Money Advice and Rights team - privacy notice

The Money Advice and Rights team (MART) are a free, impartial and confidential service that assist residents and their carers to maximise their income through Social Security and to reduce their debt through statutory debt solutions and negotiations with creditors. We can also help you access support from charities and other providers. We're required to collect some data for reporting to the Scottish Government to make sure we are reaching all groups of people. We don't share this data but report on the aggregate numbers accessing the service.

In order to be able to advise you correctly we need information about you and you household's circumstances. This information will include:

• Identity data such as your name, date of birth, previous name, address and National Insurance number
• Contact data such as your telephone number, address, previous addresses and email address
• Financial data such as money you have in savings as well as the money coming in and going out of your household. We'll ask if you have ever been made bankrupt or have Court Orders issued against you
• Protected characteristics such as age, martial status and pregnancy are required to know what benefits you're entitled to. We'll ask for your gender, ethnicity and marital status for reporting purposes. We may ask for details of your religion or trade union or political membership were this is relevant to a charity application

The MART service is a free voluntary service to East Renfrewshire residents and their carers. The information we need is used to progress your case.

The lawful basis for us collecting your data is based on a contract between you and the service.

We'll ask you to sign a contract known as a Service Level Agreement. As part of this you will give your consent for MART to act on your behalf and store your data. You're able to withdraw your consent at any time. In some circumstance not providing information will mean we cannot advise you appropriately and would be unable to offer a service.

We collect your information from referral forms from third parties and from the information you supply to us to help with your case. We store the information you supply in a secure data base that can only be accessed by the team.

MART keep your data for 7 years after the last time we do any action on your case..

We'll only share your information with your explicit consent and we will let you know who we are sharing the information with and why. For example, we would help you complete benefit forms and share this with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to process your application. We would share financial statements with your creditors to negotiate a settlement.

Depending on why we need to process your information you'll have rights to how your information is used. More information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, can be found within our main privacy policy.

If you've concerns about the processing of your personal data by us, you can contact our Data Protection Officer at dpo@eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk.

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing, visit the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website (opens new window).

Please contact us if you need this information in an alternative format.

This notice will be kept under regular review and was last updated on the 26 January 2021.