Revenues and benefits Privacy Notice

Your Personal Data - Who we are

We are Preston City Council and your privacy is important to us. We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you have any concerns about how the Council is handling your personal data, these can be raised with the Council's Data Protection Officer:

Preston City Council

Lancaster Road

Preston

PR1 2RL

Email: info@preston.gov.uk

We keep our privacy notice under regular review and we will place an updated version on this page.

This will help ensure that you are always aware of what information we collect and how we use it.

What we need

We will only collect basic personal data about you which includes your name, address, telephone number, email etc. together with information you have given us and information that we receive from third parties e.g. landlords.

We may also obtain information from the GOV.UK - Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and GOV.UK - HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to assist with the collection of Council Tax.

Why we need it

The Council uses your personal information in order to:

• administer and enforce Council Tax under the Local Government Finance Act 1992
• administer and enforce National Non Domestic Rates under the Local Government Finance Act 1988
• administer Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support under the Housing Benefit Regulations 2006, the Social Security Administration Act 1992, the Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2012 and Council Tax Reduction Scheme (Preston) Regulations 2018.

The processing of your information is necessary for compliance with the legal obligations contained in these Acts.

What we do with it

Your personal information will be treated as confidential but it may be shared with other Council services in order to ensure our records are accurate and up-to-date, and to improve the standard of the services we deliver.

We will only use your information in ways which are permitted by the General Data Protection Regulation and the current UK Data Protection law.

We have a Data protection and freedom of information in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal data. 

This authority has a duty to protect the public funds it administers, and may use information held about you for all lawful purposes, including but not limited to the prevention and detection of crime including fraud and money laundering and the matching of Council Tax and benefits data with other internal and external Government departments including the Department for Work and Pensions and HMRC.

The Council may also use your information for the purpose of performing any of its statutory enforcement duties. It will make any disclosures required by law and may also share your information with other bodies responsible for detecting/preventing crime including fraud or auditing/administering public funds.

The Council may share Council Tax data with third parties to assist with recovery of arrears. We may also share your information with debt collection agencies.

We may also use sub-processors to support our activities, for example by sharing information with a sub processor needed for delivering services on our behalf. These processors are:

• Telsolutions - who assist PCC with recovery of arrears
• Ascendant Solutions.

We will also share your data with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to help with the production of statistics related to the economy, population and society and to help with the Census. 

Details of the information we will share and how it will be used can be viewed on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) website.

There is also information about your computer hardware and software that is automatically collected by Preston City Council. This information can include:

• your IP address
• browser type
• domain names
• access times
• referring Web site addresses.

This information is used by Preston City Council for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Preston City Council Web site.

We will not disclose your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.

The legislation also allows us to share information (where appropriate) with other Billing Authorities, the Courts, HMRC, the Insolvency Service, the Valuation Office and the Valuation Tribunal Service.  This may include the Council sharing information about suspected rate mitigation or avoidance schemes with other Billing Authorities.

What are your rights

You have the right to:

• request a copy of your information (known as a subject access request)
• request rectification or erasure of your information,
• request a restriction on the processing of your information, and,
• object to processing of your information,
• complain to the Information Commissioner's Office about the way the Council processes your information.
• set your browser to remove or reject cookies before using Preston City Council website 

If you require further information about the use of your data or would like to exercise any of the above rights, please contact:

Data Protection Officer
Preston City Council
Town Hall
Lancaster Road
Preston
PR1 2RL

Transferring information overseas

In certain circumstances we may transfer your information to organisations in other countries on the basis that anyone to whom we pass it protects it in the same way we would and in accordance with applicable laws.

How long we keep your information

We will keep you information for as long as it is required by us or other regulatory bodies in order to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or for other operational reasons. In most cases this will be a minimum of six years.

More information on our retention schedule can be found online.

Website information

Preston City Council encourages you to review the privacy statements of Web sites you choose to link to from Preston City Council so that you can understand how those Web sites collect, use and share your information.

Preston City Council is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on Web sites outside of the Preston City Council family of Web sites.

Use of Cookies

The Preston City Council Web site use "cookies" to help you personalise your online experience.

A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Website via your web browser. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

For more information please refer to our Cookies page.