Personal information
Flagship Housing Group Limited (trading as “Flagship Group”) is committed to the responsible handling and protection of personal information.
The Data Protection Act 2018; UK GDPR defines personal data as any information related to a person that can be used to identify them directly or indirectly. This includes physical attributes, location data, online identifiers (including IP addresses), identification numbers, health information and economic, cultural, or social identify of a person.
We process (collect, use, store, share) personal information where necessary to provide our services and for our operational and business purposes as described in this Privacy Notice.
We want to be clear about our privacy practices so that you can make informed choices about the use of your information, and we encourage you to contact us at any time with questions or concerns.
How we use your information
This privacy notice tells you how we, Flagship Group, will collect and use your personal information to enable us to provide affordable housing, shared ownership, private lettings, student and direct sale accommodation and associated services.
Why do Flagship Group need to collect and store personal information?
Flagship Group process personal information for the following purposes:
- Management and support of Tenancies, Shared Ownership and Direct Sales
- For the welfare of our customers
- Maintenance of properties including private garages, communal areas and sewerage works
- For the protection of employees, customers, contractors, and sub-contractors
- Servicing, repair and installation of gas appliances and heating systems
- For the prevention of fraud, crime, legal proceedings and to comply with the law.
- Feedback from research and surveys on how we can provide better services
- Communication with our customers to provide updates relating to our business and services
- For the management, wellbeing, and support of our employees
- For the management of financial services
- Security and maintenance of our networks and systems
- For general day to day corporate operations and due diligence
We are committed to ensuring that the information we collect, and use is appropriate for these purposes and does not constitute an invasion of your privacy.
Special category information
Occasionally we collect and process what may be considered special category information (sensitive personal information).
Sensitive personal information is a subset of personal information and is generally defined as any information related to racial/ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health, other medical information including biometric and genetic data, or sexual life preferences.
We will only collect this information if it is necessary to support you whilst you are a Flagship Group customer.
We will only share this information if we receive your explicit consent to do so, unless for reasons of vital interest (emergency, life, or death situation) or required by law.
Lawful processing
We must have a valid lawful basis to process your personal information. This ensures that the processing is necessary for the purpose we collected it for. (Full details of our lawful processing activities can be found on our full privacy notice, link below).
Will Flagship Group share my personal information with anyone else?
We may share your personal information with third-party service providers, local authorities, the police, utility companies or any organisation who is contracted to work with Flagship Group to provide services on our behalf. Any third parties that we may share your personal information with are obliged to keep your details securely, and to use them only to fulfil the services they provide. When they no longer need your information to fulfil this service, they will dispose of the data in line with Flagship Group procedures and contractual data sharing agreements. If we wish to pass your sensitive personal information onto a third party, we will only do so once we have obtained your consent unless we are legally required to do otherwise. If you require details on who we share your personal information with please contact the dataprotectionteam@flagship-group.co.uk.
Special circumstances
To provide a duty of care to employees, customers, contractors, and sub-contractors we will process and share relevant personal information for their protection. This will be an alert on our management system to visit in pairs (DNVA).
How will Flagship Group use the personal information it collects about me?
Flagship Group will process the information you provide in a manner compatible with the Data Protection Act 2018; UK GDPR. We will endeavor to keep your information accurate and up to date, and not keep it for longer than is necessary. Flagship Group is required to retain information in accordance with the law, such as information needed for financial, legal and audit purposes. How long certain kinds of personal information should be kept may also be governed by specific business-sector requirements and agreed practices. Personal information may be held in addition to these periods depending on individual business needs.
Under what circumstances will Flagship Group contact me?
Our aim is not to be intrusive, and we undertake not to ask irrelevant or unnecessary questions. We may sometimes contact you for feedback by doing research or asking you to take part in a survey, this enables us to make changes and improvements to our services. We may also communicate with you when we have updates or changes to our business. If you have provided us your email and or mobile number, we will contact you in this way to communicate.
We consider this communication to be within our legitimate interest of lawful processing.
How do we secure personal information?
Flagship Group takes data security seriously, and we use appropriate technologies and procedures to protect personal information. Our information security policies and procedures are closely aligned with widely accepted standards and are reviewed regularly and updated as necessary to meet our business needs, changes in technology, and regulatory requirements.
For example:
Policies and procedures
We have measures in place to protect against accidental loss and unauthorized access, use, destruction, or disclosure of data including the following:
- We have a Business Continuity Plan and IT Disaster Recovery procedure that is designed to safeguard the continuity of our service to our customers and to protect our people and assets
- We place appropriate restrictions on access to personal information
- We implement appropriate measures and controls, including monitoring and physical measures, to store and transfer data securely
- We conduct Privacy Impact Assessments in accordance with legal requirements and our business policies
- We conduct Data Protection training for all employees who have access to personal information and other sensitive data
- We take steps to ensure that our employees and contractors operate in accordance with our information security policies and procedures and any applicable contractual conditions
- We require, third party contractors or sub-contractors to have appropriate agreements in place to ensure personal information is processed in line with legislation
Can I find out the personal information that the organisation holds about me?
We, at your request, will provide you with a copy of the personal information we hold about you. This is referred to as your right of access (subject access request). You are entitled to receive any information that identifies you as an individual, including the following information:
- The lawful conditions applicable to the processing of your personal information
- If the processing is based on a legitimate interest (processing is necessary for the operation of our busines and you will reasonably expect your data to be used in this way)
- The categories of personal information processed
- Recipients(s) or categories of recipients that the data is/will be disclosed to
- If we intend to transfer personal information to a third country or international organisation
- How long the information will be stored
- The source of personal information if it wasn’t collected directly from you
- Any details and information associated to automated decision making or profiling
Your rights as a data subject (Tenants of Flagship Group)
At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject, have the following rights:
- Right of Access – at your request we will provide you with a copy of the personal data we hold about you. This is referred to as your right of access (subject access request). You are entitled to receive any information that identifies you as an individual
- Right of rectification – you have a right to ask us to update personal information if you have a reason to believe that it is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Right to be forgotten – you have the right in certain circumstances to ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records. Especially if you think we are processing your personal information where it is no longer necessary or where you believe it is unlawful.
- Right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to temporarily stop processing your personal information if you have concerns over the accuracy of the information in some way.
- Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
- Right to object – you have the right to object to the way we process your personal information if you consider Flagship Group are being unlawful.
- Right to object to automated decision making, including profiling – you have the right to object to decisions made about you from automated processing/profiling. Flagship Group use an affordability checker for customers applying for Shared Ownership properties. The result of the calculation made will determine whether Flagship Group will be able to offer you a Shared Ownership property. Automated profiling is used as part of the National Fraud Initiative every two years. For further information please refer to our full privacy notice, link below)
Continuous Recording of Social Housing Lettings and Sales (CORE)
Information gathered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
If your household has entered a new social housing tenancy after 1989, social housing providers such as Flagship Group will have shared data for research and statistical purposes. The Ministry of Housing has asked social landlords to make their privacy notice available to our customers. This will be enclosed with your Tenancy Agreement.
Privacy Notice changes
We will regularly review and make necessary changes to the services and information handling processes when you, the law, or the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) request such changes.
We process personal information where necessary to provide our services and for our operational and business purposes as described in this and future Privacy Notices. For a copy of our full privacy notice click here.
How to contact us?
If you would like to make a request to obtain personal information we hold about you or access any of your rights as explained in this privacy notice you can do so by filling in a quick and easy form by clicking here.
Alternatively, contact us in the following ways:
Call us
Our Contact Centre is open from 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday (except on Bank Holidays) Call freephone 0808 168 4555.
Email – dataprotectionteam@flagship-group.co.uk
Write to us
Data Protection Officer
Flagship Housing Group Limited
31 King Street
Norwich
NR1 1PD
Lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority
If you have any concerns regarding how Flagship Group handled your request, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) details below:
Information Governance department
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF