Data Protection

Hi
what are Landlords doing with regard to the new legislation about Data Protection?

Landlords are fine - if someone replies to your advert in the paper, surely you’re ok to have their details. It’s the big agents that should be worried. Hamptons and the rest who send tenants texts about totally irrelevant properties 6, 12 months after they enquired about that one property.

Unfortunately it’s not that straight forward … if you keep records … names / email /contracts / mobile numbers … then this data comes under GPDR European Dataprotection law .
You need to demonstrate how you secure people’s data , personally I have registered as many landlords have with the ICO £35 a year .
I am sure the PPI will be looking for a new target once their income stream has run out … and everyone likes to attack landlords

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I have done some reading after your comment Neil and I must say you are probably right. I am going to wait and see how it pans out, however still. Have you heard of any landlords being fined 20 million euros yet? Me neither.

Openrent should fix this for landlords like they fix the how to rent information.

My tenants have just moved out and haven’t left a forwarding address. I have their mobile number and email addresses.
The problem is this. I have just found out that despite me emailing the supplier of the gas and electricity twice when the tenants moved in and me putting the name of the supplier and meter readings on the inventory neither party has been in touch with each other since the AST started on 3rd February so they have basically had free gas and electricity for 11 months. This utility company, I won’t name them, did the same thing with my previous tenants and I spent a month making phone calls and sending emails sorting the mess out and fortunately got the bills paid. The previous tenant was a gentleman and his company were paying the bills anyway otherwise I don’t think it would have happened.
My question is this. Am I obliged to pass on any contact details I have to the utility company or am I to tell them I can’t especially as I have now paid the £40 and registered with the ICO?

The GDPR Privacy Notice that you gave to the tenants should have named the utility company as one with whom you would share information if needed. On that basis you would be ok to give them to contact.

I bet the company was BULB

Couldn’t possibly say. GDPR and all that. Haha.

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I only found out about GDPR for landlaords in early August so no mention was ever made to the tenants. I’m guessing the tenants don’t want to pay and I don’t blame them to be honest. They would probably be annoyed and want to make an issue of it. One of them now works in property management so probably is clued up so I need to get this right.

Am I obliged to delete any personal data I have for tenants when they move out so couldn’t pass it to the utility company even if I wanted?

why would you want to help defraud the utility company and put a black mark against your property for the future

I dont want to defraud anyone I am just wondering how I stand legally with the GDPR registration landlords are required to do.

You’re not necessarily obliged to delete all of that data now. In fact you need to keep some of it for up to 6 years for tax purposes. There are also other statutory bodies that you may have to keep those records for - Council/C tax, Police, Courts…