Privacy notice - Asylum Support Liaison

Middlesbrough Council takes part in the Local Authority Asylum Support Liaison (LAASL) Government funded programme to help you when you get your status from the Home Office

We collect information directly from you and your family in forms, emails, conversations, and surveys. We also receive information from other organisations that provide you with services. This might include:

• Name, address, postcode, date of birth, gender
• National Insurance number, NHS number, Home Office number
• Immigration or other migration information
• Information about your family life, activities, and interests
• Racial or ethnic origin
• Religious or philosophical beliefs
• Political opinions
• Health data

We rely on our ‘legal obligations’ and ‘public task powers’ to use and share your personal data. Where we also use your ‘special category data’ we rely on ‘substantial public interest’ based in law. Below are some of the legislation (Acts) which also allow us to use and share your personal data:

• The 1951 Refugee Convention
• The 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees
• Childcare Act 2006
• Children Act 1989 and 2004
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998
• Equality Act 2010
• Homelessness Reduction Act 2017
• Homelessness (Review Procedure etc.) Regulations 2018
• Immigration Act 2016
• Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
• Offender Management Act
• School Discipline (Pupil Exclusions and Reviews) (England) Regulations 2012
• Welfare Reform Act 2012

We use your information to help support you to access things like housing, benefits and financial management advice and, education, training, or employment support, health services, where to get legal advice, or finding suitable social activities. We also use your data to check that we are providing you with the most effective services.

To help us find out who we can identify for the programme we share personal information between departments of Middlesbrough Council and between partner organisations to understand who can give the best support. These organisations could include:

• The Home Office/Immigration Services
• Thirteen Housing Group
• G4S/Mears
• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
• Middlesbrough Council’s Public Health and Children’s Services departments
• Doctors/GPs and other health services
• Schools and colleges

Some people who are identified and already have someone working with them are just added to the programme. Some families will be identified who we feel will benefit from co-ordinated support.

The security of your personal information is important to us. This is why we follow a range of security policies and procedures to control and safeguard access to and use of your personal information. We only record information where it is necessary. We only keep information in hard copy for the shortest time possible. We record all other information in secure computer systems.

After we deliver a service to you, we have to keep your information as a business record of what was delivered. The type of service will determine how long we have to keep it. Our corporate retention guidelines show how long we will keep it for different services. This ranges from months for some records to decades for more sensitive records.

The Council will not process your information overseas, however it may be necessary if requested by an external organisation under a legal requirement or at your request. In any event we would ensure that your information is safe.

We will only send you marketing information about our services and/or products if you have agreed for us to do so or we are sending you information in relation to similar services you have received in the past. You can opt-out of this at any time by letting us know by unsubscribing or replying with your request.

Your Information Rights are set out in law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:

• Right to rectification - to ask for information to be corrected
• Right to erasure - to have your personal data deleted
• Right to object - to how your data is used
• Right to restriction - to request limits on how your data is used
• Right to portability - to request that we move your data to another organisation
• Right of subject access - to request a copy of data the Council holds about you

If you have a concerns about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner's Office. Visit the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice or your information rights, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer
Middlesbrough Council
PO Box 500, Middlesbrough, TS1 9FT
Phone: 01642 245432
Email: dataprotection@middlesbrough.gov.uk