Privacy Notice - Revenues

Sharing Information

This authority is under a duty to protect the public funds its administers and to this end may use the information that you provide for the prevention and detection of fraud. It may also share your information with other bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds for these purposes. This will involve regular data matching exercises.

Data matching is where information held on one computer system is compared electronically with information from one or more other computer systems, for example, The Audit Commission will compare the information from Council Tax and The Electoral Register to identify fraud or error.

Revenues data, which includes Council Tax, Business Rates, Sundry Debtors and Creditor information, may also be provided to, and used for checks with other Council departments where it is needed by them to carry out their functions. For example, data can be used to help identify properties that have been empty for a while to encourage owners to bring them back into use and schools may also check Council Tax records where there are enquiries regarding pupil admissions. Customer names and contact addresses are also being held by Doncaster Council for the introduction of a single customer account. This will benefit residents in the future by reducing the number of times a customer needs to notify the Council of a change. We will tell you more about this as it develops.

Revenues data may also be shared with other organisations where the Data Protection Act 1998 allows this to happen. For example, information may be shared with the Police, or HM Revenues and Customs if it is needed to prevent or detect a criminal offence, or carry out a prosecution or to assess or collect any tax or duty.

Doncaster Council will also use Credit Reference Agencies to carry out data matching to identify potential fraud. When any such exercise is carried out no electronic footprint will be left on individual customer`s credit accounts. This means that the data matching will not affect people`s credit ratings.