1. Introduction
Reviewed June 2024
Meliora Property Management Limited (“we”, “us”, “our”) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
This Privacy Notice outlines how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your contract with us, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679 and the Data Protection Act 2018 (“Data Protection Legislation”)
Meliora Property Management Limited is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under the Data Protection Legislation to notify you of the information contained in this Privacy Notice.
You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are one of our applicants or tenants. It makes you aware of how and why your personal information will be used, namely for the purposes of managing your tenancy agreement, and how long we will usually keep your personal information for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (‘Data Protection Legislation”)
This notice applies to current and former applicants / tenants and does not form part of any contract to provide services. We may update this notice at any time.
It is important that you read this notice, together with any other Privacy Notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting, storing or using personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.
2. Data Protection Principles:
There are six overarching principles of the GDPR which we will ensure compliance with when processing your personal data. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
- used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way;
- collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes;
- relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes;
- accurate and kept up to date;
- kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about; and
- kept securely.
The types of personal information we hold about you:
In connection with your tenancy, or application for a tenancy agreement with us, we will collect, store, and use the following types of personal information about you:
- personal details such as your name, date of birth, National Insurance number, identification documents, photographs, contact details and contact preferences;
- next of kin information;
- information you have provided in your application for housing, including references, pre-tenancy assessments, housing history and income details;
- the details of other individuals living with you;
- financial details including bank details, credit history, benefit support, rent account details and income and expenditure assessments;
- employment status;
- complaints of anti-social behaviour;
- complaints about our services; and
- repair logs.
We will also collect, store and use the following types “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:
- Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, trade union membership and political opinions;
- Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, trade union membership and political opinions;
- Information about criminal convictions, criminal offences or court proceedings.
How we collect your information:
We collect, store and hold personal information relating to you from the following sources:
- You, the tenant;
- Your previous landlord;
- Your named referees; and
- Other agencies such as the local authority, the police, emergency services, probation, other RPs, the NHS, health professionals, drug and alcohol services and charities.
How we use your information:
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
- where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you;
- where we need to comply with a legal obligation; and
- where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
- where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests); and
- where you have given to consent to the processing.
We use this personal information to carry out our duties as a Letting and Management Agent. This includes:
- communicating with you about your tenancy;
- letting, renting and leasing properties;
- provision of management services e.g. repairs;
- carrying out research;
- maintaining our accounts and records;
- as part of our marketing and promotional activities (if you agree).
Failure to provide the personal information requested may result in applications for one of our rental properties being refused.
Automated Decision Making
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.
3. Other uses of your personal information:
- If we sell any part of our business and/or integrate it with another organisation your details may be disclosed to our advisers and to prospective purchasers or joint venture partners and their advisers. If this occurs the new owners of the business will only be permitted to use your information in the same or similar way as set out in this privacy notice.
- We will share personal information with our regulators, governmental or quasi-governmental organisations, law enforcement authorities and with courts, tribunals and arbitrators as may be required from time to time in order to comply with our regulatory and legal obligations.
- Where we use third party services providers who process personal information on our behalf in order to provide services to us. This includes IT systems providers and IT contractors as well as third party referencing or screening agencies for the purposes of the prevention and detection of crime.
- We may share your personal information with any person working within the Meliora Property Management Limited organisation on a need to know basis, to ensure we are able to perform our obligations to you.
- We will hold your personal information on our client management systems and use this to provide you with additional information or services offered by Meliora Property Management to those which you have engaged us to provide which we feel you might find useful from time to time. You have the opportunity to opt out of receiving this information at any time.
4. How we share tenant information:
We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the tenancy agreement with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.
Third party providers include but are not limited to the following:
- Let Alliance
- Rightmove Referencing
- Alto Software (Zoopla Group)
- The Deposit Protection Service
- Maintenance Contractors and
- Utility Providers.
Any third parties must process the information as permitted by the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Where it is required or necessary in accordance with the Data Protection Legislation, we may also share information with:
- HMRC
- your Landlord
- suppliers and service providers;
- financial organisations;
- debt collection agencies;
- central government;
- auditors;
- survey and research organisations;
- professional advisers and consultants;
- police forces;
- courts and tribunals;
- professional bodies; and
- insurers.
5. Data Security:
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
6. How long we keep personal information:
We will keep the personal information you provide whilst you are a tenant and we will also retain your personal information, even after the end of your tenancy if this is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, maintain security, prevent fraud or to enforce any outstanding debts owed to us.
A copy of our Data Retention policy which details the retention periods for your information is available upon request.
7. Your rights:
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your involvement with us.
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
- Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
- Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
- Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact Meliora Property Management Limited. Please note, there are some specific circumstances where these rights do not apply and we can refuse to deal with your request
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Meliora Property Management. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
Complaints:
We take any complaints we receive about the collection and use of personal information very seriously. We would encourage you to bring it to our attention if you think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. You can make a complaint at any time by contacting us (see contact details section below).
If you think our collection or use of personal information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate or if you have concerns about the security of your personal information, you also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at the following address:
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Contact us:
You can e-mail us at enquiry@meliorapm.co.uk or write to us at the following address:
Meliora Property Management Limited, The Office, Sellet Hall, Hosticle Lane, Whittington, Lancashire, LA6 2QF
Tel: 015242 72345 / 07540123576
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact Joyce FitzGerald, using the details above.
