Privacy notices

Effective 28 April 2025 

If you or someone you know would like this information in large print, braille, or translated into another language, please contact our Communications Team on 0808 230 6500 or email info@plymouthcommunityhomes.co.uk

SO Living is a trading name and part of Plymouth Community Homes Ltd.

At Plymouth Community Homes Ltd (“PCH”, "we", "us" or "our") we are committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected, and that data is used in accordance with the data protection legislation in force in England and Wales.

This privacy notice relates to when you apply to purchase a shared ownership property from us and sets out why we collect personal information from you, how we use it and who we may share it with. It also explains your individual rights under the current data protection legislation.

To view how PCH processes your personal information for other purposes, please visit our PCH website  where all our Privacy Notices are displayed.

If we ask you to provide information which can identify you, then we will only use it in accordance with our privacy notices.

We may change this notice by updating it on our website. You should check the notice from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact our Sales Team or Data Protection Officer as follows:

Please email us at so-living@plymouthcommunityhomes.co.uk.

or call us on 0800 0778 748

Contacting our Data Protection Officer: Tel 0808 230 6500, email or write to Plymouth Community Homes, Plumer House, Tailyour Road, Crownhill, Plymouth, PL6 5DH

Alternatively, you can telephone our main Contact Centre on 0808 230 6500

 Who we are

SO Living is a trading name and part of Plymouth Community Homes Ltd.

Plymouth Community Homes Limited is a registered housing provider. Our registration number is 30637R. Our registered office is Plumer House, Tailyour Road, Crownhill, Plymouth, PL6 5DH.

For the purposes of data protection legislation, Plymouth Community Homes Limited is a Data Controller

Why we collect information

When being considered for shared ownership property through SO Living, PCH will direct you to our mortgage broker, who will collect and process your personal information to assess, on our behalf, affordability and sustainability relating to whether you can purchase a home through the government shared ownership scheme. You are free to choose your own mortgage broker to provide advice and assistance to you. Our mortgage broker may be TMP or another broker chosen by us. TMP and PCH have a data sharing agreement and your information will be shared with Plymouth Community Homes.  TMP they have their own privacy policy you can find here. 

PCH as part of our own policy and procedure will keep a copy of your information in accordance with our retention policy.   We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. This is called the lawful basis. We rely on the following lawful bases:

• When processing is necessary for the performance of a contract or when processing is required prior to entering into a contract with you.
• There may also be times when processing personal information is necessary for a legitimate interest pursued by PCH or a third party, for example any after sales activities, managing our relationship with you, learning how our customers use our services, to develop our business or to prevent fraud, etc.
• We may use your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.
• We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter.

When you are considering selling or staircasing your home through SO living, PCH will collect and process your personal information for this purpose.  

What information we collect about you

Our mortgage broker will collect the following information from you when they need to carry out an affordability and sustainability assessment for your house purchase and will share some information with PCH.

PCH will also need to gather some of this information when you choose to sell your home and for any after sales activities to be carried out as part of the resale, staircasing and conveyancing process.

Information collected may include:

• Name
• Address
• Date of birth
• Contact details
• Family composition
• Photo ID
• Bank statements
• Income and expenditure information
• Details of your financial circumstances, including employment contract and wages, savings, loans, mortgage details and any other relevant financial information
• Copy of current tenancy agreement, if applicable
• Homeowners - solicitors confirmation of sale ‘subject to contract’
• Contact details
• Contact details for your financial adviser or mortgage broker if not using our mortgage broker to secure a mortgage
• Contact details for your solicitor/conveyancer

How we collect your information

Plymouth Community Homes collects information from you when you provide documentation, when you complete one of our forms either online or paper based, write, call, email or meet with us or respond to a survey.

Telephone calls – which are made to Plymouth Community Homes through our call centre, are recorded. Recordings of calls may be used, in pursuit of our legitimate interests, for the following reasons:

• For staff training to develop confidence and potential of staff and to improve services
• To check and measure whether we meet standards agreed with customers
• For use in appraisals with staff to develop better customer service
• As evidence where there are disputes
• As evidence in investigations concerning either our customers or staff

Access to call recordings is through sampling apart from training purposes or when abusive or threatening behaviour has occurred, or a complaint has been made and requires investigation.

We may collect information when you use our social media sites, e.g., Facebook or Twitter or our website. For more information refer to the separate Privacy Notice for SO Living website users or request a paper copy.

We operate a CCTV system at Plumer House in pursuit of our legitimate interests of building security and the detection and prevention of crime. For more information refer to the separate Privacy Notice for CCTV at Plumer House or request a paper copy.

Photographs - We may take photographs at our events and in our communities to use for general marketing and publicity. However, photographs of individuals will only be used for those purposes with your consent.

We may receive information about you from third parties including:

• Credit agencies when we apply for a credit reference check
• Financial institutions in connection with your mortgage
• Government agencies if we carry out an immigration status check
• Mortgage brokers in connection with your application to buy a shared ownership home

Special Category Information  

Under data protection legislation certain personal information is classed as special category. This information includes racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, data concerning health and data about sexual orientation.

We minimise our holding and use of special category personal information but, given the services we provide, there are times when we use it to understand our customers and their needs better. Any special category data we may hold about you will have been obtained from your application form if any.

Where we process special categories of data, this is using the lawful basis of employment, social security and social protection law, which relates to our activities as a not-for-profit housing association.

What we do with your personal information

We may use your personal information as follows:

• To carry out an affordability and sustainability assessment
• To provide information to the mortgage valuer
• To assess any future ‘staircasing’ applications
• For conveyancing purposes
• To comply with our legal obligations, which include carrying out checks to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing
• For internal record keeping
• To survey you or undertake market research about our delivery of services for quality improvement and monitoring purposes
• To provide statutory statistical information

How long we keep your information

We will only store your information for as long as is reasonably necessary for us to fulfil the purposes set out in this notice. We will then securely dispose of your information.

• This is normally a maximum of six years after you cease to be a leaseholder with us, or you become a freeholder.
• If when you cease to become a leaseholder there is an outstanding debt your information will be retained in pursuit of our legitimate interests in recovering that debt.
• Recorded telephone conversations are usually kept for up to 6 months.  Recorded calls that are deemed abusive or threatening are kept until any investigation action is completed.
• If you have consented to having your photograph taken, consent given is valid for three years, after which the images and recordings will be either securely destroyed or archived. Group shot photographs will be archived and photographs of individuals securely destroyed. If we’d like to use any individual material after three years, we will contact you to ask if you would be willing to renew your consent.

Sharing your information

We will only share your information where we are legally obliged and able to do so, for example:

• To provide you with the services you require
• To comply with the law (e.g., police, health authorities, inland revenue, government departments)       
• Where there is a clear health and safety risk
• Where we are requested to do so by another organisation in pursuit of its legitimate interests
• For the detection and prevention of crime, money laundering, prosecution of offenders and for the detection and prevention of fraud.

We may therefore share your information with third parties from time to time such as:

• Building contractors relating to property defects etc.
• Utility companies (water, electricity, gas)
• HMRC
• Our insurers and auditors
• Language translation services
• Solicitors for property conveyancing purposes
• The Regulator of Social Housing
• Credit checking agencies
• Council mortgage lenders and/or any other third party involved in the financing of the property
• Mortgage broker
• Financial advisors
• Our suppliers including IT suppliers who provide data hosting services
• A nominated third party where you have given us permission
• We participate in the government CORE data gathering scheme that gathers information and statistics about new lettings and sales. If your household enters a new social housing tenancy or purchases a social housing property, social housing providers will share your personal information with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) for research and statistical purposes only. For more information on what we share and why please see the Privacy notice for tenants and buyers of new social housing or request a copy from the SO Living Team.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect and process.

Whilst most of the IT systems that we use are based within the UK, PCH does use some systems which may store your data electronically outside of Europe. 

Your Rights in relation to your personal data

In certain circumstances, data protection legislation gives you a number of individual rights in relation to your personal data. These are as follows:

• The Right to be Informed about how your data is managed – this right is met by this privacy notice and a range of other notices which relate to specific aspects of PCH, such as the CCTV privacy notice and the website privacy notice.
• The Right of Access to your personal information – so that you can be aware of and verify what personal data we hold. Click here for further details on your right to ask us for more information.
• The Right of Rectification - to have any personal data corrected if it is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.
• The Right of Erasure of your personal data – this only applies in certain circumstances, such as where you have given consent for us to hold information and you withdraw that consent. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• The Right to restrict processing – this enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in one of the following scenarios:
• If you want us to establish the data's accuracy
• Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it
• Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims
• You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• The Right to data portability – which in certain circumstances allows you to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• The Right to object - in certain circumstances, to the processing of personal data. In particular you have the right to object to being sent direct marketing information. You may also object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for that particular use of your data. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.
• The Right not to be subject to automated decision making – Plymouth Community Homes does not do this.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

More information on the individual rights and how they apply can be obtained by clicking here,

by requesting a paper copy of our individual rights guidance information or you can visit the ICO website.

If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, please contact the Governance Team,

Plymouth Community Homes, Plumer House, Tailyour Road, Crownhill, Plymouth, PL6 5DH

Telephone: 0808 230 6500

Alternatively, you can make a request by email to: governance@plymouthcommunityhomes.co.uk

Making a complaint

If you believe that Plymouth Community Homes has not handled your personal information correctly you have the right to make a complaint. You can raise a complaint in a number of different ways:

• To a SO Living staff member
• At our Head Office at Plumer House, Tailyour Road, Crownhill, Plymouth, PL6 5DH
• Through our website
• Using social media
• By telephone
• In writing

If you would like to contact us, please email us at so-living@plymouthcommunityhomes.co.uk.

or call us on 0800 0778 748

You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.

This privacy notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of Plymouth Community Homes collection and use of personal information. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests should be sent to the PCH Data Protection Officer at the above address.

Plymouth Community Homes Group

Registered Office: Plumer House, Tailyour Road, Plymouth, PL6 5DH

Legal Status: Plymouth Community Homes Ltd is a registered society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 (which consolidates the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts) and is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (registration 30637R) and the Regulator of Social Housing (registration L4543).

At the time of issuing this Notice, Plymouth Community Homes Ltd has two wholly owned subsidiaries, Plymouth Community Homes Regeneration Company Ltd (PCHR), company number 7272688 and Plymouth Community Homes Energy Ltd (PCHE), company number 8028170. Both subsidiaries are incorporated under the Companies Act 2006.

Website:          www.plymouthcommunityhomesco.uk 

Email:              info@plymouthcommunityhomes.co.uk.

Tel:                  0808 230 6500