Privacy | energy-at-home

How Energy at Home use your data

The Energy at Home Advice Service is brought to you by the Centre for Sustainable Energy, commissioned by Bath & North East Somerset Council. When you call the advice line number you'll get through to a team of experienced advisors at the Centre for Sustainable Energy.

The Centre for Sustainable Energy collect your data so we can help you with your energy bills, keep you warm at home, deal with other problems that you might be experiencing and evaluate and improve our service.

We only ask for the information that we need to help you. We understand how important it is that your information is kept safe and we want it to be easy for you to understand how we use it, so if there’s anything here you don’t understand please just get in contact with Paul Winney, the Project Manager of Energy at Home on privacy@cse.org.uk

Who are ‘we’?

‘We’ are the Energy at Home advisors who are all employed at the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE). CSE is a registered charity (number 298740). Our address is St James Court, St James Parade, Bristol, BS1 3LH. The Centre for Sustainable Energy run the Energy at Home advice service.

Collecting your data

When you get advice from us we’ll need to ask for some personal details (such as contact details) in order to help you. We might collect this information:

Over the phone when you call the advice line
When we ask you to fill out a paper form
If you fill out a form online

Before we ask for your details we’ll explain what we’ll do with that information and why we need it. If, after you’ve received advice you would rather we didn’t keep this information and would like us to delete it you can let us know by calling the Freephone advice line on 0800 038 5680 or by emailing the Energy at Home team directly on advice@energyathome.org.uk

Why do we need your data?

We give comprehensive advice on energy. Exactly what this involves depends on the problems you are experiencing and what you want us to help with. Often, it involves giving advice on your finances, and any debt you are in, particularly if you are in debt to an energy supplier. Because we know that cold homes and financial worries negatively affect your health and wellbeing we might ask you questions about your health or how you are feeling more generally. We do this so that we can try and get you relevant support. We'll always ask you if you're happy to share your information, and you're under no obligation to do so.

Data we might ask for in giving this advice

Your name and contact details.
Information about your finances such as your salary, if you are in receipt of any benefits, and if you are in debt.
Information about your health or mental health.
Information about your living situation – for example how many people you live with and if you are renting or own your own home.
Information about the services you use – for example your energy supplier and how you pay for your energy.
Information about your home such as its general condition, if its insulated or not and how it is heated.
Information about your nationality, ethnicity or sexual orientation. We collect this information so that we can monitor who accesses our services and ensure that they are accessible for everyone.

Why do we ask for this?

We’ll ask for your name and contact details so that we can keep in touch with you about your case.

We ask for information about your finances, living situation, health, services and home so that we can help you with the problems you’re experiencing. This might include:

Checking your eligibility for benefits or other financial support.
Checking your eligibility and arranging for you to have home improvements made.
Dealing with your energy supplier on your behalf to help resolve debt issues.
Checking if you could save money on your energy bills by finding a better deal or using less energy.
Referring you to other in-depth support organisations.

If we ask you about your ethnicity, nationality or sexual orientation we will do so for one of three reasons and we’ll explain which one before we ask you for this information:

We collect information about who is accessing our services so we can ensure that they are fair and accessible to everyone – we call this “equalities monitoring”.
We may be running a project to help a specific group of people and we want to know if you can get extra help through this project.
We may be asking so that we can organise a translator to help you or to connect you with a support organisation who help people of particular nationalities or ethnicities.

Storing your data

Whether you get advice face to face or over the phone our adviser will log all your information, correspondence, and notes about your problem into our secure database.

In general, we will keep your data for up to five years from the last contact we had with you.

If we need to share your data

If we think it would help you to share your data with another organisation or person we will ask your permission to do so. We’ll only do this for the purposes of giving you the support you want.

There are some situations in which we might be able to offer you more support if we share your data with other organisations, for example:

Other support or advice organisations such as Citizens Advice, debt advice charities, health charities, council support services.
Energy efficiency installers – if you’re eligible for free energy efficiency improvements in your home we may pass on your details to installers to get quotes or to arrange for installation with your agreement.
Utilities suppliers – in some cases it might be necessary to pass on information about you to your energy supplier.

Sometimes, our funders require us to share some information with them about how the projects they fund are going. We’ll let you know if this is likely to happen.

When we share your data through one of the situations above we have checked that the organisation we are sharing it with are going to keep it safe, and will only use it for the reasons we have specified. We check that they are compliant with the law that describes how personal data should be protected (the General Data Protection Regulations).

There are a few situations where we might process your data outside of the time when we are giving you advice directly. If we do this we will always make sure we are doing this lawfully, fairly and securely. The situations where we are likely to do this include:

To invite you to participate in research we are carrying out that may be of interest to you.
To let you know about new funds, grants, schemes or services that may be of benefit to you.

Let us know if you don’t want us to contact you for these reasons.

In a few very unlikely situations we might process your data without your permission, for example:

To comply with the law or to defend our legal rights.
To protect someone’s life – this is called ‘vital interests’.

We’re happy to help with any questions about your data

When you contact the Energy at Home for advice either in person at an event or through the Freephone advice line, we’re processing your data on the lawful basis of legitimate interests. That means that at any time you can ask us to:

Tell you what information we have about you
Update or correct your information
Delete your data
Stop using your data in a certain way

If you ask us to do this, we’ll respond to your request within 30 days and we won’t charge you.

If you aren’t happy with how we have used your data, you can make a complaint.

You can also raise your concern with the Information Commissioner's Office.