Privacy

Disability Advice Service East Suffolk (DAS) holds personal data about its customers. It does so in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). DAS is a data controller, contact:

The Manager
DAS, 14 The Square
Martlesham Heath
Ipswich
IP5 3SL

The lawful basis for processing your data.

Legitimate interests: We hold your data because we cannot advise you fully and check the quality of our advice to you if we do not. Some data is collected to ensure our service is fair and available to everyone who needs it.

We will give you our Privacy Notice to you when you first contact us. If you contact us by phone we will talk to you briefly before we record anything about you, and we will send you a copy of our Privacy Notice. Our Privacy Notice is also available on our website.

Why do we hold information about you?

We collect information from you for the following reasons: –

  • To keep a record of your circumstances and the advice we have given you. This allows us to give you continuity of service whenever you contact us, and so that we can help you with more complex issues that will require ongoing contact until your problem has been resolved. It means that you can contact us at a later date, and we will have a good understanding of your situation.
  • We need certain kinds of information to advise you correctly about your welfare rights.
  • And lastly we collect equality monitoring data so that we can ensure we are helping all sections of the community.

Where do we keep information about you?

DAS holds your information on a secure electronic database. If your case is complex, we may also hold hard copies of documents in locked filing cabinets. Some information, such as appeals submissions, is held in a secure area on our computer system.

How long do we keep it?

We hold personal information for 6 years after the year of your last contact with DAS. After 6 years, electronic data is archived for a further year before being destroyed, and any documents are shredded.

What sort of information do we keep?

We record the following basic information about you:

  • Name.
  • Address.
  • Phone number.
  • NI number.
  • Gender (monitoring data).
  • Date of birth.
  • Race or ethnicity (monitoring data)
  • Whether or not you are married or are living with someone as a couple.

To advise you about your welfare benefits we will also need to know about:

  • Your disability.
  • Your income and savings.
  • Who else is living with you and their income and savings.
  • Your rent or mortgage.
  • Whether you are getting support from any other agencies.

Your right to refuse to allow DAS to keep information about you.

You have the right to refuse to allow us to hold some or all of this information about you, but this means our service to you will be limited to basic advice and signposting.

Will we share your information with anyone else?

We do not share information without your consent unless we believe there is a serious risk of harm to you or someone else, or if we believe that a serious crime may be about to be, or has been, committed. In these situations we believe that safety must override confidentiality, and we ask you to be aware of this when you give information to DAS. If possible we will let you know before we do this.

There are a number of circumstances in which we may ask for your consent to share your information in the course of our advice work, for instance

  • With the Department of Work and Pensions, Pensions Service, Housing Department or Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in order to help you to sort out your welfare rights.
  • Other agencies that may be able to provide help and support to you for problems that do not fall within our area of expertise.

We will ask you to sign a separate Consent to Share Information Form before we do this and we will make you fully aware of the information we are sharing.

There are times when we may want to contact the press or lobby politicians about issues affecting disabled people. If we think your story would illustrate the difficulties many people are experiencing, we will contact you for specific permission to use your case as an example, and we will not go ahead unless you feel completely comfortable, and we always anonymise the information.

No marketing!

We will never pass your information to commercial enterprises that may wish to market services or products to disabled people.

Your right to see the information we hold about you.

You have the right to see the information we hold about you, to change it if you feel it is incorrect. You may ask to see your information by: –

  • Calling in to our office and asking the duty worker to note your request.
  • Emailing us on advice@daseastsuffolk.org.uk .
  • Telephoning us on 01394 387070.

We must supply you with copies of this information within one month of the date we receive your request. We cannot, however, give you access to information about you that has been given to us by someone else.

Asking for your information to be erased or destroyed

You have the right to request that we erase of destroy some or all of the information we hold about you. We will look at these requests on a case-by-case basis. In most cases, however, we will need to retain your information for 6 years in case we have given incorrect advice that affects you substantially, as you may need to make a claim against us.

Your right to complain

If you feel we have misused your personal data in any way you have the right to make a complaint. Please do this by writing to

The Manager
Disability Advice Service East Suffolk
14 The Square
Martlesham Heath
Ipswich
IP5 3SL

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioners Office at www.ico.org.uk

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need any further information about how use or store your personal information.