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Benefits

Benefits Privacy Notice

We keep the Benefits Privacy Notice under review. It was last reviewed and updated in May 2018.

The Benefits Privacy Notice covers the following Benefits services:

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice contact the council’s Data Protection Officer.

View the privacy information for all of the City of York Council (CYC).


Collecting personal data

We may monitor and record electronic communications (website, email and phone conversations) for a number of reasons such as:

  • staff training
  • records of conversations
  • the detection, investigation and prevention of crime

We will inform you if your call is being recorded or monitored.

Emails that we send to you or you send to us, may be retained as a record of contact and your email address stored for future use in accordance with our retention periods. If we need to email sensitive or confidential information to you, we may perform checks to verify the correct email address and may take additional security measures.

The amount and type of personal data we collect for the purposes of administering our services are dependent on the service you are accessing or the actions we are carrying out, such as:

Details of required personal data are shown on the appropriate application forms:

In some circumstances, we will need more details and sometimes sensitive personal data for example if you are applying for assistance through the YFAS scheme, for a Discretionary Housing Payment or for extra help with your Council Tax.

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Using personal data

We'll only use your personal data in accordance with data protection legislation, and for the purposes stated in this privacy notice.

We'll:

  • only ask for what is necessary for the purposes of administration of the mentioned schemes
  • protect it and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn’t
  • ensure you know if you have a choice about giving us data
  • only share your personal data with other City Of York Council departments or with external partners, agencies and contractors involved in delivering services on our behalf
  • make sure we don’t keep it for longer than is necessary
  • delete or destroy it securely when we no longer have a need to keep it

We ask that you:

  • give us accurate information
  • tell us as soon as possible of any changes
  • tell us as soon as possible if you notice mistakes in the data we hold about you

From time to time, we may conduct or ask you to take part in a survey to get your feedback, comments and opinions to help us improve our services. We will only do this where we have your explicit consent to contact you for this purpose.

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Sharing personal data

Any information we use in presentations or reports will be anonymised and will not identify any individuals. For example a report on the spending of the Discretionary Housing Payment fund will not feature any of your personal data.

Sharing data under Data Protection legislation

We do not disclose or share sensitive or confidential information without your explicit consent except where disclosure is required by law, or where we have good reason to believe that failing to do so, would put you or someone else at risk.

We may be required or permitted, under data protection legislation, to disclose your personal data without your explicit consent, for example if we have a legal obligation to do so, such as for:

  • law enforcement
  • fraud investigations
  • regulation and licensing
  • criminal prosecutions
  • court proceedings

We must protect public funds and may use personal data and data-matching techniques to detect and prevent fraud, collect taxes and ensure public money is targeted and spent in the most appropriate and cost-effective way. To do this, your personal data may be shared with other bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds, including the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs, the Police and other local authorities.

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When we use your personal data, we are relying on the below legal reasons:

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Retaining personal data

We will keep your personal data for 7 years after your last contact with us. This means if there is no activity on your account, we will delete or destroy your personal data securely.

At the end of the retention period, we may pass any relevant information to the City Archives where it is required or appropriate to do so.

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Further processing of personal data

If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Privacy Notice, then we'll provide you with a new notice.

The new notice will:

  • explain this new use before we start the processing
  • set out the relevant purposes and processing conditions

Where and whenever necessary, we'll seek your consent to the new processing, if we start to use your personal data for a purpose not mentioned in this Privacy Notice.

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Personal data in online Payments

The personal data you give to us when using our online payment system will only be used for the recording of your payment. We'll ensure that it is used for no other purpose and is not disclosed to a third party such as other companies or individuals, unless required to do so by law for the prevention of crime and the detection of fraud.

We'll hold it securely and only for as long as is needed. It will then be deleted in line with our Retention and Disposal Policy and Procedures.

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Your rights relating to personal data

When we collect your personal data we'll tell you how we are going to use it. Where we process your personal data, you have a number of rights under data protection law.

See further details of your rights relating to personal data.

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Also see

Data Protection Officer

West Offices, Station Rise, York, YO1 6GA

Telephone: 01904 554145