Protecting your data

Radian is committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure. This section explains what we use your personal information for and how we take care of it.  It is only a guide to data protection and it does not give full details of all your rights. 

Protecting you! The Data Protection Act 1998

We ensure that information we hold and process meets the eight principles of the Act, which state that information about you must be:

• Obtained and processed fairly and lawfully
• Adequate, relevant and not excessive
• Accurate and up to date
• Not kept for longer than is necessary for the purposes it was obtained
• Processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects under the Act
• Managed to ensure only appropriate processing takes place
• Held and disposed of in a secure manner
• Not transferred without adequate protection

By law, we are required to do this.

You can view the Data Protection leaflet by clicking here. This will open in a new window as a PDF.

How we use your information

To help Radian deliver its services to you effectively, we collect, process and store personal information about applicants, tenants and other customers that we provide services for. However, we treat any information provided by you in strictest confidence and in line with the Data Protection Act.

When dealing with your personal information we aim to:

• Tell you whenever possible why we need your information and what we use it for.
• Only use your personal information for what we have said we will use it for.
• Keep only the personal information that we need in order to provide services to you or to meet our legal obligations.
• Take all reasonable steps to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up-to-date. Please help us to do this by telling us if any of your details change.
• Delete or destroy personal information about you when we no longer need it and in line with our retention and disposal policy.

What information do we hold about you?

Examples of personal information would be names and birth dates of people in your household, telephone numbers, or rent payment history. Some of the information we collect is more sensitive, and is classified as “sensitive personal data” under the Data Protection Act.

Why do we collect sensitive information?

Sensitive personal data is strictly confidential and will only be made available to those directly involved in dealing with your housing, support or care.

We collect information about your age, gender, sexuality, race, religion, disabilities etc., should you choose to give it, to:

• Ensure that services cater for you and hep us direct services to where they are most needed. 
• Provide statistical information to our regulators which we will present in a way which does not identify you.

Medical or health information is needed to:

• Assess your suitability and need for housing.
• Help provide assistance to you in an emergency.
• Tailor services so that they are appropriate for your needs

There are some occasions where to protect our staff we would like them to visit you in pairs. This information is recorded on our housing management system.  If we take this action we would write to you and let you know why.

How we protect your personal information

We are committed to the highest standards of security and confidentiality when holding your personal information.  All personal information we receive from you or a third party (e.g. a doctor or social worker) is treated as strictly confidential. We will not disclose anything given to us in confidence unless you agree to this. The only exception to this is where the law requires us to share information with the police, councils and other landlords, for example, to prevent or to deal with anti-social behaviour, crime and fraud.

We must report how we use personal information to the Information Commissioner who is responsible for making sure that information is collected, held and used in line with the Data Protection Act 1998.

If you telephone our offices to enquire about your rent account or personal matters related to your tenancy, you will be asked certain questions to prove your identity before we answer. We want to be sure that we do not disclose personal information about you to another person.

How long will we store your information

In line with the Data Protection Act 1998, we will not keep personal information for longer than is necessary. When we dispose of information we do so securely.

Who to contact if you feel we have not protected your information

If you think we have broken any principles of the Data Protection Act, you can ask the Information Commissioner’s Office to carry out an assessment. Tel: 01625 545700, Web: www.ico.gov.uk/.

Your rights to see and change your personal information

The Data Protection Act allows you to find out what information we hold about you and your tenancy. You can ask us:

• if we hold personal information about you
• what we use the information for
• to provide you with a copy of the information you are entitled to
• to supply you with given details of the purposes for which the organisation uses the information and who it is shared with
• to amend incorrect information.

How can you access information

We will ask for proof of your identity before we provide information.

We will supply information within 40 days of asking.

If you would like us to provide you with a photocopy record of your file we may charge a fee of £10 for providing information to cover our administration costs. 

There is some information that we are not permitted to disclose to you. For example, if it would affect the way a police investigation or a criminal prosecution is carried out. We also may not provide information if the request would mean disclosing information about another individual.

You can view the Data Protection leaflet by clicking here. This will open in a new window as a PDF.

For more information or to receive a copy of our Data Protection policy, please contact us on 0300 123 1567 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .