Beacon Living Privacy Policy
Beacon Living is a trading name of Gateshead Trading Company Limited. Registered Office: Civic Centre, Regent Street, Gateshead NE8 1HH. Company No. 06873659. A company registered in England and Wales and controlled by Gateshead Council.
Gateshead Council is the data controller for personal data obtained as part of the sale of properties in the Whitley Court development. Gateshead Council collects and processes personal information about you in order to deal with your application to purchase a property, and to meet our statutory obligations. Please refer to the section below 'Why we need your information' for a full description of the ways in which we may use your personal data.
Gateshead Council is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Through this Privacy Notice we have sought to be as transparent as possible to fully explain how your personal data is held and processed.
This Privacy Notice explains when and why we collect personal information about people who engage or come into contact with us in relation to the Whitley Court housing development scheme, whether via applying to buy a property or simply making initial enquiries.
This notice explains how we collect, use and share your information, how long we keep it and how we keep it secure.
We may change this Privacy Notice from time to time so please check this page regularly to ensure that you're happy with any changes.
Any questions regarding our privacy practices should be sent by post or email to:
Data Protection Officer
1st Floor
Civic Centre
Regent Street
Gateshead
NE8 1HH
DPOCouncil@gateshead.gov.uk
0191 433 3000
What type of information is collected about you
Gateshead Council may collect various types of personal data about you when you enquire about one of our properties, such as your:
- contact details; including name, address, email address, telephone number
- date of birth
- proof of identity
- national identifiers such as; NHS number and NI numbers
- information about your family
- IP address and information regarding what pages are accessed and when
- lifestyle, social and personal circumstances
- financial details for the purposes of receiving or making payments and assessing eligibility in relation to affordable housing
- employment details
We may also collect special personal data that may include:
- physical or mental health details
- racial or ethnic origin
- gender and sexual orientation
Cookies
Upon visiting our website, cookies are used to collect information about website usage.
You can see more information on how we collect web usage information on our cookies page.
Website usage
We use Hotjar (opens new window) in order to better understand our users' needs and to optimise this the website. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users experience ( for example, how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don't like) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users' behaviour and their devices (in particular device's IP address (captured and stored only in anonymised form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), preferred language used to display our website). Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymised user profile. Neither Hotjar nor we will ever use this information to identify individual users or to match it with further data on an individual user. For further details, please see Hotjar's privacy policy (opens new window).
You can opt-out of the creation of a user profile, Hotjar's storing of data about your usage of our site and Hotjar's use of tracking cookies on other websites by following this opt-out link (opens new window).
Why we need your information
We need your personal data in order to process your application to purchase a Gateshead Council property. We will only collect personal data that is absolutely necessary, and any information we collect about you will be strictly in accordance with the Data Protection legislation and other statutory obligations which we are bound by.
We process your information for the following purposes:
- complying with Money Laundering Legislation
- assessing affordable housing criteria
- processing the conveyancing documentation
In most cases the information will be collected and used where we have a contract with you. You will be advised of any additional purposes or uses at the time the information is collected or used.
Who your information may be shared with
Gateshead Council will share data with the estate agent who is marketing our properties to allow sales progression.
We will share your data with the appointed financial agent, who is responsible for carrying out due diligence services and anti-money laundering obligations and assessing affordability.
Gateshead Council will share your data with the solicitors used for the conveyancing, the Land Registry and warranty providers. We may also share your data when we are required by law to do so with HMRC and other agencies.
To finalise the sale, a completion statement will be shared with Gateshead Council's Corporate Finance team.
A completion report with a copy of the deeds will be shared with the Corporate Asset and Strategy Team (CAST) and Benefits and Council Tax to confirm that you now own the leasehold.
We may also share your information with Benefits and Council tax if you qualify for help with your rent repayments.
We will never use or share your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes without your permission.
How long we keep your information
We review our retention periods of the information we hold about you on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations.
We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as it is necessary for the sale of the property or service that we provide to you, any applicable warranty period, or as required by law. Please see the individual service Privacy Notices to find out more about how long your information is held by each service.
Marketing and e-newsletters
Gateshead Council always acts upon your choices around what type of communications you want to receive and how you want to receive them. Tools may be used to help us improve the effectiveness of our communications with you, including tracking whether the emails we send are opened and which links are clicked within a message. This helps us to improve and refine future email marketing around our campaigns and make sure all our emails are relevant and useful as possible.
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us.
Business intelligence, profiling and automated decision making
Business intelligence
We may analyse your personal information to improve services and help us to build up a picture of how we are performing.
Gateshead Council is however committed to using pseudonymised or anonymised information as much as is practical, and in many cases, this will be the default position.
Pseudonymisation is a procedure by which the most identifying fields within a data record are replaced by one or more artificial identifiers, or pseudonyms. There can be a single pseudonym for a collection of replaced fields or a pseudonym per replaced field.
Anonymisation is the process of removing identifying particulars or details from (something, especially medical test results) for statistical or other purposes.
Profiling and automated decision making
Profiling means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a person, to analyse or predict aspects concerning that person's economic and health situation, reliability, personal preferences and interests.
Automated decision making means any processing that is carried out by automated means without any human review element in the decision-making. For example; carrying out credit checks searches to detect and reduce fraud.
Profiling will be carried out only when it is necessary in order to process your application to buy a property and to understand the demographics of people purchasing our properties. However, we will notify you where we would do this and where required we will seek your consent.
Protecting your information
Any information held by Gateshead Council about individuals is held securely and in compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR.
Gateshead Council is committed to protecting its customer's personal data. We have put measures in place to ensure that our staff, service providers, partners and suppliers all look after your information in line with good practice and the law. These follow the rules and practices known as Information Governance (IG).
The information security measures we've put in place include:
- following good Information Governance practice and the law when it comes to collecting, handling and giving access to information
- training staff in their data protection responsibilities
- putting processes in place to ensure good Information Governance practices for information we collect, hold or handle in both manual and electronic forms
- access to your information is only given to those who need to know and where it is necessary
- information will not be held for longer than required and will be disposed of securely
- we encrypt all our electronic devices and sensitive information that is transmitted is encrypted
How you can access, update, restrict, remove or correct your information
The Data Protection law gives you the right to apply for a copy of information about yourself. This is called a 'Subject Access Request'.
The accuracy of your information is important to us to be able to provide relevant services more quickly. We are working to make our record keeping more efficient. If you wish to restrict data processing or sharing including use for marketing or do not want to be contacted by Gateshead Council in any way, please inform us. You can request that we remove your details from our database at the address below. We will remove data in accordance with your wishes excluding data we are required to keep by law.
If you change your address or email address, or if any of your circumstances change or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please inform the service you are receiving services from.
Alternatively, you can telephone the customer contact centre on 0191 433 3000.
Your information choice and rights
Where we use your personal data for other purposes other than what you have consented or where we have to fulfil a statutory obligation, or where the data protection law allows, then we will let you know so that you can make an informed choice about how your information is used.
If you do not want your information to be used for any purpose beyond the people we are obliged to share the data with to process your housing application or improvement of services or for Business Intelligence, profiling research or statistical purposes (in such instance only minimum and necessary, anonymised or pseudonymised data will be used), you can choose to opt-out of this.
You may not be able to object to your information being used, held, or shared under certain circumstances. For example, where we are obliged to share data i.e. with the land registry to register the purchaser of the property, or the prevention and detection of crime, or where we are required to fulfil any statutory obligations.
Where you would like to withdraw your consent or opt-out of any other use of your information, please send your request by post or email to:
Data Protection Officer
1st Floor
Civic Centre
Regent Street
Gateshead
NE8 1HH
DPOCouncil@gateshead.gov.uk
0191 433 3000
Information Commissioner's Office
The Information Commissioner is the UK's independent body set up to uphold information rights. If you would like to know more about your rights under the Data Protection law, and what you should expect from us, visit the Information Commissioner's website (opens new window).
If you have any concerns regarding our privacy practices or about exercising your Data Protection rights, you may contact the Information Commissioner's Office:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
icocasework@ico.org.uk
0303 123 1113
Changes to our privacy policy
The terms of this Privacy Notice may change, so please recheck periodically. This statement was last updated May 2022.
