Privacy & Cookies

Privacy notice

This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Thirteen processes personal information. It applies to information about applicants, customers and other service users. Thirteen is the Data Controller, joint controller or Data Processor of personal information - depending on the service.

You can also see an easy read version of the privacy notice.pdf

Why do we collect and store personal information?

We need to collect, process and store personal information about you and other household members to fulfil our obligations as a registered provider of social housing and to deliver efficient and effective services, including contracted services we run.

Information we may hold about you and how we use this

The information we hold on our records concerns our relationship with you. For example:

• we hold names and dates of birth, photographic ID and information about your previous housing circumstances to assess housing applications – we will only hold this information as long as required to assess your housing need in line with our retention policies
• in relation to the contracted services we run, ex-offender information is stored to offer the accommodation and wellbeing service. Only necessary information is stored.
• we hold your contact details so we can communicate with you
• we record information about your needs and requirements to ensure our services are accessible; that we take account of any support needs in our dealings with you; and to improve our communications with you. For example, if you are involved with a carer or social worker, if you need adaptations in your home, if you need large print or translated text, if you are working with a probation officer etc.
• we record information to help us deliver housing management services including reports of anti-social behaviour, complaints, change in circumstances, eg if you have a medical need which means your housing needs change
• we keep financial records about the amount of money you have paid us, any amount(s) outstanding and associated recovery action
• we may hold information about you if you have already signed up to one of our additional guidance and support services. For example in connection with access to training and employment, we may hold information about your job history, skills and experience, or if we are supporting you with your financial circumstances, we may hold information about your household income and expenditure
• we will hold recordings of your telephone calls to us, as calls to and from our contact centre and Customer Experience teams, and occasionally other teams are recorded for training and monitoring purposes so we can ensure we’re delivering a good service*. If you are being recorded you will be informed prior to the conversation and if you do not wish to be recorded you can contact us via email or letter instead
• we may capture your image on our CCTV systems if you visit estate, office or community facilities which have CCTV cameras in operation*
• we may carry out insight and satisfaction surveys to help us to monitor our performance, to keep our records up-to-date and to improve our services to our customers. This information is stored in-line with our retention policies.

*call recordings and CCTV recordings will be held in accordance with Thirteen’s Information Governance Framework, ICT Security Policy and CCTV Policy.

This list is not exhaustive, as we hold records of most contacts we have with you, or about you, and we process this information so we can deliver services to you.

Our legal basis for processing your information for all of the above purposes are:

1. Contract: for a contract we have with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract
2. Legal Obligation: for us to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations)
3. Vital Interests: to protect someone’s life
4. Legitimate interests: for our legitimate interests, or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless there is a good reason to protect your personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. Legitimate interests are those uses of personal data by a Data Controller that are deemed necessary (eg to provide the product or service) or reasonably to be expected by a data subject. A clear example of the latter is the basis of an existing customer relationship.
5. Consent: You have given clear consent for us to process your personal data for a specific purpose.

Generally the information we hold will have been provided by you (on application or enquiry forms or when we communicate with you), but we may also hold information provided by third parties where this is relevant to your housing circumstances eg from social workers and health professionals, MoJ, probation staff, employers or potential employers.

We will only ask for personal information that is appropriate to enable us to deliver our services. In some cases, you can refuse to provide your details if you deem a request to be inappropriate. However, you should note that this may impact on our ability to provide some services to you if you refuse to provide information that stops us from doing so.

How we manage your personal information

Processing of your personal information will be undertaken in accordance with the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR 2018). Access to personal information is restricted to authorised individuals on a strictly need to know basis. We will treat your personal information fairly and lawfully and we will ensure that information is:

• processed for limited purposes
• kept up-to-date, accurate, relevant and not excessive
• not kept longer than is necessary
• kept secure.

We are committed to keeping your personal details up-to-date, and we encourage you to inform us about any changes to ensure your details are accurate. To help us ensure confidentiality of your personal information we may ask you security questions to confirm your identity when you call us or when we call you.

We will not discuss your personal information with anyone other than yourself, unless we have a legitimate reason to do so or you have given us prior written authorisation to do so. Anyone calling on your behalf may also be subject to security questions to ensure we’re taking adequate steps to protect your personal information.

We may apply notifications to your information (for example, in relation to your vulnerability or health status) to enable us to tailor and deliver services to you. Thirteen only holds records during the period of our relationship and for a set period afterwards to allow us to meet our legal obligations, including resolving any follow-up issues between us.

Sharing your personal information

Normally only our employees are able to see and process your personal information. However, there may be times when we need to share relevant information with third parties for the purposes as outlined below, or where we're legally required to do so. When sharing personal information, we will comply with all aspects of the GDPR 2018.

Sensitive information about health, sexual orientation, race and religion for example is subject to particularly stringent security and confidentiality measures.

Where necessary or required, we may share personal information:

• with our contractors to undertake some repairs, maintenance or improvement work
• with third party service providers, in connection with services performed on our behalf. For example if we use a mailing house to distribute our newsletters or to undertake surveys on our behalf
• we use a system to review accounts which includes some profiling, which reviews rent history and other limited factors to complete automated text messaging and calls to prompt contact regarding arrears. We don’t AI or automation where a decision is required linked to any tenancy action
• our relationships with such providers are governed by our contracts with them which include strict data sharing and confidentiality protocols
• with other registered providers, trusts and landlords, in connection with tenancy references and associated enquiries
• with community partners in connection with the delivery of co-ordinated local services
• with Council Tax offices, to ensure billing details are correct
• with utility companies to ensure correct billing can take place
• information will be shared with authorised third parties to provide landlord services in partnership with us. Energy Angels act on our behalf to work with utility providers to ensure gas and electricity is readily available for new customers moving into their new home
• with credit reference agencies and debt collection agencies, in connection with some housing applications and in relation to any outstanding charges
• with local authorities and government departments as necessary for administering justice, or for exercising statutory, governmental, or other public functions
• with police and other relevant authorities (eg Probation Service, Department of Work and Pensions, HM Revenues and Customs) in relation to the prevention or detection of crime and fraud; the apprehension or prosecution of offenders and the assessment or collection of tax or duty
• with other statutory organisations, eg social services and health authorities, as necessary for exercising statutory functions
• with the Regulator of Social Housing, to comply with our regulatory obligations
• with CORE - COntinuous REcording of Lettings and Sales in Social Housing in England, The Ministry for Housing, Communities and local Government (MHCLG) collect data on social housing lettings and sales via CORE for statistical purposes
• this list is not exhaustive as there are other circumstances where we may also be required to share information, for example:
  • to meet our legal obligations
  • in connection with legal proceedings (or where we are instructed to do so by Court Order)
  • to protect the vital interests of an individual (in a life or death situation)

International transfer of personal information

We do not envisage transferring any information about or relating to you to anyone who is located outside of the European Economic Area other than as indicated above. We have a commitment from our business partners and data processors that they too will honour this commitment.

Your rights

Right of Access

You have the right of access to personal information we hold about or concerning you. This is called a subject access request. If you would like to exercise this right, please visit the Data Subject Access Request page.

We have a subject access request form on the above page which you can use for this purpose and we ask that your request is accompanied by proof of identity. If you want to obtain specific information (eg about a particular matter or from a particular time period), it helps if you clarify the details of what you would like to receive in your written request.

If someone is requesting information on your behalf they will need written confirmation from you to evidence your consent for us to release this and proof of ID (both yours and theirs).

We have one month to provide you with the information you’ve asked for (although we will try to provide this to you as promptly as possible).

In response to subject access requests we will provide you with a copy of the information we hold that relates to you. This will not generally include information about your property such as repair logs, details of contractor visits, or general property maintenance information as this is unlikely to be ‘personal information’.

Right of Rectification or Erasure

If you feel that any data we hold about you is inaccurate you have the right to ask us to correct or rectify it. You also have a right to ask us to erase information about you where you can demonstrate that the data we hold is no longer needed by us, or you withdraw the consent upon which our processing is based, or you feel that we are unlawfully processing your data. Your right of rectification and erasure extends to anyone we have disclosed your personal information to and we will take all reasonable steps to inform those with whom we have shared your data about your request for erasure.

Right to Restriction of Processing

You have a right to request that we refrain from processing your data where you contest its accuracy, or the processing is unlawful and you have opposed its erasure, or where we don’t need to hold your data anymore but you want us to in order to establish, exercise or defend any legal claims, or we are in dispute about the legality of our processing of your personal data.

Right to Portability

You have a right to receive any personal data that you have provided to us in order to transfer it onto another data controller where the processing is based on consent and is carried out by automated means. This is called a data portability request.

Right to Object

You have a right to object to our processing of your personal data including but not limited to direct marketing and profiling.

Changes to this privacy notice

This Privacy Notice is kept under regular review and was last updated in in October 2024.

Cookies

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device. You can find more information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu. You can also see a video about cookies.  

Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improve the user experience. They can also help to ensure that adverts you see online are more relevant to you and your interests. The cookies used on this website have been categorised based on the categories found in the ICC UK Cookie guide. A list of all the cookies used on this website by category is set out below.

Browser cookie control

All recent versions of popular browsers give users a level of control over cookies – for more information visit: www.aboutcookies.org

Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are essential to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies services you have asked for, like shopping baskets or e-billing, cannot be provided.

• sessionid - only valid for your current visit and is used to manage our admin login system and to provide other functionality necessary for the site to work
• AWSELB - only valid for your current visit and is used by our load balancer to ensure your session is kept on the same server during your visit [being phased out]
• AWSALB / AWSALBCORS - valid for 7 days and is used by our load balancer to ensure your session is kept on the same server during your visit [replaces AWSELB]
• CookieControl - used to store details of your interaction with our cookie consent popup

Performance cookies

These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works.

• __utma – a persistent cookie which remains on a computer, unless it expires or the cookie cache is cleared. It tracks visitors.
• __utmb / __utmc – only valid for the current browser session, these cookies store your arrival time and exit time on the site
• __utmz – cookie lasts for 6 months and details how you found the site

These cookies are set, both by us, and some third parties (for example embedded video players) to provide critical website management data via Google Analytics. You can opt-out of Google Analytics across all websites.

Functionality cookies

These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. For instance, a website may be able to provide you with local weather reports or traffic news by storing in a cookie the region in which you are currently located. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

• Recite.Persit and Recite.Preferences - only set if you use our accessibility and language tools feature

Targeting cookies or advertising cookies

These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests, They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers. Quite often targeting or advertising cookies will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organisation.

• None of these cookies are used by this site

Third party cookies

Some of the content on this website is provided by third party services who also use cookies, these include:

• Share/Like/Follow Buttons – if you are logged into Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus, then they may be setting cookies when you visit this site. You can control this by logging out of those services or seeing if they have options to turn this off
• YouTube – embedded YouTube videos will set cookies. Where possible we have used enhanced privacy options which means this only happens when you watch a video.

Google anti-spam reCAPTCHA

If you complete an online form on our website, Google will capture your IP address.

In relation to cookies and local storage in My Thirteen specifically:

Savvy stores a session cookie which allows the server to know specifically which browser is being used to access the server (this is normal).

Savvy stores minimal information in local storage, eg you have read some help on how to use the web site. Savvy does not store any user-related information in local storage.

Social log-in

Facebook log-in: if you log-in with Facebook, Facebook will store information in the browser identifying you, the detail of this information should be covered by Facebook’s cookie/privacy policy.

Google log-in: if you log-in with Google, Google will store information in the browser identifying you, the detail of this information should be covered by Google’s cookie/privacy policy.

Google Maps - Google will store cookies in-line with their cookie policy.

Social cookie policies

You can find the Facebook and Google cookie policies here:

• https://en-gb.facebook.com/policies/cookies/
• https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en-US

Further information

For more details on how to request your personal information and how and why we process your information, please contact us:

• by post: Data Protection Officer, Thirteen Housing Group Limited, Registered Office: Northshore North Shore Road Stockton-On-Tees TS18 2NB
• by phone: 0300 1111 000
• email: data.compliance@thirteengroup.co.uk

The Information Commissioner (ICO) is also a source of information about your data protection rights. The ICO is an independent official body and one of their primary functions is to administer the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulations. You also have a right to lodge a complaint with the ICO about any aspect of how we are handling your data and can do so at:

• Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
• tel: 0303 123 1113
• web: www.ico.org.uk

Copyright policy

We respect the intellectual property rights of others and expects users of the service to do the same. We will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with applicable law and are properly provided to us. If you believe that your content has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please contact us.

We reserve the right to remove content alleged to be infringing without prior notice and at our sole discretion. In appropriate circumstances, we will also terminate a user's account if the user is determined to be a repeat infringer.

The copyright of this service and its content is owned by, or licensed to us.

We grant to you a worldwide non-exclusive royalty free revocable license to view this service and to copy, store and print from this service for your own personal and non-commercial use.