Refugee Resettlement forms part of the Community Directorate and this document explains how information will be held about you and processed.
This notice should be read in conjunction with our Privacy Policy.
How do we get your information?
Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you. We may also receive personal information indirectly, from the following sources:
- Home Office
What personal data do we process and why
The information we process about you will vary depending on the service being provided, but will fall within the following categories:
- Home Office reference number
- Name
- Date of birth
- Address
- email addresses
- telephone numbers
- language/s spoken
- income
- financial information
- photos
- disabilities
- health information
- level of English
Information relating to health and wellbeing and other special category data
In order to meet our statutory and legal obligations in respect of these services, we may also need to process sensitive, or “special category” personal data about you, which could include data related to:
- Racial or ethnic origin data
- Religious or philosophical beliefs
- Health
Why we collect personal information about you.
Wealden District Council will collect and hold personal information relating to Refugee Resettlement. We use this information for the following purposes:
- deliver and manage the services we provide
Lawful basis for processing your personal data
We do this as a task carried out in the public interest in line with the grant conditions that we operate within as set out by the Home Office for the purpose of the various resettlement schemes.
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Who do we share your data with
The data you provide may be disclosed with other departments of the Council or external organisations for related purposes or as required by law. We may share information with the following types of organisations:
- Health services – to support you to access doctor, dentist and optician appointments and to address any health concerns that you may have
- Education services – to help you to access school and nursery placements for your children and to enrol you in English language classes. We also monitor progress of yourself and your family and work closely with the educational provider to ensure any additional services that are needed to support you and your family are made available.
- Employment and Benefit services – to support you to claim all of the welfare benefits you are entitled to and to access opportunities to work.
- Translation/interpreting services – to ensure your full understanding of information being supplied to you.
- Sussex Police – to support your community integration.
- Utility providers – to ensure you have accounts set-up for all services needed and to support you to pay these. Such as helping you set up direct debits.
- Other services such as Council Tax and register of electors – to ensure you are set up and registered at the property in which you are living.
- With your consent we may also be able to link you to voluntary/charitable organisations, other refugee families on a resettlement scheme or volunteers in the community.
- Home Office – for the purpose of completing monitoring returns on yours and you families progress.
In some circumstances, such as under a court order, we are legally obliged to share information, and we may also share information with the Police and other enforcement agencies for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offences.
We may also share information internally, in order to verify or confirm your personal details, to ensure our records are accurate and up-to-date. Data held by this service will only be used by other internal departments or services when we are satisfied there is a lawful basis for doing so and is considered fair.
Do we use processors
Data processors are third parties who provide certain parts of our services for us. We have contracts in place with them and they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do so. Our current data processors for this service are listed below
Data Processor | Purpose |
People Matter | To provide tailored employment support to you. |
Egg Learn/Sam Reid | To provide tailored ESOL. |
Ask Ali | To provide counselling and advice/support services (Afghan families only). |
Software we use
Housing One
Transfer of personal data
No data is transferred overseas as part of this service.
Automated decision making
We process your personal data for the above purposes for no longer than necessary and in accordance with current legislation and the Councils Retention Schedule.
Only in exceptional circumstances will we hold your information for longer, for example a pending court case. All information will be held securely and disposed of confidentially.
Retention period
We process your personal data for the above purposes for no longer than necessary and in accordance with current legislation and the Councils Retention Schedule.
Only in exceptional circumstances will we hold your information for longer, for example a pending court case. All information will be held securely and disposed of confidentially.
Anonymising your data
Your personal information may be converted into statistical or aggregated data that ensures that you cannot be identified from it. Anonymised data means it cannot be linked back to you as an individual and may be used to conduct research and analysis. This includes the preparations of statistics for use in our reports.
Your rights
Your rights are set out in the Data Protection legislation and include:
- the right to access your personal information, to request rectification or erasure of certain personal
- information and to object to processing in certain circumstances
- the right to withdraw any consent you may have given to process your personal information
- the right to complain to the Information Commissioner(opens new window)if you feel we are processing your personal information unlawfully
- the right to restrict processing activity in certain circumstances
- the right to object to certain types of processing activity
If you wish to exercise any of these rights please contact our Information Governance team on informationgovernance@wealden.gov.uk in writing or by completing our online form.
If you are dissatisfied with how we have used your personal data you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner Office
Data Protection Officer
If you have any questions or concerns about how your personal data is handled, you can contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO) at dataprotection@wealden.gov.uk