General privacy notice

Money Matters Advice Service

The information you provide will be used to deliver the services you require, including money advice, guidance, and support with understanding your legal responsibilities and assessing your entitlement to money and benefits assistance.

Using your personal information

We request your email address and/or telephone number so that we can contact you if needed. If you provide a mobile number, we may use it to call or send you text messages.

We will collect details including your name, address, date of birth, household circumstances, employment status, and financial circumstances (e.g. income, benefits, and outgoings). This information is necessary to ensure a comprehensive assessment of your situation. We may also ask about your gender and ethnicity to help us meet our equality and diversity obligations.

Depending on the nature of the support provided, we may also request emergency contact details, your GP’s information, details of any medical conditions, support needs, or religious requirements.

In addition to assessing your application, your information may be used to:

evaluate your social care requirements
safeguard vulnerable individuals including children, young people, and adults
administer and allocate service funding
assist with auditing and monitoring for regulatory compliance
generate anonymised statistical reports and support research initiatives
enhance service quality, which may include inviting you to take part in feedback or surveys

In some cases, we may need to use personal information to protect individuals from harm, prevent or detect crime, comply with court orders, or fulfil a person’s legal rights.

Information sharing

Depending upon the services being provided we may contact and/or share your information with your creditors and those representing them, with your agreement. If necessary and appropriate and only with your agreement, we may also share your information with the following organisations:

Department of Work and Pensions
Accountant in Bankruptcy
His Majesty’s Revenue Service
His Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service
The First Tier Tribunal for Scotland (Social Security Chamber)
The Scottish courts
Your landlord
Social Security Scotland
Other South Lanarkshire Council departments
Food and Fuel Banks and other charitable organisations that can provide grants (where you agree to an application being made).

We will always inform you in advance about which organisations we may share your information with as part of delivering services and seek your agreement.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us to:

tell you that we are using personal information about you, tell you what that information is and who we have shared it with. You can also ask us for a copy of the information we have about you. This is called the right of access.
correct any wrong or misleading personal information that we have about you. This is called the right to rectification.
stop using any or all of your personal information. This is called the right to object
delete or destroy your personal information under certain circumstances. This is called the right to erasure.
stop using your personal information until we can correct your personal information, give you our reasons for using your personal information or stop us deleting your personal data if you need it in connection with any legal claims. This is called the right of restriction.
pass your personal information to someone else under certain circumstances. This is called the right to data portability.

For more information on how we use and handle your information and rights and how to exercise them or how to make a complaint, you can ask for a copy of the council’s explanation from our Data Protection officer by emailing dp@southlanarkshire.gov.uk or see our general privacy notice.

Data Protection Officer

Administrative and Legal Services,
Finance and Corporate Resources,
Council Offices,
Almada Street,
Hamilton
ML3 0AA
Phone: 0303 123 1015
Email: dp@southlanarkshire.gov.uk

The Information Commissioner

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner about the way we have handled your rights, to enquire about any exercise of those rights or to complain about the way that the council has dealt with your rights (or any other aspect of data protection law).

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Phone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.

https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/data-protection-complaints/