Data Protection

Information provided about individual rough sleepers is held on a central database and shared with the relevant local authority and/or their contracted provider (e.g. outreach team) in order to locate the rough sleeper only.    StreetLink monitors and evaluates the use of its service and the impact this has. This includes preparing reports about the number of alerts made, location of alerts, and actions taken as a result of alerts. Personal data identifying individuals is not included in these reports. The reports will be available in the StreetLink community website.

Any information you provide about yourself will be held by StreetLink on a central database managed in accordance with data protection legislation. This means your information will only be shared, with your consent, with the local authority responsible for the area in which you saw the rough sleeper, or the contracted service provider (e.g. outreach team). StreetLink or local authority/service provider staff may contact you, with your consent, in order to ask for more information about the alert (in cases where there is not enough information to locate the rough sleeper) and to provide feedback on your alert if requested by you. We will not sell your details to any third parties, but we may sometimes share your information with our trusted service providers who are authorised to act on our behalf, our trading companies, and associated organisations who work on our behalf or whom we work with in partnership in order to achieve our charitable aim to end homelessness. You can opt out of these communications at any time by contacting  streetlink@homelesslink.org.uk

Any information you provide about yourself as a rough sleeper will be held on a central database and shared only with the relevant local authority or their contracted provider (e.g. outreach team) in order to locate you. If you are rough sleeping or homeless yourself and you are in London, your information may be passed over to the StreetLink London Advice Line, which is managed by St Mungo's, who may call you following your contact with StreetLink to see if they can offer any further support. Any information you provide about yourself as a referrer will also be held on a centyral databse. All data is stored and processed in accordance with the Data Protection Act. StreetLink monitors and evaluates the use of its service and the impact this has. This includes preparing reports about the number of alerts made, location of alerts and actions taken as a result of alerts. Personal data identifying individuals is not included in these reports.

StreetLink values the information you have provided and your concern for the individual you have sent an alert about. We understand that feedback about what has happened as a result of your alert is important. However, the feedback we provide will be of a general nature; due to data protection legislation we cannot disclose specific information about individuals. We will tell you if an alert has been acted on or not by the local authority concerned, but cannot go into detail about what has happened as a result of this action. Please be aware that individual circumstances do have a bearing on services available and how a person interacts with them. Don’t feel that if you see someone is still sleeping rough after you have sent an alert that your alert was a waste of time: there may well be action going on ‘behind the scenes’ that has been initiated by your alert.

If you wish to see the information held by StreetLink about you, please make your application in writing to  streetlink@homelesslink.org.uk

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

All inbound and outbound phone calls to StreetLink are recorded, with calls recordings kept for no longer than six months.