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Carelink privacy policy

About this notice

We are committed to respecting your privacy. This notice sets out these commitments, and explains how we may use the personal data we collect before, during and after your involvement with us. This notice explains how we comply with the laws on data protection and what your rights are. Also for the purposes of data protection we are the data controller of any of your personal information.

Our core data protection obligations and commitments are set out in the council's privacy notice.

This notice provides additional privacy information for the service provided by, and duties undertaken by the Carelink service during our interactions with you.

References to we, our or us in this privacy notice relate specifically to the Carelink service provided by Bury Council.

Purpose(s)

We obtain your personal information for the following purposes:

  • In order to ensure that we can effectively provide a community alarm service to our customers.
  • In order to develop a clear understanding of your needs at the commencement of the service, and to inform further planning and support as your time with the service progresses.
  • To report problems or concerns surrounding your care, support and wellbeing to other council departments and services if you request it, or where it is judged to be in your best interests to do so.
  • To report problems or concerns to third parties, for example, your nominated contacts, your GP, Care agencies, Health service, Fire Service, Ambulance service, Police, Six town Housing and other Housing providers if you request it or where it is judged to be in your best interests to do so.
  • To allow us to arrange set up and management of your account and to arrange payments for the services provided by us.
  • To investigate complaints or concerns about the delivery of our or other providers services to you, or as a result of criminal investigations.
  • As a nominated contact for a customer, we collect your data to allow us to contact you should a request to do so be made, or if we have concerns or enquiries regarding our customer.

Categories of personal data

In order to carry out these purposes we collect the following types of information:

  • Your title, name, address and telephone numbers.
  • Your date of birth
  • Gender
  • Ethnicity and Religion
  • Known health and medical conditions, including details of your doctor and medication details if necessary.
  • Details of your nominated emergency contacts, including name, address, e-mail and telephone details.
  • Specific property access arrangements for emergency use only (where applicable).
  • Records of our interactions and correspondence with you such as call histories, telephone recordings, details of maintenance visits, results of customer satisfaction surveys, letters and your instructions to us.
  • Your bank details in order to assist the councils customer accounts section to set up your account. This information is only used to complete the transaction and is not stored or retained by the Carelink service.

Where we get our information

In addition to information collected from you, we also obtain information or receive information from:

  • Other council departments and services, including but not limited to: Social service teams, Customer contact centre and Customer accounts department.
  • Adult Care services Personalisation and support team to check eligibility to reduced prices for services - note we will ask your permission before we do this.
  • Landlords
  • Your nominated contacts or representatives who may communicate with us on your behalf or in your absence and where it is judged that it is in your best interests to do so.

Consequences if information is not provided

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may be unable to continue to provide the service to you, or it may limit the effectiveness of delivery. In addition we may be unable to address any query, issue or complaint or further issues which may result.

Legal basis for processing

Under article 6 of the UK General Data Protection Regulations.

  • Basis:
    • Consent: You have given clear consent for us to process your personal data for the purpose of providing the Community alarm and related services.
    • Contract: We have a contractual obligation to you to process your information relating to the provision and delivery of the services agreed.
    • Vital Interests: It is necessary to process your information in order to safeguard wellbeing and protect life.
    • Legitimate Interest: Processing is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests pursued by Carelink or its customer.
  • Purposes:
    • Retention of records: We have a legitimate interest in retaining records whilst they may be required in relation to service delivery, complaints or claims. We need to retain records in order to effectively manage any account you have with us, and in some cases we may have legal or regulatory obligations to retain records.
    • Information used: all the personal information as detailed above.
    • Health information: To store and process information relating to your physical or mental health or disability status to ensure that we can assess need in the event of an emergency or unknown event and relay important information to emergency and other relevant services in order to safeguard wellbeing and protect life.
    • Information used: Health and other related information
    • Equal opportunity monitoring: We have a legitimate and legal interest in ensuring that the Carelink service is inclusive, fair and accessible to all, and were you have given your explicit consent to do so.
    • Information used: Name, title, date of birth, gender, race & ethnicity, health information.
    • Marketing information: To send marketing information we think you may find useful, or have requested from us, where you have given your explicit consent to do so.
    • Information used: Contact details (Name, address, email address)

Information sharing and recipients

We may share personal information about you with the following types of organisations:

  • Other service providers: For example, social workers and social care officers, health services, care agencies. Emergency services.
  • Our partners: IT service support including suppliers, and disaster recovery services. (In order to maintain our IT systems and in the event of IT failure or other event that impacts directly upon service delivery)

Automated decisions

For this service all the decisions we make about you involve human intervention

Data retention / criteria

We will only keep your personal information for as long as the law specifies or where the law does not specify this, for the length of time we would need to hold onto your personal information having regard to the purpose for which it was obtained, the nature of the information, industry practice and all surrounding circumstances, including historical.

Rights of individuals

Information about the following is accessible in our guide to exercising your rights:

  • exercising your rights
  • contacting our Data Protection Officer
  • raising a concern with us, or
  • making a complaint to the Information Commissioner.