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Privacy

Summary

Information provided will be treated confidentially and in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 25th May 2018.

Personal information will be used solely for the purpose of discharging our duties as landlords and/or keeping you informed about the property you have enquired about or ones that are similar and close by.

Our privacy policy, which explains how we will process your personal information, how long we will retain it and your rights as a data subject, can be found in this section.

Privacy Policy Notice

UWE Houses’ General Manager can always provide the name of the current data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and other relevant regulations. The purpose of this privacy policy is to tell you about the information we collect about you when you use our services, how we use that information and who we may share it with. The contact details of the data controller are: UWE Houses LLP, 5b Staplehill Road, Bristol, BS16 5AA.

What data we need to collect and the legal basis for processing it:

Tenants

We will process name, address, organisation name, phone number(s) and email address information in order to contact you.

We also collect photo(s), DOB, gender, course of study, student ID and national ID, visas (where appropriate), proof of student finance, occupation (if relevant) and your UK ‘Right to Rent’ status; and your declared associations with your guarantors/guarantees and potential ‘Joint Tenants’ (house-sharers) together with enough financial data to prove ability to pay rent and charges as planned and account data to make such payments.

Such data is kept for employees, key contractors (e.g. for maintenance) and for local authorities (e.g. Bristol City Council and South Glos Council).  Such data is also kept together with H & S data we deem to be relevant to discharging our responsibilities.

With your consent, we will process your contact data during the ‘pre-commitment’ period when you are an expressing interest in UWE Houses but have not yet applied to join us.

With your consent, we may share your contact details with potential or actual joint tenants.

Guarantors

As part of the application process, the tenant will provide us with details for a guarantor.  This includes name, address, phone number, and email address.

If you are nominated to act as a guarantor, we will hold and process your personal data for the purposes of completing your guarantor application. Your personal data will be shared with our designated credit referencing agency to process the guarantor application.  We are currently using a referencing agency called Vouch.  You will be asked to upload a copy of your ID, payslips, bank statements, and provide an employer or accountant reference. The results of any subsequent credit score/report will be used in the decision-making process. We will also hold and process your personal data for any lawful reason required such as law enforcement.

When contacted by the referencing agency, you will be asked to complete a declaration whereby you can decide whether you want the designated 3rd party referencing agency to hold your personal data.

UWE Houses may also contact a guarantor if serious concerns are raised about the tenant’s behaviour.

Former Landlords and Employers

To check the suitability of new tenants, we will contact a tenant’s current or most recent landlord, if they have provided us with their information.  This is the same for employers if they are working.  The personal information we use includes the landlord or employer’s name, phone number, and email address.

Emergency Contact
As part of our duty of care, the tenant will provide us with details for emergency contact.  This includes their name, phone number, and email address. They will be contacted in the event of an emergency.
How long we will keep your data for

Where we are using your data because you have consented to use of your contact details (name, address, organisation name, phone number and email address information), these will be deleted in the second year after you provided the data unless you formally ‘engage’ with us – in which case, all information we hold about you will be deleted in the twelfth year after you have ceased to be engaged with us.

If you never engage with us and we are processing your data on the basis of your ‘consent’ (typically prior to any engagement with us), you are freely able to withdraw your consent for us to process your information at any given time. 

Cloud-based Data

Some data is held using cloud-based services that are themselves GDPR compliant. These currently include DocuSign, Arthur, Vouch and Google. Such data is protected by the relevant company’s own procedures.

Your rights as a data subject
You have the right to request access to your data and wherever data is found to be inaccurate to have that data corrected.  In certain circumstances, you have the right to have data held about you erased; you may be able to object to our processing or transferring your data to another data controller. You also have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at www.ico.org.uk if you think we have dealt with your information in an inappropriate manner.