Help to Claim - our privacy policy

When you use the Help to Claim service, we’ll only ask for and process personal information about you so we can support you.

We get your information:

when you come into our office asking for support
by talking with you over the phone or webchat
when you leave a message asking us to call you back

On some occasions, the Jobcentre might share some information about you with us. They’ll do this usually when they need us to help you with your claim.

We collect and process your personal information using a lawful basis called ‘legitimate interests’. This lets us carry out our aims and goals as an organisation when we give you support.

What information the Department for Work and Pensions send us

If you were referred to the Help to Claim service by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), they’ll tell us the following information about you:

your first and last name
your postcode
your mobile and home phone number
your email address if you have one
how you want us to contact you - your local Citizens Advice will always contact you through your chosen method

The DWP are allowed to share some personal information with us because they’re a government department. The legal basis for this is called 'public task'.

What information we ask for

While helping you, we might ask for and process more information from you. If you don't want to give us this 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 consent to record information about your:

ethnicity
religion
health conditions
sexual orientation
trade union membership

This type of information is known as ‘special category data’. You can withdraw your consent at any time. Tell us the personal information you don’t want us to store and we’ll delete it.

We might need to record special category data about members of your household. This is to help us give you accurate advice. We’ll always make efforts to get consent from the person in your household to store their data.

Sometimes, it might not be appropriate for us to contact that person, for example because of mental capacity or severe illness. In this case, we’ll use the ‘Counselling’ provision of the Data Protection Act as our lawful basis for processing their data.

How we use your information

The main reason we ask for your information is to support you with Universal Credit. We'll only get access to your information for other reasons if we need to - for example:

for training our staff
to investigate complaints
to get feedback from you about our services
to help us improve our services
for evaluating our service
understand the kind of problems people are having with Universal Credit

If the DWP needs to carry out an audit of a local office, we’ll ask your permission before sharing any personal information with them.

We’ll always balance our interest against your rights and freedom when we use your personal data.

When we share your information

Sometimes we share your personal information with other organisations. For example, when you need more support and advice about issues like debt or housing. We’ll only do this if you give us your permission.

In rare cases, we might need to share your information without your permission. This is where we might have concerns about your wellbeing or the wellbeing of someone else.

If you've given us your permission, we might contact you to ask for feedback on our service. We might also ask a research company we trust to do this.

If we use an external research company, we’ll only disclose the personal information necessary to deliver the research. We’ll have a contract with the company to make sure your personal information is kept secure and protected.

We won’t ever share your information with other organisations for their own marketing purposes.

If you get advice in person

NHS Test and Trace or local public health organisations might ask us to share your name, contact details and the date of your visit. This is to help track cases of coronavirus.

We have a ‘legitimate interest’ to share this information under data protection law - it helps us keep you and the public safe.

We won’t:

share information about the reason for your visit
share your contact details with anyone other than Test and Trace or a local public health organisation

Unlike most situations, we won't ask for your consent before we share your contact details. If you don't want us to share this information you can tell your local office you want to opt out. If you don’t want to give us your contact details at all, we’ll still be able to give you advice in person.

NHS Test and Trace might contact you if you visited at the same time as someone who tested positive for coronavirus. You can:

find out more about Test and Trace in England on GOV.UK
find out more about Test and Trace in Wales on the Welsh Government website

If you have the NHS Test and Trace app on your phone you can ‘check in’ at some of our local Citizens Advice offices. You can still get advice even if you don’t check in on the app. You can:

find out how the NHS Test and Trace app will use your information on GOV.UK
download the NHS Test and Trace app from NHS.UK

Storing your information

We store your information securely on our internal systems.

All volunteers and staff who have access to your data have data protection training. This is to make sure your information is handled sensitively and securely.

When we call you, we'll record the phone call to help train our staff and check we’re giving good advice. Sometimes we might need to call the DWP Helpline so they can help you with your claim. We’ll always ask your permission to do this first.

All our calls are recorded and stored securely by our trusted partner, KCOM. All recordings are deleted after 6 months.

We’ll only keep your information for as long as necessary. In most cases, this will be for 6 years after you’ve accessed our service.

Our case management systems are hosted in the European Economic Area and the UK.

Contact us about your information

You can contact us at any time and ask us:

what information we’ve stored about you
to change or update your information
to delete your information from our records or withdraw your consent
to stop using your information

Send us a message at helptoclaim@citizensadvice.org.uk

If you want to make a complaint

You can make a complaint through our website if you're not happy with how we've handled your data.

You can also contact the Information Commissioner's Office to raise a concern about how we’ve used your information.