Partnerships for People and Place

East Sussex project summary

East Sussex County Council is one of 13 local authorities that have secured funding to deliver a project as part of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) Partnerships for People and Place programme. The long-term vision for Partnerships for People and Place is to see local communities empowered to develop and deliver solutions to the problems that matter to them, whilst being supported in an efficient and joined-up way by both central and local government.

The project will test whether closer working between different government departments and local places can bring measurable benefits to the people who live there. It will test and promote a more joined-up approach to support the delivery of improved outcomes for individuals.

The project is focused on tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency in the private rented sector within three Hastings wards: Castle, Central St Leonards, and Gensing. The target wards have a large proportion of privately rented accommodation, higher-than-average levels of households living in fuel poverty, and a higher-than-average proportion of residents who have a limiting long-term illness or disability.

The project is testing new approaches to the delivery of fuel poverty schemes, aiming to increase the take-up of energy efficiency improvements in privately rented homes in order to secure positive outcomes for residents’ health and the environment.

East Sussex County Council is working closely with Citizens Advice 1066 on stage one of the project, which involves running a series of engagement activities with landlords and tenants to better understand the barriers to making improvements.

Landlord and tenant responses will inform the development of new approaches to fuel poverty schemes. The council will also work with other local partners, including Hastings Borough Council, along with several central government departments, including the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department of Health and Social Care, DLUHC, and Her Majesty’s Treasury to design the new approaches, which will then be piloted with landlords and tenants in the target areas.

The project runs for 12 months, although there are hopes that local and central partners develop a more sustained programme of activity.

The four phases of the project are:

1. Engagement with tenants and landlords to better understand the barriers to investment and the impact of housing standards on health and wellbeing;
2. Co-design with government changes/flexibilities to the implementation of current programmes and funding eligibility requirements for energy efficiency improvements in target households;
3. Pilot delivery in target households to improve energy efficiency, reduce fuel poverty and improve tenant health and wellbeing, and;
4. Evaluate and capture learning to inform sustained action locally and elsewhere.

Partnerships for People and Place project Privacy notice

Overview

East Sussex County Council is one of 13 local authorities that have secured funding to deliver a project with central government as part of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) Partnerships for People and Place programme.

The project is focused on tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency in the private rented sector within three Hastings wards: Castle, Central St Leonards, and Gensing. The target wards have a large proportion of privately rented accommodation, higher-than-average levels of households living in fuel poverty, and a higher-than-average proportion of residents who have a limiting long-term illness or disability.

The project will test new approaches to increase the take-up of energy efficiency improvements in privately rented homes within Hastings and St Leonards, in order to secure positive outcomes for residents’ health and the environment.

Local and central government partners are working closely with Citizens Advice 1066 on stage one of the project, which involves running a series of engagement activities with landlords and tenants to better understand the barriers to making improvements, involving a representative from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Landlord and tenant feedback on barriers will inform the development of solutions which aim to overcome these barriers. Partners from local government, local organisations, and central government will design these solutions, which will then be piloted with landlords and tenants in the target areas.

Citizens Advice 1066 will recruit landlords, tenants and other stakeholders to take part in engagement activities: focus groups, structured interviews or surveys. They will facilitate the sessions, record the feedback and produce an evaluation report.

Citizens Advice 1066 takes data protection seriously. Be assured that your information will be used appropriately in line with data protection legislation, will be stored securely and will not be processed unless the requirements for fair and lawful processing are met. It will not be processed outside the EU.

How your information is used

Citizens Advice 1066 collects and stores personal data about participants, including their special category data, to enable them to record information specifically to arrange the engagement activities, record the feedback and produce an evaluation report. It shares anonymised information about participants of the project with the University of Canterbury Christ Church and central government departments for the purposes of monitoring and evaluation. Personally identifiable information about participants of the project will be shared with East Sussex County Council only with participants’ consent.

When Citizens Advice 1066 records information it:

• only accesses it when it has a good reason
• only shares what is necessary and relevant
• does not sell it to commercial organisations.

Citizens Advice 1066 also uses information anonymously to understand how different problems are affecting society and to take action to tackle these problems. The data used for research is kept separate from a client’s case record.

Where a participant has given Citizens Advice 1066 their permission and contact details, it, or in some instances a trusted research partner, may contact the participant to ask for follow-up information at a later stage in the project.

Where a participant has given Citizens Advice 1066 their consent to share contact details with East Sussex County Council, the council may also contact the participant at a later stage in the project.

The legal basis for processing your information

We will explicitly seek your consent to process your personal data (Article 6(1)(a)) and special category data (Article 9(2)(a)).

A participant can always withdraw their consent and request that Citizens Advice 1066 and East Sussex County Council remove their information.

Where your information is stored

Citizens Advice 1066 and East Sussex County Council will store the information on a secure database and are responsible for keeping the information safe. Citizens Advice 1066 and East Sussex County Council will make sure any information is stored securely and only accessed when there is a good reason.

How long your information will be kept for

Citizens Advice 1066 and East Sussex County Council keep records for 6 years.

Sharing your data

With your consent, your contact details will be passed from Citizens Advice 1066 to East Sussex County Council for follow-up contact about your involvement in the project. Anonymised, amalgamated data, including special category health data, will be shared with central government departments and external evaluators later in the project.

At the end of this project, you may be asked for your contact details to be shared with Ipsos and Grant Thornton (external evaluators of the Partnerships for People and Place programme) if you would like to participate in focus group discussions as part of the programme evaluation. These discussions would focus on your experiences of participating in the project, whether you felt your contributions made a difference, and what you would change about the process in the future. However, your contact details will not be shared with Ipsos and Grant Thornton without your prior consent.

Citizens Advice 1066 will only share a participant’s information with another party with their permission, unless required to do so by law or in some very limited situations, for example, to protect a client or someone else from serious harm.

Your rights

You can contact Citizens Advice 1066 and ask it:

• what information it has stored about you and get a copy to keep
• to change or update your information
• to delete your information from its records or withdraw your consent
• to stop using your information.

If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact us at:

Citizens Advice 1066, The Magnet Centre, 1 Christ Church Courtyard, London Road, St. Leonards-On-Sea, TN37 6GL

This privacy notice can be found at www.citizensadvice1066.co.uk/PeopleandPlace

If you are not happy with how we have used your information, you can contact us at: info@citizensadvice1066.co.uk

You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office to raise a concern about how we have used your information.  Visit www.ico.org.uk or call: 0303 123 1113.