Who we are
We are a local authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 and have our headquarters at Newtown St Boswells, TD6 0SA.
You can contact us by:
- phone: 0300 100 1800
- email: CustomerAdvice@scotborders.gov.uk.
Our Data Protection Officer can be contacted using the above details or by emailing dataprotection@scotborders.gov.uk
How we will use your information
We will use your information to assess your financial contribution towards your care costs. We are entitled to collect and use this information under its statutory duty to provide you with a financial assessment under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002, Part 3 of the National Assistance Act 1948 Section 22, National Assistance (Assessment of Resources) Regulations 1992, Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007.
If you do not provide us with the information we have asked for then we will not be able to provide you with a financial assessment towards your care costs.
We may use your information for the following purposes:
- Assess your initial and ongoing charge for care at home services
- Asses your initial and ongoing contribution for residential care
- Assess your initial and ongoing entitlement to receive funding assistance towards your residential respite care costs
- To allow the Council to communicate and provide services appropriate to your needs
- To allow the Council to communicate and provide services appropriate to your needs, for example homecare, housing support, telecare services and transport service
- To help identify people who may be eligible for other benefits, grants or other financial support and to encourage, assist or advise people to make claims for them
Who we may share your information with
Your information will be accessed by our staff who need to do so in order to provide the service described above. We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds so details will be checked internally for fraud prevention and verification purposes and may be shared with other public bodies for the same purpose.
Personal data provided for Applications for services administered and/or provided by us may be shared with, or obtained from the following organisations (in addition to any other disclosure required by a Court of Law or in response to a valid request by, normally, a law enforcement agency):
- Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
- National Health Service (NHS)
- To make any disclosures required by law such as disclosure to the Office of National Statistics
- The National Fraud Initiative (NFI) and other bodies responsible for detecting or preventing fraud or auditing or administering public funds
- Care Providers
- Other Council Services
- Other organisations or public bodies
- Registered social landlords
Your Information may also be shared and analysed internally in order to provide management information, inform service delivery reform and similar purposes to meet our duty to achieve best value and continuous service improvement.
In general we do not transfer personal data outside either the UK or the European Economic Area (EEA) and on the rare occasions when it does so we will inform you. We will only transfer data outside the UK and the EEA when it is satisfied that the party which will handle the data and the country it is processing it in will provide adequate safeguards for personal privacy.
Decision Making
We do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes. Some processes are semi-automated (such as anti-fraud data matching) but a human decision maker will always be involved before any decision is reached in relation to you.
Information you have given us about other people
If you have provided anyone else's details on this form, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to us. We will only use this information to contact those people to assess your own entitlement to this service. If they want any more information on how we will use their information they can visit our website.
How long do we keep your information for?
We only keep your personal information for the minimum period necessary. Sometimes this time period is set out in the law, but in most cases it is based on the business need.
The information you have provided will be retained for up to a maximum of 7 years once the case is closed.
Your Rights
You have the right to request access to any personal data held about you by us. You can also request that we restrict the use of your information or even object to any further processing. You can do this by contacting the Data Protection Officer using the contact details provided above. We will respond to your request within thirty calendar days.
For more information on your rights visit our website or if you would like a hard copy of this information, please contact us using the contact details provided above.
How to raise a complaint
We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information. If your complaint is about how we have handled your personal information, you can contact the our Data Protection Officer by email at dataprotection@scotborders.gov.uk or by telephone on 0300 100 1800.
However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint about data protection matters with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), who can be contacted by post at:
Information Commissioner's Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF
You can contact the ICO by phone on 0303 123 1113 or you can visit their website for more information.
If your complaint is not about a data protection matter you can find details on how to make a complaint on our website.