Council Tax privacy notice

Reasons for processing your personal information

Some of the information that is collected and shared is classified as:

  • special category personal data, such as health and ethnicity-related information
  • criminal convictions and offences including alleged offences.

This is processed for reasons of substantial public interest under the laws that apply to us where this helps to meet our broader social obligations such as where it is necessary for us to fulfil our legal obligations and regulatory requirements.

We have a privacy notice that sets out how this information will be handled.

Sharing your data

Some of the information we hold about you may come from third party sources such as the Department of Work and Pensions and the Electoral Registration Officer.

HM Revenue and Customs may also provide information they hold about you to us so that we can:

  • determine an application for Council Tax reduction
  • review or appeal a determination
  • prevent or detect fraud or error in connection with a Council Tax reduction or as a result of an attempt to get a Council Tax reduction fraudulently.

We may share your information with:

Sharing your information with the Office for National Statistics (ONS): an ONS feasibility study in 2017 identified the benefits of using Council Tax data to help meet its transformation goals. As the required data is beyond what is collected centrally by any government department, ONS is therefore acquiring Council Tax data from every local council in the UK. Our lawful basis for sharing your information with the ONS is as set out above.

We have a legal obligation to share information with the Valuation Office Agency.

We share with, and use, enforcement agents during the course of enforcing Council Tax liability orders.

If you have given us your permission in writing, some of your information may be shared with:
  • a named friend or family member
  • support workers or other individuals authorised by you to act on your behalf.

We subscribe to a tracing system called LoCTA which allows us to search a subset of all subscribing local councils’ revenues systems to trace individuals who have an outstanding Council Tax debt and to prevent duplicate Council Tax claims.

We may be asked for contact details (limited to address, phone and email information). See our privacy notice and Kent County Council’s‘ Kent Local Tracing Partnership’ privacy notice.

We may also rely on a number of exemptions, which allow us to share information without needing to comply with all the rights and obligations under the Data Protection Act 2018. Find further details on our sharing agreements with Kent and Medway Information Agreement.

Retention period

We keep your personal information for the minimum period necessary. The information outlined in this privacy notice will be kept after Council Tax liability has ended, after any recovery and enforcement action has been completed and the period required by us for legal and audit purposes has expired.

Only in exceptional circumstances will we hold your information for longer, for example a pending court case. All information will be held securely and disposed of confidentially. 

Anonymising your data

Your personal information may be converted into statistical or aggregated data that ensures that you cannot be identified from it. Anonymised data means it cannot be linked back to you as an individual and may be used to conduct research and analysis. This includes the preparation of statistics for use in our reports.

Changes to this privacy notice

We review this privacy notice regularly and will place updates on our website.

Refer to our privacy notice for further details of how we process your personal information and for details on your additional rights.

We may process your personal information on more than one lawful basis depending on why we are using your information.