National Fraud Initiative privacy notice

This Privacy Notice should be read in conjunction with Colchester City Council’s Privacy Policy. 

The National Fraud Initiative (NFI) is an exercise that matches electronic data within and between public and private sector bodies to prevent and detect fraud.  

This Privacy Notice provides information on how we will use your personal information with regards to the NFI in line with data protection legislation. 

Your data

Under the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, we are a mandatory participant in the NFI and consequently are required to provide the following data sets, where we hold the relevant information, to the Cabinet Office as part of the data matching exercise:

• Payroll
• Pensions
• Trade creditors’ payment history and trade creditors’ standing data
• Housing (current tenants and individuals on a housing waiting list) and right to buy (completed and in progress)
• Housing benefits (provided by the DWP)
• Council Tax reduction scheme
• Council Tax
• Electoral register
• Students eligible for a loan (provided by the Students Loan Company)
• Private supported care home residents
• Transport passes and permits ( including residents’ parking, blue badges and concessionary travel)
• Insurance claimants
• Licences – market trader/operator, taxi driver and personal licences to supply alcohol
• Personal budget (direct payments) and social care

Agencies we might share your information with

Data will be submitted to the Cabinet Office and shared with other NFI participants including public and private sector organisations.  These bodies include police authorities, local probation boards, fire and rescue authorities as well as local councils and a number of private sector bodies.  Public sector bodies are required to submit data to the NFI on a regular basis.

The purpose and lawful basis for processing

The lawful basis for the processing of your personal data is legal obligation. The use of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.

We are required by law to protect the public funds that we administer.  We may share information provided to us with other bodies responsible for auditing, or administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud.

Length of time we keep your information

Data extractions prepared for submission to the NFI and data downloads from the Cabinet Office are held by us until the next NFI exercise commences. The Cabinet Office have their own National Fraud Initiative privacy notice and retention periods.

How we protect and store your personal data

We take the confidentiality of personal information very seriously and use recognised security and access controls to protect your information from unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration or corruption. We have procedures and processes in place to ensure that your personal information is managed appropriately.

Your information may be held outside of the UK. Where this is the case, we ensure that additional measures are in place to protect your data and to ensure that we continue to comply with data protection requirements.

Updates to this privacy notice

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect changes in our processes and procedures, as well as to comply with changes in the law. When such changes occur, we will revise the 'last updated' date on this notice. We encourage you to periodically review this notice and to be informed of how we are protecting your information.