Prevention team - privacy notice

The personal information you give to us through any of our forms relating to the prevention of scams, and keeping you safe and any other personal information we hold about you in this context will be processed by us (East Renfrewshire Council, Eastwood Park, Giffnock, G46 6UG) for the administration of an application, enforcement case, enquiry or related appeal or review.

Your information is processed to help us to give a person centred service and keep you safe and linked to other services. Your information may also be shared with other departments within the council and other organisations for the same purposes and also to:

• check the information we have is accurate
• prevent and / or detect crime
• protect public funds

Other organisations include bodies that are consulted on your application such as:

• other council departments
• other local authorities
• external funders
• third sector organisations giving support to keep you safe and protected from harm

We process your information in order to perform a task carried out in the public interest and in the exercise of official authority, namely the task of preventing crime and protecting adults from risk of financial harm in terms of The Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007. The law gives certain types of information special significance because of its sensitivity such as health information. If we process this type of information about you in relation to your application, we do so on the basis that it's necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

Without the correct information we can't tailor our service to meet your individual needs. For instance, we can utilise our dementia friendly training if we know you're living with dementia. In addition, we can seek to ensure you're linked to all relevant services to keep you safe, prevent scams and keep you independent at home.

Most of the information we hold about you will come from you as an individual. Some of the information may come from third party sources including other departments within the council, other local authorities, voluntary organisations, Police Scotland or the Scottish Fire Service to keep you safe. Such information includes:

• your name
• your address
• your phone number
• your email
• your age
• details of others who help in your care or welfare
• any history of you being scammed or at risk of being scammed
• telephone numbers of incoming and outgoing telephone calls and duration of calls made to and from your fixed phone line. This affects only True Call users, to establish patterns of nuisance callers and prevent unwanted calls and scams
• health conditions - to allow us to provide free equipment and ensure we give a person centred approach linking you to services you consent to receive.

We'll hold your information from the end of the year it was provided for a period of 6 years. Your information will be destroyed under confidential conditions after this period.

Your information will be accessed by appropriate council staff who need to do so to keep you safe and linked to other services. We may share your information with other organisations who prevent and detect crime. We'll get your consent before we refer you for other services unless an appropriate exemption exists. We also need to ensure proper administration of our funds so details will be checked internally for fraud prevention and verification purposes. Information is also analysed internally in order to give management information and inform future service delivery. Your information may be shared with:

• other departments within the council
• bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds
• other councils
• public sector agencies
• governmental departments
• other private companies or entities such as credit reference agencies or service providers

We also meet requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and appropriate.

In general, we don't transfer personal information outside the UK but on the rare occasions we do we'll inform you. We'll only transfer information outside the UK when we are satisfied that the party that will handle the data and the country it is being processed in have adequate safeguards for personal privacy comparable to those which are in place in the UK.

We don't use profiling or automated decision-making for Prevention team activities. Some processes are semi automated but a human decision maker will always be involved before any decision is reached in relation to you.

Depending on why we need to process your information you'll have rights to how your information is used. More information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, can be found within our main privacy policy.

If you've concerns about the processing of your personal data by us, you can contact our Data Protection Officer at dpo@eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk.

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing, visit the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website (opens new window).

Please contact us if you need this information in an alternative format.