Council Tax privacy notice

Your Personal Information and how we use it

Sunderland City Council needs to collect information about you to help us with the administration, billing, collection, and enforcement of council tax.

We will only use information collected lawfully in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and future UK Data Protection legislation.

We will not use any information we hold about you for any purpose other than that for which it was collected, unless we have obtained your consent beforehand.

What information do we collect?

We collect information about you from various sources to ensure that we meet your needs, including:

Correspondence including emails, letters and forms sent by you or others, including landlords and letting agents
Applications for housing benefit or Council Tax support
Credit searches provided by credit reference agencies (for example, TransUnion)
Information from other council departments
Information from government departments
Information requests we make to other local authorities and public bodies
The register of electors
Telephone conversations with you or others acting on your behalf

This enables us to:

Assess your liability for council tax, including entitlement to discounts, exemptions and reductions
Communicate with you about services appropriate to your needs
Protect public funds, including the prevention and detection of crime or fraud
Recover any council tax due

The lawful basis for our processing is:

Compliance with a legal obligation to which the data controller is subject
Performance of a task carried out in the public interest

The legislation the service is obliged to comply with includes:

The Local Government Finance Act 1992
The Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992
The General Data Protection Regulation/Data Protection Act 2018

Information we may collect:

Name, address, contact details
Date of birth
Employment and benefit details
Bank details if you pay by Direct Debit
Health information including disability
Household makeup to apply the relevant discounts, exemptions and reliefs
Income and expenditure details
Occupancy or tenancy information

Contact details including: 

Current and previous addresses
Email address
Telephone number

How is the information we collect used to help you?

The information we collect may be used to help you in the following ways:

To administer and collect council tax.
To assess eligibility for discounts, exemptions, and reductions
To prevent and detect fraud
Fulfil our legal obligations under the Local Government Finance Act 1992, The Council Tax (Administrative and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 and related regulations.

Do we share information about you with anyone?

There are times when it will be appropriate for us to share relevant information with other agencies to help us work together for your benefit. We may share your information with the following organisations:

Other council departments
Government agencies (e.g., DWP, HMRC)
Enforcement agents
His Majesty's Court and Tribunal Service
Other local authorities
Credit reference agencies
Fraud prevention bodies (e.g., National Fraud Initiative)
The Valuation Office Agency
The Valuation Tribunal Service
Your employer
Your place of study, for example a college or university

The lawful basis on which we use this information

We may need to disclose personal information in other specific situations such as:

where required by law
where required for the prevention or detection of crime
when disclosure is in the vital interests of the person concerned

Please note that your personal data e.g. name, address etc may also be shared with bodies responsible for auditing and administering public funds for the purposes of preventing and detecting fraud e.g. The lawful basis on which we use this information data is shared with the Cabinet Office as part of the government's National Fraud Initiative (NFI), in an exercise undertaken periodically that seeks to match electronic data for the specific purpose of preventing and detecting fraud.

For more details see the Council's National Fraud Initiative Privacy Notice.

We will not sell your information to third parties. We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes. Our lawful basis for this processing is legal obligation or task in the public interest and your consent is not required.

How we look after your information

We hold personal information in secure electronic systems on Sunderland City council servers.

How long we will look after your information

We retain your data for as long as necessary to fulfil our legal and operational obligations. Where we have no need to keep your data it will be securely destroyed.

Requesting access to your personal data

You have rights under data protection law, including:

Access to your data
Correction of inaccurate data.
Erasure of data (in certain circumstances)
Restriction or objection to processing under certain circumstances
Data portability

You can find out if we hold any personal information about you by making a 'subject access request' under the General Data Protection Regulation.

In addition, you have the right to request the rectification or erasure of your personal data, and to object to, or request restriction of, processing your data.

If you have any concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal information, we request that you raise your concern with us in the first instance.

Alternatively, you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Further information

https://www.sunderland.gov.uk/data-protection

Contact Us

By post - Data Protection Officer, Sunderland City Council, City Hall, Plater Way, Sunderland, SR1 3AA

Email - Data Protection Office at [email protected]

Telephone - 0191 520 5555