At DIAL Barnsley we collect and use your personal information to help solve your problems, improve our services and influence wider issues in society that affect people’s lives.

We only ask for the information we need. We always let you decide what you’re comfortable telling us, explain why we need it and treat it as confidential.

When we record and use your personal information we:

• only access it when we have a good reason

• only share what is necessary and relevant

• never sell it to commercial organisations.

At times we might use or share your information without your permission. If we do, we’ll always make sure there’s a legal basis for it. This could include situations where we have to use or share your information to:

• comply with the law – for example, if a court orders us to share information. This is called ‘legal obligation’

• protect someone’s life – for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a client was unwell at our office. This is called ‘vital interests’

• carry out our legitimate aims and goals as a charity – for example, to create statistics for our research. This is called ‘legitimate interests’

• carry out a task where we’re meeting the aims of a public body in the public interest – for example, delivering a government or local authority service. This is called ‘public task’

• carry out a contract we have with you – for example, if you’re an employee we might need to store your bank details so we can pay you. This is called ‘contract’

• defend our legal rights – for example, sharing information with our legal advisors if there was a complaint that we gave the wrong advice.

We handle and store your personal information in line with the law – including the General Data Protection Regulation. 

We may collect your data via referrals from other organisations with your consent. The organisation referring you will obtain your consent and pass it to us with the referral data.

We may collect your data in order to refer you to another organisation with your consent.  We will obtain written or verbal consent from you in order to do this and pass this data and consent on to the ‘referred to’ organisation. 

We’ll only ask for information that’s relevant to your problem. Depending on what you want help with, this might include:

• your name and contact details – so we can keep in touch with you about your case

• personal information – for example about family, work, or financial circumstances, or if you’re vulnerable or at risk of harm

• details about services that we may need to speak to e.g DWP

• information like your gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

We occasionally ask for details about someone else like a neighbour or your partner so we can deal with an enquiry. We’ll only do this if we have a legitimate interest in the information, or we need it to protect someone’s life.

If you don’t want to give us certain information, you don’t have to. For example, if you want to stay anonymous we’ll only record information about your problem and make sure you’re not identified.

We’ll always ask for your permission to store information about your:

• health conditions

• ethnic origin

• religion

• sexual orientation

You can withdraw your permission at any time – known legally as withdrawing consent. Tell us what personal information you don’t want us to store and we’ll delete it. 

The main reason we ask for your information is to help to support you.

We only access your information for other reasons if we really need to – for example:

• for training and quality purposes

• to investigate complaints

• to get feedback from you about our services

• to help us improve our services.

All advisers and staff accessing data have had data protection training to make sure your information is handled sensitively and securely.

We use some information to create statistics about who we’re helping and what problems are the most common. This information is always anonymised – you can’t be identified.

We share these statistics with funders, regulators, government departments and publicly on our blogs, reports, social media and press releases.

When you give us authority to act on your behalf, for example to help you with a Universal Credit claim or debt/arrears, we’ll need to share information with that third party.

We may also share information with your permission, with DWP or BMBC to help with your enquiry. 

All confidential information storage adheres to Information Assurance and General Data Protection legislation and is stored on our case management system. 

We will always request/record your consent before sharing your information with a third party.  Obtained consent will be written if we have assisted you face to face or verbal if we have assisted you via telephone. All statistical records given to third parties, such as to support funding applications or monitoring reports shall be produced in anonymous forms, so individuals cannot be recognised. 

If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact our office.

Telephone: 01226 240273

Email: first.contact@dialbarnsley.org.uk

Send us a message on our contact page.

You can contact us to:

• find out what personal information we hold about you.

• correct your information if it’s wrong, out of date or incomplete.

• request we delete your information

• ask us to limit what we do with your data – for example, ask us not to share it if you haven’t asked us already.

• ask us to give you a copy of the data we hold in a format you can use to transfer it to another service.

• ask us stop using your information.

The data controller is responsible for the management of personal data within DIAL as well as compliance with the requirements of the DPA and demonstration of good practice protocol.

You can find out more about your data rights on the Information Commissioner’s website.