Privacy Policy

Our website address is: https://www.hopestead.org.

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service Privacy Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Hopestead is part of the Flagship Group. Flagship Housing Group Limited, is registered under the Data Protection Law to hold information about you.

Personal information
Flagship Housing Group Limited is committed to the responsible handling and protection of personal information.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines personal data as any information related to a person that can be used to directly or indirectly identify them. This includes physical attributes, location data, online identifiers (including IP addresses), identification numbers, health information and economic, cultural or social identify of a person.
We process (collect, use, store, share) personal information where necessary to provide our services and for our operational and business purposes as described in this Privacy Notice.
We want to be clear about our privacy practices so that you can make informed choices about the use of your information, and we encourage you to contact us at any time with questions or concerns.

How we use your information
This privacy notice tells you how we, Flagship housing Group Limited, will collect and use your personal information to enable us to provide affordable housing, shared ownership, private lettings, student and direct sale accommodation and associated services.

Why does Flagship Group need to collect and store personal information?
Flagship processes personal information for the following purposes:
• Management and support of Tenancies, Shared Ownership and Direct Sales
• For the welfare of our customers
• Maintenance of properties including private garages and communal areas
• For the protection of employees, customers, contractors and sub-contractors
• Servicing, repair and installation of gas appliances and heating systems
• For the prevention of fraud and legal proceedings
• Feedback from research and surveys on how we can provide better services
• Communication with our customers to provide updates relating to our business and services
• For the management, wellbeing and support of our employees
• For the management of financial services
• Security and maintenance of our networks and systems
• For general day to day corporate operations and due diligence
We are committed to ensuring that the information we collect and use is appropriate for these purposes and does not constitute an invasion of your privacy.

Special category information
Occasionally we collect and process what may be considered special category information (sensitive personal information).
Sensitive personal information is a subset of personal information and is generally defined as any information related to racial/ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health, other medical information including biometric and genetic data, or sexual life preferences.
We will only collect this information if it is necessary to support you whilst you are a Flagship customer.

Will Flagship Group share my personal information with anyone else?
We may pass your personal information on to third-party service providers contracted to Flagship Group during the course of dealing with you. Any third parties that we may share your information with are obliged to keep your details securely, and to use them only to fulfil the services they provide on our behalf. When they no longer need your information to fulfil this service, they will dispose of the details in line with Flagship Group procedures. If we wish to pass your sensitive personal information onto a third party we will only do so once we have obtained your consent, unless we are legally required to do otherwise.

Special circumstances
To provide a duty of care to employees, customers, contractors and sub-contractors we will process and share relevant personal information for their protection. This will be an alert on our management system to visit in pairs (DNVA).

How will Flagship Group use the personal information it collects about me?
Flagship Group will process the information you provide in a manner compatible with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We will endeavour to keep your information accurate and up to date, and not keep it for longer than is necessary. Flagship Group is required to retain information in accordance with the law, such as information needed for financial, legal and audit purposes. How long certain kinds of personal information should be kept may also be governed by specific business-sector requirements and agreed practices. Personal information may be held in addition to these periods depending on individual business needs.

Under what circumstances will Flagship Group contact me?
Our aim is not to be intrusive, and we undertake not to ask irrelevant or unnecessary questions. We may sometimes contact you for feedback by doing research or asking you to take part in a survey, this enables us to make changes and improvements to our services. We may also communicate with you when we have updates or changes to our business. If you have provided us your email and or mobile number we will contact you in this way to communicate.
We consider this communication to be within our legitimate interest of lawful processing.

How do we secure personal information?
Flagship Group takes data security seriously, and we use appropriate technologies and procedures to protect personal information. Our information security policies and procedures are closely aligned with widely accepted standards and are reviewed regularly and updated as necessary to meet our business needs, changes in technology, and regulatory requirements.
For example:

Policies and procedures
We have measures in place to protect against accidental loss and unauthorized access, use, destruction, or disclosure of data including the following:
• We have a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy that is designed to safeguard the continuity of our service to our customers and to protect our people and assets
• We place appropriate restrictions on access to personal information
• We implement appropriate measures and controls, including monitoring and physical measures, to store and transfer data securely
• We conduct Privacy Impact Assessments in accordance with legal requirements and our business policies
• We conduct Data Protection training for all employees who have access to personal information and other sensitive data
• We take steps to ensure that our employees and contractors operate in accordance with our information security policies and procedures and any applicable contractual conditions
• We require, third party contractors or sub-contractors to have appropriate agreements in place to ensure personal information is processed in line with the General Data Protection Regulation.

Can I find out the personal information that the organisation holds about me?
Flagship Group at your request will provide you with a copy of the personal data we hold about you. This is referred to as your right of access (subject access request). You are entitled to receive any information that identifies you as an individual, including the following information:
• The lawful conditions applicable to the processing of your personal information.
• If the processing is based on the legitimate interests (processing is necessary for the operation of our business) we will advise which legitimate interest applies
• The categories of personal information processed
• Recipient(s) or categories of recipients that the data is/will be disclosed to.
• If we intend to transfer the personal data to a third country or international organisation, information about how we ensure this is done securely. The EU has approved sending personal data to some countries because they meet a minimum standard of data protection. In other cases, we will ensure there are specific measures in place to secure your information.
• How long the information will be stored.
• The source of personal data if it wasn’t collected directly from you.
• Any details and information of automated decision making, such as the affordability checker used for applications made on Shared Ownership properties.
Your rights as a data subject (Customers of Flagship Group)
At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject, have the following rights:
• Right of rectification – you have a right to ask us to update personal information if you have a reason to believe that it is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten – you have the right in certain circumstances to ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records. Especially if you think we are processing your personal information where it is no longer necessary or where you believe it is unlawful.
• Right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to temporarily stop processing your personal information if you have concerns over the accuracy of the information in some way.
• Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
• Right to object – you have the right to object to the way we process your personal information if you consider Flagship are being unlawful.
• Right to object to automated processing – you have the right to object to decisions made about you from automated processing, such as the affordability checker.

Cookies
Flagship Housing Group Ltd and our third-party providers set and use cookies and similar technologies to store and manage user preferences, enable content, and gather analytic and usage data, for example. The use of cookies and other tracking technologies is standard across websites and apps through which information is collected about your online activities across applications, websites, or other services. More information about how we use cookies and similar technologies and how you can control and manage them is here.

National Fraud Initiative
Public Interest – We process personal information as part of the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). This is a national exercise run by the Cabinet Office every two years. Data is matched to enable potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. If a fraudulent match is discovered an investigation will take place which may result in the prosecution of the individual. For more information please refer to Gov.UK privacy notice or
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/code-of-data-matching-practice-for-national-fraud-initiative

How to contact us?
If you would like to make a request to obtain personal information we hold about you or access any of your rights as explained in this privacy notice you can do so by filling in a quick and easy form by following this link

Alternatively feel free to contact us in the following ways:

Call us
Our Contact Centre is open from 7am – 7pm Monday to Friday. Call Freephone 0808 168 4555

Write to us
Data Protection Officer
Flagship Housing Group Limited
31 King Street
Norwich
NR1 1PD

Email – Data Protection Officer
DataProtectionTeam@flagship-group.co.uk

Lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority
If you have any concerns regarding how Flagship Group handled your request, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) details below:

Information Governance department
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF