Privacy Notice

Merthyr Valleys Homes Privacy Policy

Our contact details

Name: Merthyr Valleys Homes

Address: Ty Brychan, 22 Lansbury Road, Gellideg, Merthyr Tydfil, CF48 1HA

Phone Number: 0800 085 7843 OR 01685 727772

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The type of personal information we collect

We currently collect and process the following information:

Personal data

  • Your address
  • Household’s names
  • Dates of birth, for everyone in the household
  • Contact details, including home telephone number, mobile telephone number, and email address
  • National Insurance number and
  • Records of any transactions such as payments or requests for information

Special category data

  • Race
  • Gender
  • Ethnicity
  • Religion or other beliefs
  • Sexual orientation and
  • Medical history
  • Physical or mental health or disability status
  • First language, or whether you need information in larger font, or braille. Criminal offence data

Criminal offence data

  • Criminal convictions or offences.

How we get the personal information and why we have it

i) Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for the following reasons:

  • When you fill in an application form for housing and bidding for one of our properties
  • When you accept an offer of one of our properties
  • When you request a move to another property
  • When you request any of our services, and fill in any of our forms
  • When you voluntarily complete our customer surveys
  • When you provide feedback or make a complaint
  • When you visit our website, contact us by email or phone our offices
  • When you complete forms when you move into one of our community living schemes
  • When you volunteer with us
  • From CCTV cameras which are there for security, then prevention and detection of crime and for staff safety and monitoring purposes
  • When your child(ren) attend Merthyr Valleys Homes’ youth club, or specific workshops, or day trips
  • Additional personal information that you have provided to us in the course of landlord/occupation contract throughout the period that you rent with us.
  • You have agreed to become a member of MVH

All telephone calls made to our Contact Centre are recorded and are used to coach staff and improve the services that we provide to you. Call recordings are retained for 42 days and then deleted, unless you make a complaint or a Data Subject Access Request within this timeframe; and we will then be able to retain the recording for a longer period.

ii) We also receive personal information indirectly, from the following sources in the following scenarios:

  • The Local Authority, through the common allocations policy and common housing register, to enable us to assist you with housing.
  • The Local Authority when you apply for a Disabled Facilities Grant, so that we are aware of any changes required to our property.
  • The housing benefit department at the local authority so we know how much rent we are going to get, and so that we can assist you with any claims.
  • The Department of Work and Pensions
  • The Police
  • The National Health Service
  • Website usage via cookies

We use the information that you have given us in order to:

  • Allow us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases, we may use your personal information where it is in the public interest (or for our official purposes) for us to do so or to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. In more rare situations, we may need to use your personal information to protect your interests or someone else’s interests.
  • Provide you with housing accommodation and to communicate and provide services which meet your needs.
  • Monitor your compliance with the occupation contract
  • Ensure that we meet all our legal and statutory duties such as those which apply under the Equality Act 2010.
  • Help with crime prevention and the prosecution of offenders.
  • Protect individuals from harm.
  • Provide you with welfare services, including advice and appropriate support.
  • Carry out research and to provide anonymised information to help improve our services and direct funds to the most appropriate areas.
  • Manage repairs and alterations to our properties
  • Contact next of kin in case of an emergency

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions and offences where the law allows us to do so, and to enable us to assess risk and suitability when we are housing tenants, and to deal with nuisance and antisocial behaviour complaints.

We are allowed to use your personal information in this way because it is in the public interest for us to do so. We may also use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else's interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public. We have an appropriate policy document in place, and there are safeguards in place, which we are required by law to maintain when processing this type of data.

We may share this information with:

  • The Department of Work and Pensions, the local authority housing benefits department, to ensure that you are being paid the correct amount of benefit entitlement or the local authority council tax department, where we are legally required to do so, the local authority social services department, emergency services, probation, to comply with legislation or court orders, other social landlords.
  • Our framework contractors and subcontractors that are undertaking work for us
  • Utility companies, as required by regulation
  • Where you live in a property which has been fitted with an IES Device and Smart Meter (or needs to be fitted with an IES Device/Smart Meter), in order to comply with our obligations to Welsh Government, we will share your key contact details with Welsh Government service providers as part of their initiatives (such as the optimised retrofit programme) in order to achieve ‘net zero’. The data collected by the IES device is about the property and will not be linked back to your personal data. The data will only be used to provide statistical information to Welsh Government.

Where sharing information is necessary, we are required to comply with all aspects of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018. We also require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes, unless you have consented to receive marketing as a member of the Mutual. If you change your mind in the future, you may opt out at a later date, and you have the right to stop us from contacting you for marketing purposes.

If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Transferring information oversees

We do not transfer any personal information outside of the EEA.

 

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:

(a) Your consent. You are able to remove your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by phoning us on 0800 085 7843 OR 01685 727772.

(b) We have a contractual obligation.

(c) We have a legal obligation.

(d) We have a vital interest.

(e) We need it to perform a public task.

(f) We have a legitimate interest.

How we store your personal information

Your information is securely stored. We do store information in the cloud.

We keep personal, special category and criminal offence data in accordance with the timescales identified in our Retention Schedule, which varies depending on the type of data. We will then dispose of your information by deleting it from our records, where it is held electronically, or through our confidential waster contractor, where it is held in hard copy format.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.

Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.

Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , or by phoning us on: 0800 085 7843 OR 01685 727772, or by writing to us at: Merthyr Valleys Homes, Ty Brychan, 22 Lansbury Road, Gellideg, Merthyr Tydfil, CF48 1HA, if you wish to make a request.

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and address it for the attention of the Data Protection Manager.

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Offfice at the adress provided below:-

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe HouseWater LaneWilmslowCheshireSK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

Changes to this privacy notice

We reserve the right to update this privacy policy at any time.

This Privacy notice was last updated on: 18 October 2024