Manchester Access and Support (MAS) Gateway

This privacy notice relates to the Manchester Access and Support (MAS) Gateway, which acts as a single point of access to homelessness supported accommodation services commissioned and delivered by Manchester City Council, and is also used for monitoring the outcomes of people who access these services. It provides additional information that specifically relates to this particular service, and should be read together with Manchester City Council’s general privacy notice, which provides more detail.

If you receive or have received homelessness housing related support from Manchester City Council, the council will hold a record about you. This is stored in an electronic database called the Manchester Access and Support (MAS) Gateway, and they may also hold some paper based information about you.

Your record will contain:

• Basic details about you such as your name, address and date of birth;
• Information about your support needs, including health needs, offending, and access to work, education and training
• Information about your housing needs, including current and previous addresses
• Letters, notes and reports about the support provided to you and about the help you need;
• Plans for providing support, and details of support you receive;
• Information about any other support services or professionals who are working with you

Some of the information held in your record will be more sensitive personal details about you, such as your race or ethnic origin, sex and sexual orientation, religious beliefs, your physical and mental health etc. (known as Special Categories of Personal Data).

It is important for this information to be known, for example, if you have particular support needs, as this may influence the services that are offered to you or how services need to be delivered to meet your needs. This information will also be used by the council for equalities monitoring purposes, so they can be sure that they’re reaching and responding to all sectors of the community, inclusive of ethnicity, age and disability.

The council will use your personal data for the following reasons:

• To assess you and identify appropriate services or support;
• To provide homelessness housing related support services to you; for example in order to plan and provide care for you;
• To maintain records of the support and services you receive;
• To monitor the quality of the services provided to you and check how our services are performing overall;

In order to improve service delivery, personal information may be used to create statistics which help show how our services are being used and how they should be funded.

Manchester City Council are the Data Controller. This means they decide how to use the personal information held about you. They hold your personal information in an electronic system which is accessible by their staff, as well as some partner organisations commissioned to deliver services on our behalf.

Manchester City Council’s housing related support providers are Data Processors. This means that they use the personal information held about you in order to provide services.

Manchester City Council will only use your personal data where it is necessary in order to perform our public tasks and duties as a Local Authority (Art 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulations), and to meet our statutory obligation under the Care Act 2014.

In some cases, they may be required to share your information by law (Art 6(1)(c)) or where it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency (Art 6(1)(d)).

The council will only use any special category personal data they hold where there is a substantial public interest (such as to carry out our statutory or legal duties, for the prevention of crime) (Art 9(2)(g)).

Your personal data may be shared securely to other departments within the Council, only where it is both necessary and appropriate to do so for the reasons given above.

In order to provide our services to you, the council will need to securely share your personal information to other organisations outside the Council. For example, we may share your data with:

• Supported Accommodation providers
• Resettlement/floating support providers
• Third sector/voluntary organisations involved in making referrals to homelessness housing related support services
• With your legal representative or the Courts if there are any claims or proceedings

Organisations will use this information to support you with any service or contact that you may have. It helps them provide the most appropriate support for you as an individual and they may share information with others including health professionals to ensure that they can make informed decisions. Where this information is shared, your confidentiality and privacy will be protected. To make sure this takes place, there are clear rules in our own procedures as well as national legislation.

In most situations, other people must have your permission before the council can give them information about you. For example, members of your family, the Department of Works and Pensions, the Child Support Agency, the Inland Revenue or Council Tax Officers.

However, there are some circumstances when Manchester City Council are obliged to share information without your permission, for example:

• To protect you or another person in an emergency (for example with the police, NHS or with Immigration/Border Control)
• For the administration of justice (such as providing information to Court)
• To meet other legal obligations, such as:
  • where we are required to share safeguarding information by law to other agencies and other Councils
  • where we are required to provide information to an auditor or standards body or as part of any formal inquiry or investigation

Manchester City Council’s retention schedule sets out how long they keep personal information for.

Find out more about your rights regarding the personal information used for this service

Your rights apply to the information held by the Council as a data controller, and the information we hold on behalf of the other data controllers.

Manchester City Council may change this privacy notice from time to time.

If you have any questions or concerns about how your personal information is used, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer:

• Michael Seal
• dpo@manchester.gov.uk
• Data Protection Officer, Manchester City Council, PO Box 532, Town Hall, Manchester, M60 2LA.

Find out more about getting help with our privacy notice

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you're unhappy about how your information is processed:

• Go to the Information Commissioner's Office website