How we use your data
Aberdeen City Council’s benefits and money advice team provides free, impartial and confidential advice on all aspects of money, budgeting and debt. When you make an enquiry we will keep the personal details that you give us so that we can provide you with information and advice relevant to your needs.
You may wish to attend an appointment with our Service virtually. If you do this will be done using an internet based platform called Attend Anywhere. When attending your appointment using Attend Anywhere a full list of their Terms and Conditions is provided.
How long we keep your information for
We will keep your personal details for 6 years, from the date of the last action we have on file, after which they will be disposed of securely. The Council will keep an anonymised record of your request for statistical purposes. Statistical information will be used to ensure that we are delivering the right services to meet the needs of our service users.
Your data will be stored on secure servers within the EEA by our suppliers govService and Advice Pro, and on servers maintained by Aberdeen City Council in our local data centre with BrightSolid.
If you attend a virtual appointment using Attend Anywhere, please note that although you will have to provide identifying information to securely attend your appointment, once this appointment is terminated your personal information is deleted from the platform. The only information retained will be the time, date and duration of the appointment.
Your rights
You’ve got legal rights about the way the Council handles and uses your data, which include the right to ask for a copy of it, and to ask us to stop doing something with your data.
See more information about all of the rights you have and the contact details of our Data Protection Officer. You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office. They are the body responsible for making sure organisations like the Council handle your data lawfully.
Our legal basis
Wherever Aberdeen City Council processes your data we need to tell you what our legal basis in Data Protection law for doing so. The Council understands our legal basis for processing your data as public task, because providing benefits and money advice is part of our public task, as a local authority. The Council has the power to provide this support under the Social Work Scotland Act 1968, the Local Government (Scotland) Act 2003, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, and the Housing (Scotland) Acts.