Agency request ICO registration for copy of tenancy?

The agency is wrong in asking you for your ICO registration certificate before it will allow you your tenants details, they have a duty to give the details to you under the contract, whether or not you are yourself registered, if this is their lame excuse they should have also asked the tenants for their copy of ICO registration before they had passed your details to the tenant. They are obviously talking from their backside.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 02/10/2020 - 12:23The tenant would not be processing data in the course of a business so has no need to register in order to be given the details of the landlord although the agent should perhaps have sought the permission of the landlord before doing so unless there was already implied consent.
The agent should be asking the tenant for permission to pass on his details to the landlord but it sounds as though he might just be paranoid about breaching the regulations. Remember that we are all supposed to check that any tradesman is complying with the regulations before we pass on details of our tenants to him - the agent may be applying that principle. I have no idea whether he is right or wrong but there seems little value in arguing the point when we should all be registered anyway.

You should be ICO registered as you will be holding your tenant's private data. It's no different than if you are a shop collecting details on customers. You are a business (even if you only have one house) and need to comply - but as others have said there can be exemptions so check with the ICO webite.

We built a landlord's privacy notice into our tenancy agreement, but would not check that a landlord is compliant. Your agent sounds a bit over-zealous, but they are protecting you.

You cannot give your tenants detail out to contractors or agents (e.g. an EPC surveyor) unless you have confirmed that the contractor or supplier is ICO registered and GDPR compliant.

Those of us who run our property through limited companies were chased by ICO last year; they obviously did a trawl to make sure we are compliant. Clearly it's harder for individuals and partnerships.

At the end of the day it's a small price to pay, £35, so hopefully you will get registered.

Reply to the comment left by Dylan Morris at 02/10/2020 - 11:43
thanks

The agency in the case of the property they manage for you is the ico registered data controller. They are responsible for data provided to them by the tenant. The agency should get explicit permission from the tenant to share personal information credit check data/results, ast etc with the landlord. From a data controller position, the agency will want to know that this data is being protected by the landlord. This can be covered in the agencies terms of business agreed between the landlord and the agency. In the event that the landlord intends to "use" this data to third parties (good examples would be providing copies to mortgage or insurance providers), outside the control of the data controller, the agency could decide to limit the giving of data only to ico registered landlords or only showing you the data at their office. Otherwise how can the agency's data controller enforce the correct management of that data? If you are managing your other properties, you will be holding personal tenant data already and should already be registered with ico. This subject always causes much debate and I have personally asked the ico to clarify the landlord / agent position with a specific example. The existing guidance is very wishy washy. Many may disagree with the above but ask yourself, if you were the data controller would you want to ensure the data remains under your control- I think most would!

Reply to the comment left by Professor W at 02/10/2020 - 10:14
I developed my own, looked at some that different housing associations had to understand how they managed the data, considered what I needed the data for, who I would need to give it to eg. Credit checks, police of asbo, workmen. Then write one specific to what I do. The danger with just buying a template is it isn't specific to your needs and The ico want you to examine your procedure and if you write your own privacy Policy it goes to show that you've examined your data handling requirements.

Dylan has the right approach. I've been doing it this way for years. NRLA walk you through the GDPR process & provide downloads of the documents you'll need, plus other benefits for not a lot of money.