Energy Bills Support Scheme (EBSS) Alternative Funding
The Government’s EBSS Alternative Funding is intended to facilitate a one-off £400 payment of support for domestic energy consumers that would otherwise not receive that support through the Energy Bills Support Scheme, due to the absence of a domestic electricity supply i.e. for households that do not have a contract with a domestic electricity supplier.
We work in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), to deliver the EBSS to help households with bills over winter 2022-23.
Processing activity/purpose - we will process personal information relating to supporting the delivery and administration of the EBSS.
Information requirements – processing activities will include:
We will receive from BEIS:
- Your name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Date of birth
- Bank account details (i.e. sort code, account number and name on account)
- Relevant contact details of any third party individual supporting or making the application on your behalf
- Any other relevant data that may be provided by you (or third party individual supporting you)
- Council Tax account number
- any other information as may be requested by BEIS
We will share with BEIS:
- Application reference number
- Your name (and any contact details for any third party individual supporting or making the application on your behalf)
- Date application received
- Outcome of application and reason for decision-making
- Assurance evidence such as bank account details, Council Tax records, UK Driving licence, utility bill, care home invoice, tenancy agreement
- Payment fraud or error, money recovered and subsequent fraud and error reporting
Lawful bases- we are a ‘designated body’ under sections 7(a) and (c) of the Energy Prices Act 2022 and reg. 4 of the Energy Prices (Designated Domestic Energy Price Reduction Schemes for Great Britain and Designated Bodies) Regulations 2022, for the purposes of taking action in support of the EBSS, pursuant to section 15(1) of the 2022 Act.
Our lawful bases for processing your personal information are:
- UK GDPR Article 6(1)(e) and DPA 2018 section 8(c) - that the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in us, pursuant to section 15(1) of the Energy Prices Act 2022
Special category data will not be expressly requested in connection with applications for EBSS, but it is possible that co-incident collection and sharing of special category data could occur as a result of information provided by you (or third party individuals acting on your behalf) in connection with your application, including, but not limited to, information relating to your ethnic origin or data concerning your health or age.
- UK GDPR Articles 9(1) and 9(2)(g) and DPA 2018, section 10(3) & Schedule 1, Part 2, para.6(2)(a) and para.10, justified by section15 (3)(c), (d) and (e) of the Energy Prices Act 2022
We have a Data Protection Policy that sets out how this information will be handled.
Data sharing – Once you have applied to BEIS to receive support and your application has gone through internal verification, if you are eligible, BEIS will share your details with us to enable us to make the one off payment of £400.00. We will determine the most appropriate way to distribute the payment to you. You do not need to repay this money.
We will share your personal information with BEIS for monitoring, fraud prevention and effectiveness of the EBSS.
We may share your data if we are required to do so by law, for example by court order or to prevent fraud or other crime.
We may rely on a number of exemptions, which allow us to share information without needing to comply with all the rights and obligations under the Data Protection Act 2018. Please refer to the Kent & Medway Information Agreement for further details on our sharing arrangements.
Retention period - we keep your personal information for the minimum period necessary. The information outlined in this Privacy Notice will be maintained for 7 years, from collection. We may choose to store anonymised data beyond this period. All information will be held securely and disposed of confidentially.
Anonymisation- your personal information may be converted ('anonymised') by us into statistical or aggregated data in such a way that ensures that you cannot be identified from it. Aggregated data cannot, by definition, be linked back to you as an individual and may be used to conduct research and analysis, including the preparation of statistics for use in our reports. Anonymised data may be shared with relevant government departments.
Right to object – where processing your personal information is required for the performance of a public interest task (see our lawful basis above), you have the right to object on ‘grounds relating to your particular situation’. We will have to demonstrate why it is appropriate for us to continue to use your personal data.
Changes to this Privacy Notice – we review this Privacy Notice regularly and will place updates on our website.
Please refer to our Corporate Privacy Notice for further details of how we process your personal information and your rights.
Note that we may process your personal information on more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your information.