Business Rates & your Personal Data

South Staffordshire District Council of The Council Offices, Wolverhampton Road, Codsall WV8 1PX (telephone number 01902 696000) is what is known as the ‘controller' of your personal data. Our ‘Data Protection Officer' is Lorraine Fowkes. She can be contacted here at the Council Offices.

As an organisation we process your personal data to enable us to ascertain who is liable at a property with a view to levying Business Rates. We register progress and determine applications for a discount / exemption and, where you qualify, provide financial support to you. We also review certain claims after an award of a discount / exemption has been made. We progress applications for payment by direct debit and hold personal bank details. Our legal basis for processing your ordinary personal data will be either that it is necessary to do so to perform a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in us. Where we process any special data such as information about mental or physical health we do so as it is necessary for us to perform our obligations under social protection law.

Depending on your circumstances we may share your information with officers within the Business Rates team, other officers within the Council, the Valuation Office, other Councils and Police. The Council has a duty to protect public funds that it administers. The Council will take steps to verify information given in support of any discount or exemption by matching with data held elsewhere within the authority or with other external bodies involved in the administration of public funds, for the prevention and detection of fraud.

We will store your information for a period of 6 years or as long as there is a justifiable Council need to do so. We will store your information on both our Live and Test databases.

In brief, If we process your personal data you may, depending on your circumstances have a right of access to it; to correct inaccurate information; to restrict our processing of it or to have your personal data erased.

The provision of information by you to us is a legal requirement. If you do not provide the information to us we may not be able to register progress and/ or determine your application.

Please speak to us or our Data Protection Officer in the first instance but if you do have any concerns about the way we have processed your personal information then you can complain to the Information Commissioner.