Privacy notice - COVID-19 Local Support Grants

Middlesbrough Council provides a Revenues and Benefits Service that offers financial support to Residents who are eligible for help from various national and local schemes including the COVID Local Support Grant Payment and Advice and Financial Support.

We use online and telephone applications to collect the information directly from you that we need to process your claim. We also use information that we already hold about your in our Revenues and Benefits records. This includes names, dates of birth, postal and email addresses, mobile telephone number, financial details such as income, and National Insurance number.  If you are applying for Free School Meals, we also receive some information from the Department for Education about your eligibility.

When we capture and use personal data, we rely on ‘public task’ as our legal basis where we have a legal power that allows us to provide financial assistance under the Coronavirus Act 2020 and free schools meals under the Education Act 1996.

We use personal data to check your eligibility for a COVID Support Grant Payments or Advice and Financial Support Scheme Payment including Free Schools Meals. We also use your data to process your applications, and make sure our other records are up to date, make payments to you or Free School Meals providers, and to provide you with advice about any other local support that may be available to you. Any information provided on this form will be subject to validation against the information we hold within and the Revenues and Benefits System. Your information may also be used as a basis to respond to payment issues or make contact with you to discuss such matters. We also use your personal data to undertake checks for fraud.

We share your mobile number and payment amount information with our provider PayPoint to allow you to receive the payment voucher. If you are also applying for Free School Meals we share some of your information with the Department for Education using their Eligibility Checking System and with Free School Meals providers.

We may also share your with other bodies responsible for; auditing, or administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud (including Police and Law Enforcement Agents). This also includes sharing data with the Cabinet Office who administer the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). For more information about how the NFI will use your data visit GOV.UK.

We use the following measures to ensure that your personal data is secure: data protection and security policies, information security incident reporting, data and device encryption, system and data access controls, user accounts and passwords, physical and environmental security, staff vetting practices, staff training and awareness, data back-ups, ICT network penetration testing, and business continuity and disaster recovery plans. Any data that we send or receive to other organisations is encrypted and protected.

We keep personal data only for as long as is necessary. For more information about how long we keep data, please search for our Records Retention and Disposal Schedule on our website.

The Council does not transfer your data overseas. However, our provider PayPoint may export data to countries outside of the UK. Where this happens, they always put appropriate security measures in place.

We will never use the data provided by you for the grant schemes for marketing.

Your Information Rights are set out in law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:

• Right to rectification - to ask for information to be corrected
• Right to erasure - to have your personal data deleted
• Right to object - to how your data is used
• Right to restriction - to request limits on how your data is used
• Right to portability - to request that we move your data to another organisation
• Right of subject access - to request a copy of data the Council holds about you

If you have a concerns about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner's Office. Visit the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice or your information rights, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer
Middlesbrough Council
PO Box 500, Middlesbrough, TS1 9FT
Phone: 01642 245432
Email: dataprotection@middlesbrough.gov.uk