Aberdeen City Council welcomes and supports displaced households who seek sanctuary in Aberdeen.
How we collect and use your information
We collect and use your information to ensure we offer the right type of support at the right time. The information we hold about you is gathered from a number of sources, including the Home Office, the UNHCR and Scottish Government. This information allows us to arrange your resettlement in Aberdeen. We work with a range of services within the Council, agencies external to the Council, community groups, faith groups and volunteers. We will share your information with the necessary services to ensure your integration and support in Aberdeen.
This information includes for example, personal information about your family and some medical records. We share relevant information with:
- Education services
- Housing providers
- Adult and Children’s Services
- Police Scotland
- Health services or the NHS.
The reasons we share this information are:
- To ensure all requirements are in place for resettled refugees arriving in Aberdeen
- To ensure that all relevant services are in contact with resettled refugees
- To ensure that the resettlement needs of refugees are met.
Once these agencies have reviewed your information, necessary information may be shared with supporting agencies, who the Council employ to provide services to you when you arrive in Aberdeen. These agencies, which includes charities and community organisations work with the Resettlement Team to find the best support and integration opportunities for you.
These additional services may include:
- English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes to support you to learn English
- One to one support to help you access healthcare, education and welfare support
- Support to help you settle in a local community
- One to one support for young adults, progressing through education
- Support to access volunteering, employability and employment opportunities
- Group support and information sessions tailored to your integration needs.
These services have their own information processing methods which they will share with you during initial appointments.
Some of the information we hold is provided by you, directly to us. We are required to report information to the Home Office and Scottish Government as part of our funding agreements with them.
We may also obtain some of the information through third parties such as:
- Education Services
- Adult and Children’s Services
- Police Scotland
- Health services or the NHS
- ESOL and support agencies
Where we may gather information from organisations outside the Council, or share information with them, we are doing this because it is necessary to perform the role required of us by the Home Office or Scottish Government.
We share information with the Home Office and Scottish Government when a refugee has been:
- arrested for an offence involving violence; weapons; terrorism/extremism; sexual offences (criminality)
- subjected to a hate crime or hate crimes
- suffered a serious negative impact (or perceives they have) because of an act or omission by the Home Office and/or local authorities/delivery partners’ (perceived failing)
- been involved in any other incident which the media is aware of (potential media coverage).
Finally, we may share some of your information with interpreters who provide you with language or personal support to help your integration in Aberdeen. The information we share with interpreters and volunteers is limited to the minimum information needed for them to carry out their support assignment. We only use registered interpreters bound by the code of practice of community interpreters. We also use our registered volunteers who have signed our data protection policy and have been trained to respect privacy and treat information with care.
Regardless of the source of the data we obtain about you, we believe it’s important to treat your information with care and to help you maintain your privacy.
Quotes, Images and voice recording
Information we share:
- We may take your image or recordings of your voice or opinions
- This is only done with your explicit consent and if we use your image this consent will be confirmed in writing through an image consent form.
Reasons to share information:
- Your opinion, voice or image could be used to create information resources and videos, to share feedback or when recording events.
How long we keep your information for
We will keep your information for at least 5 years after your resettlement date, your information will be retained if there is opportunity for you to engage in optional services past this point.
Your rights
You have rights in relation to your data, including the right to ask for a copy of it. See more information about all the rights you have and how these work in practice, as well as the contact details for the Council’s Data Protection Officer. You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you think we haven’t handled your data properly.
Our legal basis
Wherever the Council processes personal data, we need to make sure we have a legal basis for doing so in data protection law. We consider refugee resettlement as part of our public task, in accordance with the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. This means that we understand our legal basis for processing your data as Article 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
In delivering this service we will process special category personal data. We understand our legal basis for doing so as Article 9(2)(g) of the GDPR as we consider that it is in the substantial public interest to fulfil our obligations that we have considered all relevant information when planning resettlement activities and making decisions relating to your housing situation, we do this under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and the Housing (Scotland) Acts 1987 and 2001 and the Homelessness etc. (Scotland) Act 2003.