GovWire

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and the Home Office are data controllers for the Homes for Ukraine visa sponsorship scheme.

The purpose of this privacy notice is to tell you how DLUHC and the Home Office will process your personal data for their shared purposes to deliver the sponsorship scheme and the common objective of providing homes to those fleeing the war in Ukraine. You have rights concerning how your data is collected and used for this purpose. We inform you here what those rights are and how you can exercise them.

DLUHC and Home Office are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal data. As the two departments still have distinctive statutory responsibilities and accountabilities, we may publish separate privacy notices where appropriate which further explain how your personal data is used for their respective purposes.

Read more details of how the Home Office will use your personal data, including your data protection rights: Borders, immigration and citizenship: privacy information notice.

DLUHC general privacy charter.

We are only allowed to use, gather, and share personal information where we have an appropriate legal basis to do so. We only collect and processes personal information to fulfil our legal and official functions. We will only use personal information when the law allows us to and where it is necessary and proportionate to do so.

The identity and contact details of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and the Home Office Data Protection Officer

DLUHC and Home Office each have an appointed Data Protection Officer (DPO) to help ensure that the departments fulfil their legal obligations when processing personal data. You can contact each DPO respectively, or both:

DLUHC dataprotection@levellingup.gov.uk or by writing to the following address:

Home Office DPO@homeoffice.gov.uk, or by writing to the following address:

What personal data we are collecting and why

Your personal data is being collected and used to deliver the Homes for Ukraine visa sponsorship scheme, for the purpose of matching potential sponsors with visa applicants and providing applicants with suitable accommodation. We may also use your personal data to contact you about related matters. If the potential sponsorship concerns a minor who is not travelling with or to join a parent or legal guardian, we will use your personal data to approve the suitability of the sponsorship.

Individual sponsors

We collect your name, address, contact details (including email), and details about your property. We may also need to collect and use personal data about others, such as your household members or others living in your property, or someone you have nominated to be a sponsor.

Visa applicants

In circumstances relating to the re-matching of visa applicants and sponsors we will hold your name, address, and contact details. We will use this information to help keep you advised of the options available to you.

If you are travelling to the UK as a minor who is not travelling with or to join a parent or legal guardian, we will collect your name, date of birth, passport or identification document number, and visa application reference.

Parents or legal guardians of applicants

If your child is travelling to the UK as a minor who is not travelling with or to join a parent or legal guardian, we will collect your name, address, and contact details (including email). We will also collect this data for your childs next of kin.

Organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)

We collect your name, work email address, other contact details (including address), and details about offers of accommodation that you submit. If you may need to provide personal data about others relating to your offer, we will process this as well.

We may also collect certain technical data like your IP address, in order to manage delivery of our sponsor application portal.

We are conducting ongoing research to inform policy development on the Homes for Ukraine scheme. The aim of this research is to continue to improve the service we provide to both sponsor and guest. This research will take the form of remote in-depth interviews, which will be recorded. If your sponsor or guest is participating in this research it is possible that some of your personal data will be shared.

• If you are an applicant - information about you may be provided by sponsor
• If you are a sponsor - information about you may be provided by guests

See the Homes for Ukraine user research privacy notice.

If any special category personal data is inadvertently collected during this research process, we will delete or anonymise at the earliest opportunity.

How we use your personal data

DLUHC collects individual sponsor and organisational offers of accommodation that you submit for the scheme via our portal on gov.uk. and has overall responsibility for compiling, maintaining and managing the central repository of data necessary to collect information about accommodation offers, sponsors and refugees from Ukraine so that these can be matched.

The Home Office is responsible for processing visa applications for the purposes of the scheme and will do so under its borders, immigration and citizenship privacy policy. Home Office visa approval or rejection data will be submitted to the repository of data managed by DLUHC.

The Home Office may also process the data you submit for necessary vetting of sponsors as part of the matching process, which may involve a check against Police National Computer records and related safeguarding checks.

Both DLUHC and the Home Office will use the data that we separately collect and use, to enable suitable and safe matches of sponsors and organisation offers of help with applicants that have been visa cleared.

If you are a visa applicant, after your visa has been granted your data will also be used by local authorities to produce management monitoring reports for DLUHC on local delivery of the scheme. These reports only contain anonymised data and will not contain any identifiable personal data about you once produced.

If you are a parent or legal guardian of an applicant travelling as a minor who is not travelling with or to join a parent or legal guardian, we will use the data you have provided to: confirm parental consent for sponsorship arrangements; and to contact you in the event of a change in circumstances of the sponsorship arrangement. If we are unable to contact you in this event, we will use the data you provided to contact your childs next of kin.

Lawful basis for processing the data

We are using the following lawful basis under UK GDPR to process personal data:

• Article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority

We may also process special categories of personal data which may include information about political beliefs, health, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and biometrics. Where we do so our lawful basis is

• Article 9(2)(g) of the UK GDPR processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

With whom we will be sharing the data

DLUHC and the Home Office may share your data will other external parties who are working to match potential sponsors with applicants to the scheme and who may provide matching services in addition to DLUHC. These currently include:

• English local authorities, so that they can take forward local placement in homes when a suitable match has been made;
• the UK devolved assemblies (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), for the purpose of their acting as super sponsors for visa applicants;
• Ukrainian Sponsorship Pathway UK (USPUK) who can provide information and
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