Accessibility

Web accessibility is about removing barriers to information and services for all site users, regardless of their ability, environment or individual needs.

WDH recognises diversity in society, and one of our key values is to be inclusive.

We aim for compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and we use a service that monitors our website and identifies any accessibility issues.

Accessing our services

We want to make sure everyone has equal access to the services and information we provide, and that you can use our services in a way that suits your needs.

If you would like us to communicate with you in a different way, or receive written information from us in another format, please email the Communications Team at [email protected] with your requirements.

ReachDeck

To support everyone online with visual and nonvisual disabilities, we have created an inclusive website to enable all employees, customers, and other website users to customise their online experience in a way that works best for them by using ReachDeck.

The ReachDeck tool sits on the top of this website and enables you to have better access to our information in a format that suits your needs. Through ReachDeck, you can customise the look and feel of our website in a way that works for you. It includes dyslexia friendly tools, an interactive dictionary, a translation tool with over 100 languages and the option to turn text to speech.

You may need Adobe Acrobat Reader® to read some of the documents on this site. Download Adobe Acrobat

Our Privacy Notice 

We ask that you read this privacy notice carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use or share personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us and the supervisory authority in the event that you have a complaint.

Who we are?

Wakefield and District Housing Limited (WDH) is a registered charitable Community Benefit Society that provides social housing and social support services. WDH are the Data Controller of personal information and is registered with the Information Commissioner (ICO reg. no. Z9160379). We are regulated under the Data Protection Act 2018, including the UK GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Our contact details for data protection purposes are as follows.

Information Governance Team
WDH
Merefield House
Whistler Drive
Castleford
WF10 5HX
Email: [email protected]

The individual responsible for data protection compliance is our Data Protection Officer, who can be contacted using the above details.

How we get and use your information

Tenancy applications

Please see the Homesearch Privacy Notice for how we deal with tenancy applications.

Occupation and use of property

When you live in one of our properties on an Occupation and Use basis, which mainly occurs when you apply for the succession of a tenancy, this privacy notice fully applies to you in the same way it would if you were named on the tenancy agreement.

Supporting tenants, leaseholders, residents and communities

When you contact us about your tenancy, property repairs, rent payments or lease we rely on the lawful basis of Contract for processing your information.

We require your cooperation for us to access the property you live in because we have a legal obligation to complete regular safety checks and inspections. We will liaise with you, or members of your household, to try and agree a mutually convenient time for all visits to your property.

We rely on the lawful basis of Legitimate Interest for the following activities.

  • When we may need to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, we:
  • record and manage complaints made against us;
  • instigate debt collection for rent arrears or other money owed to us;
  • receive claims against us for personal injury or property damage; and
  • believe there is, or may be, a breach of a tenancy or lease agreement.
  • Dealing with general enquiries by:
  • phone, email, letter or online, including by social media;
    making
  • notes and completing forms we keep about your enquiry when you visit our hubs; and
  • recording phone calls to and from our contact centre for training, quality, and dispute resolution.
  • Ensuring utility bills are accurate as this is in our financial interests, by:
  • contacting you to check your eligibility or renew your Yorkshire Water discount; and
  • passing meter readings and the name and address of the person responsible for the bill to the utility broker we use.
  • For security and crime prevention at our properties:
    issuing,
  • managing and checking the use of key fobs for access to buildings;
  • recording CCTV images; and
  • issuing and monitoring the use of visitor passes.
  • Maintaining, monitoring and enforcing environmental management, such as noise or litter to support our vison, to create confident communities, and strategic priority, to achieve high quality neighbourhoods.
  • Conducting tenancy visits, customer, stakeholder or lifestyle surveys and research, to improve our services as a provider of Social Housing.
  • Checking fire risks and safety of properties we own at intervals we decide, in addition to statutory checks.
  • We receive funding or invest WDH funds to reduce long-term costs and our carbon footprint through environmental and sustainability programmes, such as energy conservation and monitoring energy use. Read about how we use connected devices in properties.
  • If you are a resident in one of our independent living schemes, or if you apply or are referred as a possible resident, we have to ensure you meet our criteria, assess your needs, plan and review support.

We rely on Public Task as the lawful basis for the following housing related activities.

  • Where we liaise directly with The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) about Universal Credit and benefits, and local authorities about other benefits.
  • Managing nuisance and antisocial behaviour.
  • Organising tenant, community, neighbourhood and partnership groups and panels.
  • Reporting suspected fraud, and data that helps identify fraud.
  • Safeguarding vulnerable individuals, including the provision of emergency accommodation.

Users of our care and support services

We have teams that work to support our residents covering wellbeing, adaptations, independent living, health and medical rehousing and NHS Housing Coordinators. We have written agreements with local authorities, including Wakefield Families Together and the NHS, who may refer you to us for this support. We process these referrals and report outcomes under the lawful basis of Public Task.

Where you approach us directly for health-related support we may rely on your Consent.

If you are a Care Link customer, please read the Care Link Privacy Notice.

Support from our Social Investment team

Our Social Investment team work across our communities to provide several support programmes. We rely on the lawful basis of Consent for the following activities.

  • When you first register and apply for a Yorkshire Water discount.
  • if you take part in our Community Employment Service or Work Experience programmes.

If you apply to the WDH Training for Employment Scheme, please see our Privacy Notice - Job Applicants.

For details on the work of our Financial Inclusion Team please see the Cash Wise Privacy Notice.

Types of personal information we collect

  • Names and other identifying information including date of birth.
  • Contact details.
  • Employment details and history.
  • Income, expenses and benefits.
  • Account information for collecting your rent and monitoring your payments.
  • Family / household members’ details.
  • Information about antisocial behaviour or criminal activity.
  • Details of reports made by you, and communications to you, such as queries, repairs and complaints.
  • Recordings of phone calls to / from our call centre.
  • CCTV images.
  • Key fob entry and exit times, if you live in a block.

Special category data

We routinely process the health data of tenants and residents where it is relevant to their housing needs and the provision of our services, including where we make adjustments. We rely on GDPR Article 9 2(b), and the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 Schedule 1, Part 1 (1) (social security and social protection).

When we deal with antisocial behaviour complaints, particularly those involving race and hate crime, we will process special category data under Substantial Public Interest (GDPR Article 9 (g)) and Criminal Offence Data (GDPR Article 10) relying on the DPA 2018 Schedule 1, Part 2 (10) (Preventing or detecting unlawful acts).

Wellbeing, adaptations, health and medical rehousing, NHS Housing Coordinators, and independent living teams rely on your Explicit Consent and, where appropriate, the Provision and Management of Health and Social Care (GDPR Article 9 2(h)), and the DPA 2018 Schedule 1, Part 1 (2) (Health and Social Care Purposes).

We also collect faith, race and sexual orientation data to monitor equality, diversity and inclusion to help ensure our services are delivered fairly. We rely on Substantial Public Interest (GDPR Article 9 (g)) and the DPA 2018, Schedule 1, Part 2 (8) (Equality of opportunity and treatment).

We collect information that you provide about criminal convictions and offences so that we can safeguard our employees and the communities where we are the landlord. The lawful basis we rely on to process this information is Employment and Social Protection Law (GDPR Article 9 2(b)) and the DPA 2018, Schedule 1, Part 1 (Employment and Social Protection Law).

We are required to have an Appropriate Policy Document (APD) for certain conditions of processing special category and criminal offence data. Our APD sets out and explains our procedures for securing compliance with the principles of GDPR and policies regarding the retention and erasure of such personal data.

Automated Decision Making

Your personal data is not used in any automated decision making (a decision made solely by automated means without any human involvement) or profiling (automated processing of personal data to evaluate certain conditions about an individual).

We employ profiling technologies for statistical analyses, of our tenants and properties, which are used to manage our properties and run our business. While the analyses from profiling are automatically produced, the results are reviewed by a human and actions are determined by a human.

Who we share your information with

Data Processors

To provide services such as customer management platforms, maintenance, repairs, online services, arrears collection and cloud storage we use Data Processors who we have written agreements with.

All Data Processors are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our Data Processors to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in line with our instructions.

Other Data Controllers

We may need to share information about you with The Department of Work and Pensions, local authorities, or other agencies such as Social Services, the NHS and the Fire and Rescue Services.

We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies, regulatory bodies, legal representatives, auditors and insurers, to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and to establish, exercise or protect us from legal claims.

Preventing fraud and bribery

WDH has a zero tolerance towards fraud, corruption, or bribery.

To help achieve this, we take part in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI), which is run by the Government and aims to reduce opportunities for fraud against organisations that take part and identify potential cases for further investigation.

Our aim is to protect WDH and the money we collect, such as rent, from the risk of fraud.

We provide information we hold on tenancies for use in the exercise annually.

Please, be assured that the process is properly controlled and fully complies with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018, and the information will be used for this purpose only.

If you have any questions or concerns about the NFI you can contact OneCALL on 0345 8 507 507 or see the Government NFI website.

Reporting statistical information to Government

Continuous Recording of Social Housing lettings and Sales (CORE) New Tenants / Buyers - Privacy notice for tenants and buyers of new social housing.

How long we retain your information.

The period we keep your personal information depends on the type of information it is and what it is used for. We have set periods, listed in our Records Retention Schedule.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have a Personal Data Breach Plan, which is GDPR compliant, to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Transferring your personal information out of the UK

To deliver services to you, it may be necessary for us to share your personal information outside the UK, for example if we were to use a cloud service provider based outside the UK. In such a situation, we will make sure that we have adequate safeguards and security measures in place as required by the GDPR.

Visitors to our website

We take a proactive approach to user privacy and ensure that appropriate steps are taken to protect the privacy of users of our website. For further details please see our cookies policy at the bottom of this page.

Your Data Protection rights, including your right to complain.

Please see the data protection rights section below.

Changes to this privacy notice

We may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page regularly so that you are aware of any changes.

Do you need extra help?

We are committed to giving everyone equal access to information. If you would like us to communicate with you in a different way, or receive written information from us in another format, please phone 0345 8 507 507 or email [email protected]

Your data protection rights

The following applies to all Data Subjects who deal with Wakefield and District Housing (WDH), Homesearch, Care Link and Cash Wise.

 This includes our current and former tenants and residents, Homesearch members, Care Link customers, Cash Wise customers, our employees and job applicants.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018 you have a number of important rights, free of charge, unless excessive or repetitive in nature.  In summary, those rights are:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a ‘data subject access request’).  This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you.  This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.  We often rely on you to keep us informed about changes in your circumstances.  In the first instance please contact the team you usually deal with to check or update your information.

Request deletion of your personal data.  This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law.  Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, in response to your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms.  In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms, or that the processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.  You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data.  This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

a)     if you want us to establish the data's accuracy;

b)     where our use of the data is unlawful, but you do not want us to erase it;

c)     where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or

d)     you have objected to our use of your data, but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party.  We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine readable format (that is, useable on a computer).  Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data.  However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.  If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you.  We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.  Also, we may still be allowed to process your data following the withdrawal of consent if another lawful justification for such processing exists.

The right to challenge any automated decision making or profiling that may be carried out using your information.  If we use automated decision-making we will highlight this right and describe the processing in the relevant privacy notice.  This right is not automatic and may not apply in certain circumstances.

The right to complain to us and / or to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if your information is being used unlawfully.  If you have queries or concerns about how we have processed your information you can contact our Data Protection Officer.  If you remain dissatisfied, you can complain to the ICO as follows:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane Wilmslow

Cheshire
SK9 5AF
www.ico.org.uk

If you would like to exercise any of the above rights, please:

·             Write to, call or email The Data Protection Officer, Wakefield and District Housing Limited, Merefield House, Whistler Drive, Castleford, WF10 5HX.  Phone: 03458 507 507.  Email: [email protected].

·             Let us have enough information to identify you (for example, tenancy or Homesearch reference number).

·             Let us know the information to which your request relates.

·             Note that in some circumstances we may need to verify your identity and address through a copy of appropriate ID.  We will let you know if this is the case.

 

We will respond to all legitimate requests within one month.  If it is going to take us longer than a month because the request is complex, or you have a number of requests we will notify you and keep you updated.

 

Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They can then be read back by the website when required. Each cookie is unique and will contain anonymous information such as a unique id, the site name and some characters and numbers.

Cookies are used to remember that you have logged in when you move to a different page, store your preferences, and improve the efficiency and experience of using the website. Often cookies are deleted automatically after you have left the website. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from using all the functions of the website.

Visit ico cookies for information on how to make your browser decline cookies.