Conditions of Use

This privacy notice sets out how ABC Property may collect, use and share your personal information.

ABC Property and its Data Protection Officer can be contacted at: The Data Protection Officer, Ashford Borough Council, Civic Centre, Tannery Lane, Ashford TN23 1PL or via FOI@ashford.gov.uk.

The processing of personal data is governed, in the UK, by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (the “UK GDPR”) and any national implementing laws (Data Protection Act 18), regulations and secondary legislation, as amended or updated from time to time, and the regional supervisory authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office with registration number ZA064163.

About ABC Property

ABC Property is an independent private limited residential investment and development company wholly owned by and funded through Ashford Borough Council. Our aim is to build a private market rental portfolio of up to 500 properties which will not only provide A Better Choice for Property for its working tenants but also a significant alternative revenue stream to the council.

Incorporated in 2014, it is one of the first of this type of company to be set up by a local authority in the country and in recent years the business has gone from strength to strength. The quality of our private market residential property portfolio and the professionalism of our property management team are hallmarks of the company’s expansion.

While the focus is on Ashford, the company is not geographically constrained and might consider opportunities outside the borough. Of particular rental interest are new build one and two bed flats, and two and three bed houses but the company is open to buying for private market sale.

Processing activities

ABC Property will use your personal data to deliver our housing services to you, this may include:

  • To send you information about properties and property related services you may request of us or that we think will be of interest to you.
  • To conduct appropriate pre tenancy checks, including the conduct of searches about your identity, your current and past residency addresses, and your right to live in the UK, credit history and other checks to ensure your suitability as a tenant.
  • Necessary processing for the purpose of administrating any ongoing tenancy with you.
  • Post tenancy processing such as check out procedures or fulfilling other legal duties.

What personal information we collect

ABC Property. will collect and process your personal data when you interact with us, through our websites or when you register with us to receive our services.

This usually includes, name, address, telephone number, email address, date of birth, credit history, previous addresses, identification, financial information and  maintenance records associated to any tenanted property. 

If you contact us for any reason, we may retain copies of any letters, emails or online forms and may record telephone conversations with you.

Lawful basis

We will only process your data if we have a lawful basis to do so, as spelt out under article 6 of the UK GDPR. These will include:

  • processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract;

This will include providing our services including processing information in connection with tenancy agreements, arrangements for the transfers of funds or ending of any contract arrangements;

  • you have given consent to the processing of your personal data for one or more specific purposes;

This will include where you have signed up to newsletters or other marketing activities conducted by us.

  • processing is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests

This will include the use of your data in connection with, pursuant of none payment of rent, legal claims, compliance, regulatory and investigative purposes as necessary.

Sharing of personal information

Your information may be shared with and/or obtained from the following in order for us to deliver our services:

  • Kent Fire & Rescue Service
  • Local authorities
  • Border Force
  • Department for Work and Pensions
  • Other lettings agents
  • Job Centre Plus
  • Probation Service
  • Health services 
  • Friends and relatives you and your household may have been living with
  • Housing associations
  • HMRC
  • Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
  • Your nominated friend, relative or advocacy worker
  • Utility providers
  • Private sector landlords
  • Mortgage lending companies

We may check your housing record against other records held by us such as housing benefits and the Electoral Register to aid with the detection of housing fraud and with law enforcement agencies such as the police to aid with the detection and prevention of criminal acts and with our agents during the course of debt collection.

Retention period

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of your personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. We will securely destroy your personal data in accordance with our data retention policy and applicable laws and regulations.

How we protect your data

The data you provide is protected by rigorous measures and procedures to make sure it can’t be seen, or accessed by, or disclosed to anyone who shouldn’t be allowed to see it.

We provide training to staff who handle personal data and treat it as a disciplinary matter if they misuse or do not look after your personal data properly.

We regularly review and assess the technical and organisational security measures in place around our systems and that of our suppliers.

We will investigate data incidents where we have found that your personal data may have or has been disclosed inappropriately (data breach) and attempt to recover any data lost. If any breach is likely to result in a risk to your rights or freedoms we will inform the ICO within 72 hours and should such breach result in a high risk to these freedoms we will contact you without undue delay.

Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent from the website and stored on your computer by your website browser. The cookies used on this website are either to:

  • Enable you to navigate the website and find the information you are looking for, or
  • To give us general information about website activity, e.g. how many people visit the website, which pages they look at, what devices they use (PC's mobile phones etc). The information stored does not include any personal data identifiable back to an individual.

For a detailed description of the types of cookies we use and on how you can control the use of cookies, please see our Cookie control pop out found at the bottom left of any page.

Your rights

Unless subject to an exemption under data protection legislation, you have the following rights:

  • be informed about how your personal data is being used
  • access your data and supplementary information
  • update your data if your information needs to be corrected or updated
  • request erasure of your personal data
  • restrict processing of your personal data
  • object to the processing of your data

If you would like to exercise any of your rights, please get in touch with our data protection officer.

Right to Complain

We set ourselves high standards when it comes to protecting your personal data. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive from you about our use of your personal data very seriously and request that you bring any issues to our attention.

Where you are communicating with us for the purpose of making a complaint, we will only use your personal data to handle, investigate and respond to the complaint and to check on the level of service we provide.

If having exhausted the complaint process you are not content that your request or review has been dealt with correctly, you can appeal to the ICO to investigate the matter further by writing to:

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

Changes to our Data Protection Policy

  • We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website.
  • You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes to this policy.