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The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) wishes to collect a range of information to improve its understanding of the causes and factors related to homelessness. This will help MHCLG to improve homelessness services. By carrying out this research, MHCLG aims to find out whether:

1. housing services help prevent homelessness
2. people return for help or move regularly
3. homelessness programmes, such as Housing First, and the temporary accommodation provided during the Covid 19 pandemic have reduced homelessness and rough sleeping in the longer term
4. there are other causes of homelessness and outcomes, such as poor health
5. understand more about the contact households have with public services

To do this, MHCLG wishes to link information about you and others in your household together with other information, including your homelessness application to us and past and future information on your use of other public services and benefits.

For the research, MHCLG and º¬Ðß²ÝÉçÇø Borough Council will both be independent data controllers of the personal information shared between them in accordance with a data sharing agreement.

MHCLG is commissioning an independent research organisation to carry out the research.

º¬Ðß²ÝÉçÇø Borough Council has a statutory duty to prevent homelessness and provide assistance to people threatened with or actually homeless. In order to fulfil our statutory duties, we collect and process the personal data that you provide  to us when completing a homelessness application, which may include:

• name
• residential address If available)
• email address
• telephone number
• nationality
• gender
• age
• ethnicity
• proxy applicant details 
• employer name and address
• your National Insurance Number

º¬Ðß²ÝÉçÇø Borough Council will share your name, date of birth, gender, last known address and national insurance number (if known) with MHCLG so that it can decide whom to select to participate in the research.  MHCLG’s researchers looking at the data on homelessness and data from other departments and agencies will not know whose data they have – as the data will be anonymised (i.e. not include any personal identifiers such as names, date of birth, etc., only a unique reference number created for the research).

Any information you provide will not be used to make any decisions about what benefits you receive, services you use, now or in future, or used to identify fraud. It can only be used for research.

As some of the additional information is related to and/or connected with your ethnicity and sexual orientation and/or criminal convictions and offences, it is referred to respectively, as ‘special category data and criminal offences data’. These are submitted in our quarterly H-CLIC statistics return to MHCLG and are to be shared alongside other attribute fields for use in research in an anonymised or pseudonymised form.

Our lawful bases for sharing your personal data with MHCLG: The following are the UK GDPR lawful bases under which we will process your information, based on the Housing Act 1996, section 179 with ancillary powers confirmed by Local Government Act 1972 section 111 and Localism Act 2011 section 1:

• Article 6(1)(e) as supplemented by DPA 2018, section 8(c) - processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller
• Articles 9(2)(j) & 89(1) as supplemented by DPA 2018 sections 10(2) & 19 and Schedule 1, Part 1, para 4(a) – processing is necessary for statistical purposes
• Article 9(2)(g) as supplemented by DPA 2018 section 10(3) & Schedule 1, Part 2, paras 6(1) and (2)(a) – processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest
• Article 10 as supplemented by DPA 2018 section 10(5) & Schedule 1, Part 1, para 4(a) – processing is necessary for statistical purposes;
• Article 10 as supplemented by DPA 2018 section 10(5) & Schedule 1, Part 2, paras 6(1) and (2)(a) – processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

MHCLG will only use your data within the terms of data protection laws and will only keep it as long as we have a lawful basis to do so. MHCLG will delete your data securely and only keep it for as long as necessary for its work as a public body. MHCLG will review dates for keeping personal identifiers and data in the future and if necessary ask us to update this Privacy Notice. All information will be held securely and disposed of confidentially by MHCLG.

Where processing your personal information is required for the performance of a public interest task (see our lawful basis above), you have the right to object on ‘grounds relating to your particular situation’. We will have to demonstrate why it is appropriate for us to continue to use your personal data.

To see how we use cookies (small text files that are placed on your browser), please refer to our Cookies Policy.

Please refer to our º¬Ðß²ÝÉçÇø Borough Council Privacy Notice, our Housing Assessment Privacy Notice and our Housing Options Privacy Notice. The documents provide further details of how we process your personal information and for details on your additional rights.

We review this Privacy Notice regularly and will place updates on our website.

For further detailed information on the H-CLIC research and how MHCLG will process your personal information. please refer to MHCLG’s Privacy Notice. If you would like more information you can email MHCLG researchers at, HomelessnessPersonalData@communities.gov.uk.

You can contact MHCLGs Knowledge and Information Team about seeing your data or withdrawing from the research by emailing MHCLG’s Data Protection Officer at, dataprotection@communities.gov.uk.

º¬Ðß²ÝÉçÇø Borough Council’s Data Protection Officer oversees compliance with the Data Protection Legislation and making sure we respect your rights and follow the law. If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please email the Data Protection Officer at, dpo@crawley.gov.uk.

 If you are unhappy with the way your personal information is being handled you can contact the independent Information Commissioner at: 

Dated: 15 September 2022