Privacy Notice - Council tax and business rate

Spelthorne Borough Council is a data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulations.

How we will use your information

The council uses your personal information in order to administer and enforce council tax under the Local Government Finance Act 1992 and Business Rates under the Local Government Finance Act 1988. We may collect special category data such as details of disabilities in order to process requests correctly. Any additional information requested, will be processed under the lawful basis of public task.

This authority has a duty to protect public funds it administers and may use information held about you for all lawful purposes, including but not limited to the prevention and detection of fraud, matching council tax data with electoral registration records and protecting public funds in investigating misuse of public money.

This council is required by law to participate in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) data matching exercises, as such council tax and council tax support information may be provided to the Cabinet Office for NFI purposes and will be used for cross-system and cross-authority comparison for the prevention and detection of fraud.

The council will also use the information for the purpose of performing any of its statutory enforcement duties. It will make any disclosures required by law.

We will not disclose your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes and we will not use your personal data in a way that may cause you unwarranted detriment. Your data is not subject to any automated decision-making or transferred outside of the European Union.

Your records will be kept only for only as long as the service is provided to you or as is required by law. If there is no legal requirement to keep the records they will be destroyed as soon as is practicable.

Your personal information may be shared with the following:

Enforcement agents, our hybrid printing supplier, provider(s) of specialist multi-channel messaging solutions for the council to contact you regarding collection of revenues.

Phone calls are recorded for training and monitoring purposes and for the detection and prevention of fraud. The phone number of incoming calls will be detected and displayed by our telephony systems. 

Further information

 You have the following rights:

• You have the right to be informed via Privacy Notices such as this.
• You have the right to request access to and to receive a copy of any information we hold about you (including in an electronic format) - to request a copy of this information you must make a subject access request in writing.
• If you find that the information Spelthorne Borough Council holds about you is no longer accurate, you have the right to ask to have this corrected.
• You have the right - under certain conditions - to ask us to erase your personal data.
• You may request that Spelthorne Borough Council stops processing your personal data in relation to any council service (this may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you, we will seek to comply with your request but may be required to hold or process information to comply with our legal duties.)
• To exercise any of these rights, contact the Data Protection Officer at data.protection@spelthorne.gov.uk
• You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).  This is an independent body responsible for making sure that organisations comply with Data Protection Legislation. The ICO will always expect you to have raised your concerns with us before submitting a complaint.