Residential tenants

This notice explains how Blain Firmin use the personal information held in connection with your residential tenancy. If you are a residential tenant, the information we hold about you may include:

• Name
• Address
• Email address
• Telephone/mobile number
• Date of birth
• National insurance number
• Financial background information (eg residential status, copies of bank
  statements)
• Application support documentation (eg proofs of identity and right to rent,
  credit report)
• Bank account and sort code
• Enquiries, complaints or other correspondence from you
• Tenancy history documentation and contract

If you are a prospective residential tenant, and do not enter into a tenancy, we may hold all of the above information, with the exception of tenancy history documentation.

Legal basis for using your information

Under data protection legislation, Blain Firmin is only allowed to use personal information if we have a proper reason or ‘legal basis’ to do so. In the case of Residential Property management we rely on the following ‘legal grounds’:

• For the ‘performance of a contract’ – steps taken towards entering into a tenancy agreement, and to comply with the obligations contained in the tenancy agreement itself
• For ‘compliance with a legal obligation’ that Blain Firmin is subject to – in connection with any statutory obligations relating to the management of property (including annual gas safety checks and electrical installation condition reports)

Obtaining and using your information

The personal information we hold is primarily provided by you when you make a tenancy application directly with Blain Firmin. If you become a Blain Firmin tenant we also hold information generated during the period of your tenancy.

We use your personal information for the purposes of assessing your application (including a review of financial strength), ongoing tenancy account and property management and fraud prevention.

If we hold an email address for you we will send an annual survey to ask for your feedback. You will be given an opportunity to respond anonymously and can also opt-out of participating in future surveys.

We will not pass your personal information on to any other organisation for marketing purposes without your prior consent. In addition we do not sell or rent personal information to third parties for any purpose.

Length of time we keep your information

Blain Firmin will keep your personal information for as long as you’re a residential tenant. After you stop being a tenant we will keep your information for 10 years to: respond to correspondence, concerns or complaints; to maintain records according to rules that apply to us (for example financial regulations or property or contract law); to establish and defend any legal rights.

If your residential tenancy application is unsuccessful, we will dispose and destroy any of your information after a final decision is made.

Keeping your information secure

Blain Firmin take the privacy of our tenants very seriously and a range of robust policies, processes and technical measures are in place to control safeguard access to and use of personal information associated with residential property tenancy.

Sharing your information

Blain Firmin share your personal information with our subsidiaries, service providers and other recipients for the purposes of assessing your application (including a review of financial strength), ongoing tenancy account management and fraud prevention.

Third parties that we work with include:

• Licensed credit reference agencies – to support a review of credit worthiness
• Maintenance contractors – to support ad hoc and planned maintenance works
• Tenancy deposit schemes (Government-backed) – to protect tenant deposits
• Utility companies and county council– to inform when a new tenant has moved into a property

During your tenancy we will need to arrange access to the property to carry out certain works. We will appoint contractors to undertake these tasks on Blain Firmin’s behalf, and your contact details will be provided to them to arrange access directly. If you would prefer for your details not to be forwarded then inform a member of the team at Blain Firmin and every effort will be made to ensure this doesn’t happen where possible.

Where you have direct engagement with our service providers, they will maintain records of their own. You should check their terms of service for further information on how they will process your information.

At our discretion, we may disclose personal information in response to valid requests from the police. Before we authorise any disclosure, the police have to demonstrate that the personal information concerned will assist them in the prevention or detection of a specific crime, or in the apprehension or prosecution of an offender. Each request from the police is dealt with on a strictly case-by-case basis to ensure that any such disclosure is lawful and in accordance with data protection legislation.

Overseas processing

Blain Firmin and its service providers may process your personal information in countries within the European Economic Area (EEA). Any such processing will be carried out in strict accordance with UK and EU privacy legislation and the appropriate contractual safeguards which Blain Firmin has put in place.

Your information rights

Under data protection legislation you are entitled to ask to see any personal information that we hold about you.

You also have a number of other information rights which include:

• The right to question any information we have about you that you think is wrong or incomplete
• The right to object to how we use your information or to ask us to delete or restrict how we use it
• The right to complain to the regulator – the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk

Changes to this notice

It’s likely that we’ll need to update this statement from time to time, and will notify you of any changes when made. This statement was last updated in May 2019.

Blain Firmin is committed to safeguarding your information and we will never pass your details onto a third party without prior consent.