Privacy notice - Home Comforts

The Wheatley Foundation is the charitable trust set up by the Wheatley Group. It is funded by the Group and its subsidiaries to benefit our customers. Maximising social inclusion, jobs, and training and education outcomes for our customers is a key Wheatley Group priority.

To support this, the Foundation coordinates the Home Comforts service that provides tenants with upcycled furniture, white goods and electrical items. The aim of this service is to help tenants to furnish their home by providing items that they might not be able to afford otherwise.

Housing Officers can refer tenants to Home Comforts for items that they require however this is dependent on the service having the available stock. Home Comforts relies on donations and pickups from void properties.

The Home Comforts service you receive will depend on what subsidiary of group you are part of:

• Wheatley Homes Glasgow & Loretto Housing households will be supported by Wheatley’s internal Home Comforts service.

• Wheatley Homes East households will be supported by our delivery partner Foursquare.

• Wheatley Homes South households will be supported by our delivery partners SHAX and Community Re-Use.

The Wheatley Foundation will be the "data controllers" of the personal information that you provide to us. This information is required to process your referral and deliver the items to you.

Our Data Protection Officer is Ranald Brown who can be contacted on wheatleydataprotectionofficer@wheatley-group.com

What we need

Your Housing Officer or other support staff will ask for your consent to be referred to Home Comforts. If you consent, the staff member will provide us with the following information to process the referral:

• Your name;

• Address and postcode;

• Household composition;

• Mobile phone number or email address;

• Employment status;

• Health issues;

• Tenant status;

• Age and

• Disability status.

We will ask you for this information in order to process your referral and deliver your items to you. We will also use this information to monitor the project and evaluate the impact it has.

We also collect information relating to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), such as age and disability status. This data will be used solely for the purposes of analysis and reporting, helping us to understand who we are reaching and identify any gaps or barriers in service provision. We use this information to improve access, tailor support, and ensure fair treatment for all customers. You are not required to provide this information, and any data you choose to share will be used only to help us deliver better, more inclusive services.

Why we need your personal information – legitimate interest

We will process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interest to provide you with support as our tenant, specifically so that we can provide you with the items requested.  We will use your personal information to:

• Process the request for furniture, white goods or electrical items

For Wheatley Homes Glasgow and Loretto customers

• We will collect your personal information via a referral form which will be completed by your Housing Officer or other member of staff. This will be processed by a Wheatley Foundation staff member and you will be sent the items that have been requested on your behalf.

For Wheatley Homes East & Wheatley Homes South customers

• Referrals are made via email to delivery partner inboxes detailing the items and value required. The Wheatley Foundation with also store this information in line with our data retention schedule.

Where we process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to us using your personal information for the above purposes.  If you wish to object to any of the above processing, please contact us on InformationRequests@wheatley-group.com

If we agree and comply with your objection, this may affect our ability to undertake the tasks above for your benefit.

Other uses of your personal information

We may ask you if we can process your personal information for additional purposes.  For example, to promote Home Comforts or to report on the successes of the programme. Where we do so, we will provide you with an additional privacy notice with information on how we will use your information for these additional purposes.

Furthermore, in order to carry out research and evaluation around the performance of the programme we may ask you to complete questionnaires issued by or on behalf of Wheatley Group, and to participate in evaluations that Wheatley Group or it’s representatives may conduct.

We may take photographs and video footage at events we organise or take part in, at our offices and in our communities to use for general marketing and publicity. We may also ask you to take part in case studies to demonstrate the impact of the project, and this is entirely voluntary.

Where we do so, we will provide you with an additional privacy notice with information on how we will use your information for these additional purposes.

Who we share your personal information with

For customers of Wheatley Homes South and Wheatley Homes East, Home Comforts is delivered by an external partner on our behalf. We therefore share referral data with those partners to process your referral and ensure you receive the items required.

Where we do share personal information with external third parties, we will only share such personal information strictly required for those specific purposes and will take reasonable steps to ensure that recipients shall only process the disclosed personal information in accordance with those purposes.

Our contractors are required to comply with the law and our own Data Processing Agreement or Data Processing Clauses within our contracts to ensure data is managed appropriately and for specified purposes.

How we protect your personal information

Your personal information is stored on our IT filing systems which may be copied for testing, backup, archiving and disaster recovery purposes. Access to your information is limited to those who require it to provide services to you.

How long we keep your personal information

We will only keep your personal information on our customer database to record that you have been issued with a voucher.  We will keep evidence of your referral for 5 years after which it will be deleted.

We have a data retention policy that sets out the periods for retaining and reviewing all information that we hold.  This sets out different retention periods and you can request a copy by writing to us at Wheatley Foundation, 25 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, G1 1HL or by e-mailing foundation@wheatley-group.com

Your rights

You can exercise any of the following rights by writing to us at Wheatley Foundation, 25 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, G1 1HL or by e-mailing foundation@wheatley-group.com

Your rights in relation to your personal information are:

• you have a right to request access to the personal information that we hold about you by making a "subject access request";

• if you believe that any of your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you have a right to request that we correct or complete your personal information;

• you have a right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information for specific purposes; and

• if you wish us to delete your personal information, you may request that we do so.

Any requests received by the Foundation will be considered under applicable data protection legislation.  If you remain dissatisfied, you have a right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office at www.ico.org.uk

The accuracy of our information is important to us - please help us keep our records updated by informing us of any changes to your personal information.

Changes to our Privacy Notice