Guidance

Homelessness and rough sleeping: Accommodation and immigration advice: privacy notice

Published 29 November 2024

Applies to England

This privacy notice explains who we are, the personal data we collect, how we use, store and delete it, the legal basis for using personal data and what your legal rights are in relation to this research.

1. The data controller

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is the “data controller”. This means that we at MHCLG are responsible for determining what personal information we collect about you and use, why and how (the ‘purpose and manner’). The Home Office will be acting as a separate data controller for this project, though this data processing is not covered by this privacy notice, with further details available in the linked privacy notice.

2. What personal data we are collecting and why

When we ask for your personal information, we promise only to ask for what we need and to make sure you know why we need it. If this includes contact details, we will tell you if we intend to use these details to contact you about anything else, and whether it is possible for you to opt out of this. If you agree to us contacting you about other things, you can withdraw your agreement at any time.

MHCLG have commissioned the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) to lead a consortium (a group of organisations) to establish the effectiveness of 8 projects testing different approaches to tackling homelessness and rough sleeping (known as the Test and Learn programme). For this project, the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) is the evaluation partner.

One of these 8 projects is ‘Accommodation & Immigration Advice’ (A&IA), which is covered by this privacy notice. This project offers time-limited accommodation to enable non-UK nationals to engage with legal advice to resolve their immigration status. Read more about this project.

The aim of this study is to establish the efficacy (how well it works) and cost-effectiveness of this project in reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. If you allow us to use your personal data, you will be helping us to find out whether this project is effective in reducing homelessness and rough sleeping.

Whose data we are collecting

As part of this project, we will be collecting information from:

• people experiencing rough sleeping
• staff delivering services or making referrals to these services
• staff bidding to take part in projects via Flexigrant

3. Why we are legally allowed to process your data

How we are using your data

The reasons that we can use to collect or use your personal information are set out in law. Most of the time, the lawful basis for us processing your personal information under data protection legislation will be because it is necessary for our work as a public body (the processing is necessary for the performance of a task in the public interest – (Article 6(1)(e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR))). Where we process data about criminal convictions, our additional legal basis for processing it is paragraph 6 of Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

For this project, sensitive personal data known as ‘special category data’ will be processed (detailed below). Where we process special category data, our legal basis for processing it is Article 9(2)(g) of the UK GDPR, that processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

For any interviews or focus groups that take place during the course of this research, audio recordings may be used, which may contain personal data.

For people experiencing rough sleeping supported by the project

Your local authority and the Home Office will share personal data (for example, your name, demographic background data, information on personal circumstances, details of your immigration case and the support services received) with the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), who are part of the CHI consortium and will therefore process data under instruction from MHCLG. BIT will use this personal data with other information about the service provision, to understand the impact of the project on reducing rough sleeping, and other outcomes including immigration case resolution.

Your local authority may also share your personal information with BIT to arrange an interview with you.

Finally, your local authority will share your data with the Home Office for the purposes of immigration case progression. This data processing activity is covered by a separate privacy notice.

The following personal data will be processed about individuals for this trial:

Personal identifiers (provided by local authorities and their delivery partners), for example:

• Names
• Contact details (e.g. telephone number, email address)

These data are needed by BIT to be able to contact participants about interviews or focus groups.

Background data (provided by local authorities and their delivery partners). The following list of background data that will be collected is not exhaustive, but some examples of data (some of which is special category data) that will be collected are:

• Date of birth
• Ethnicity
• Nationality
• Sexuality
• Sex at birth
• Gender
• Disability
• Employment and financial security
• Previous experiences of homelessness or housing insecurity
• Support needs (e.g. substance misuse, mental health, physical health)

These data are needed for a number of reasons. Factors like mental health are risk factors in making a person more susceptible to homelessness/rough sleeping, and/or can influence the likely success or failure of projects. For demographic factors such as age and ethnicity it is important to know whether projects are more or less successful for different groups (particularly useful to breakdown results by protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010). BIT will also use this data to identify who will be invited to interview for this project, to ensure we collect views from a diverse and representative group.

Service referral and provision data (provided by local authorities and their delivery partners), for example:

• Referral routes or dates
• Immigration case information
• Recent living location and accommodation history
• Service engagement information (e.g. timing, nature and amount of support provision, reason for leaving)
• Accommodation provision information (e.g. nature of accommodation, dates of stay)

Immigration status and case data (provided by the Home Office), for example:

• Eligibility assessment outcomes and dates
• Immigration status information
• Contact with Home Office support staff (dates, reasons for contact on your case)

Local service outcome data (provided by local authorities and their delivery partners), for example:

• Housing and homelessness data
• Referrals to other services and statutory support (e.g. mental health services, employment support, benefits)
• Immigration outcome within 20 weeks

Home Office outcome data (provided by the Home Office), for example:

• Immigration outcome after 20 weeks, including status of any appeals

For staff delivering services or making referrals to these services

We expect that this information will be shared with BIT by local authorities, so they can invite you to take part in an interview or focus group.

Personal identifiers, for example:

• names
• contact details (e.g. telephone number, email address)

All personal data shared between members of the CHI-led consortium will be shared via secure electronic systems. All findings will be anonymised in any disseminated/published reports.

For people who agree to take part in an interview

BIT will gather participants’ views and experiences of the Accommodation and Immigration Advice service to help understand people’s experiences of the service. The interviews may include personal data, and the interviews will be audio recorded and stored securely. All raw data relating to interviews (notes and recordings) will be kept confidentially by BIT and will not be shared with other consortium members. BIT will only share aggregated and anonymised findings from interviews externally, meaning external bodies will not be able to identify you from what you said.

For staff bidding to take part in projects

For the Test and Learn programme, personal details (name and contact details) will be collected to process, score and oversee applications and grants to take part in specific projects. These will be managed by CHI through Flexigrant.

Personal identifiers

• names
• contact details (e.g. telephone number, email address)

4. Sharing your data

Personal data for participants taking part in research activities collected during this study will not be shared with any other body outside the members of the CHI-led consortium (for example, BIT), MHCLG and the Home Office.

Personal data (name and contact details) for professionals (local authority, third sector organisation and evaluators) interested in taking part in projects, for example, submitting an application through Flexigrant, may be shared with third parties for the purpose of scoring.

5. Keeping your data

We will only keep your personal information as long as we continue to have a lawful basis to do so. This will usually mean that it is still necessary for our work as a public body. This will be decided by our ongoing business need and any laws or government policies that affect how long we keep it. We have a “retention schedule” that sets out how long we will keep personal data:

• CHI and consortium members will securely keep your personal data for up to 3 months after the completion of the Test & Learn evaluation.
• MHCLG, the data controller, may keep your data securely stored for up to 5 years after the completion of the evaluation, after which this will be further reviewed.

You may ask to withdraw from the study by getting in touch with MHCLG or BIT using the contact details in section 11 of this privacy notice.

Details of the Home Office’s data storage procedures can be found in their separate privacy notice.

6. Your rights

The data we are collecting is your personal data, and you have rights that affect what happens to it. Generally, you have the right to:

(a) know that we are using your personal data;

(b) see what data we have about you;

(c) ask to have your data corrected, and to ask how we check the information we hold is accurate;

(d) ask to have your data deleted where the processing is no longer necessary for the purposes stated in this privacy notice;

(e) object to the processing of your personal data; and

(f) complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (see below).

7. Sending data overseas

We will not usually send your data overseas. If for some reason we do, such as storing data on computer servers that are not in the UK, we will ensure that all necessary safeguards are in place.

8. Automated decision making

We will not use your data for any automated decision making.

9. Storage, security and data management

Your personal data will be stored securely and will be protected to make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn’t.

You can ask us for details of our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete your personal data.

10. What we ask of you

So that we can keep your personal information reliable and up to date, please:

• give us accurate information
• tell us as soon as possible if there are any changes, such as a new address or contact details.

11. Complaints and more information

When we ask you for information, we will keep to the law, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Act 2018 and any new legislation coming into force.

If you are unhappy with the way the department has acted, you can make a complaint.

If you are not happy with how we are using your personal information, you should first contact dataprotection@communities.gov.uk. If you have other queries about the project you may contact the evaluators at clare.tanton@bi.team. For data queries for the evaluators, you may contact BIT: dpo@bi.team. For data queries for the Home Office, please see the Home Office privacy notice.

If you are still not happy, or for independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing, you can contact:

The Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 030 3123 1113

Website: https://ico.org.uk/