NFA Managing Agent Privacy Policy
Last updated: June 2026
- About the NFA
The National Federation of ALMOs Ltd (NFA) is the trade body which represents all arms-length management organisations (ALMOs) across England. NFA members manage around 172,275 homes on behalf of their parent local authorities. First set up in the early 2000s to tackle poor quality housing in the council sector and make sure that tenant voices are heard, these council-owned companies are ideally suited to meet the new regulatory environment.
ALMOs are:
• wholly owned by the local authority, managing stock that remains in local authority ownership and control;
• governed by independent boards made up of tenants, councillors and independent members who oversee strategy and planning;
• a vehicle for excellent, specialised housing management services that give tenants a strong voice, with no loss of democratic accountability.
The NFA was established in 2003 to represent the interests of ALMOs at the national level, lobbying and negotiating with central government on their behalf. ALMOs themselves were first established as not-for-profit companies in 2002 to manage council housing on behalf of their local authority and to help deliver the government’s Decent Homes Programme, aimed at improving council housing conditions.
The core values of NFA members are as follows:
Members of the NFA will aspire to provide excellent value for money and customer-led services for residents in partnership with their local councils.
- Members will seek to develop innovation and continuous improvement in providing, managing and maintaining affordable homes in sustainable neighbourhoods.
- Members will be open and accountable organisations that actively promote equality and social cohesion.
- Members will remain rooted in their local community and will work in partnership with others to help deliver locally determined priorities.
- Members will share good practice and help support other members of the NFA.
The NFA delivers the following services to its members:
Advice, support and information service for members.
- High level policy lobbying and negotiating to further the agenda for ALMOs and ensure the ALMO voice is heard.
- Promotion of the ALMO model both within the sector and externally.
- Provision of meetings to enable networking, discussion, policy briefings and training
- Communications services, including maintaining the website, twitter, Teams discussion groups.
- Monthly policy updates.
- Good practice briefings, seminars, roundtables and one-day events.
- Publication of NFA reports on key topics, including house building, welfare reform and health and housing.
The NFA is governed by a Board of six ALMOs elected by members from across all geographical areas (Northern Midlands. South West, London & Southern).
A managing agent is employed to manage the NFA contract, providing employment and other administrative services. In 2017, Housemark became the NFA Managing Agent. Although the NFA does not employ staff directly or maintain assets, it is a limited company with its own accounts and auditors and is independent of the managing agent.
For the purposes of UK data protection laws, including the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, the NFA is the data controller. This means the NFA determines why and how personal data is collected and used. Housemark acts as the NFA’s data processor for managing agent services and processes personal data only on the NFA’s instructions and under contractual data protection arrangements. Housemark is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.
2. When we collect data from you.
When an organisation joins the NFA we ask for details of:
- A main contact for the organisation
- The CEO or MD
- Chair of the Board
- Tenants Advisory Panel member
We save this data on Housemark’s NFA Sharepoint drive, access to which is restricted to NFA staff only. In the course of our work and in shifting policy landscape we may also ask for:
- Contacts for all of our best practice groups (details of groups here)
- Event registration contacts
- Event speaker contacts
- Tenant engagement contacts
- ALMOs with RP status contacts
We regularly update our secure contact lists for ALMOs and share these with other members. The following contact lists are currently commonly available to members only and restricted to these roles:
- Chairs
- Chief Officers
- Finance Directors
- Governance officers
- New supply
- Property management
- Housing management
- Resident engagement
- Data management
- Homelessness
- TAP (NFA Tenants Advisory Panel)
- Complaints handling
- Universal Credit
- Press & Communications Officer.
We also have WhatsApp forums for NFA members where ideas and information can be shared between peer groups across member organisations. Members can be added to these groups by the headquarters team on request. Groups currently active include:
- Press & Communications
- Chief Officers
- Board Chairs
- Local authority HIBs & HABs network
These groups are serviced by the headquarters team and members’ staff can be added on request and are deleted when they move jobs.
Contact lists
In the course of our day-to-day duties we will update email addresses of our existing contacts and respond to new requests from ALMO staff to be added to the contact lists.
We also store and keep updated contact lists of MPs with ALMOs or an interest in housing, and of stakeholder organisations collected from public records such as websites.
The NFA never shares your information with any third party. We will always give any individual the opportunity to opt out of any emails from us with our service offer.
Please email alli.ward@almos.org.uk to be removed from our email contact list.
Images
We collect photographs and case studies from members for use in our publicity, lobbying and research reports and in our online social media channels.
Whenever we collect this type of content, we will at least say:
- Why we are collecting your information
- What we will do with it
- Whether we will share it (and, if so, who we will share it with)
Where images identify individuals:
- We will seek explicit written permission for the use of such images.
- We will review these permissions every two years if they have not been withdrawn.
- Permission can, of course, can be withdrawn at any time by either the member organisation or the individual who is identifiable from the image.
- We will delete all instances of an image’s use in our social media and other online content as soon as is practically possible after receipt of formal withdrawal of permission.
- Such images will also be permanently deleted from the NFA picture archive.
3.What information will we collect about you?
The NFA collects contact information from relevant staff and board members of ALMOs including name, job title, work address, work telephone number and work email address.
This may include identity data such as your name and title, contact data such as your work email address and telephone number, and membership-related information such as your organisation, role, joining date or membership status where relevant.
4.Why do we ask for this information?
We use this information to manage membership, communicate with members, provide administrative updates, run NFA activities and support the business of the organisation.
- Provide staff with the service their ALMO is paying for including policy updates, good practice briefings, and notifications of meetings and events.
- Respond to requests, enquiries and complaints.
- To contact members about services they have asked for.
- Evaluate customer satisfaction and the success of any programmes we deliver.
- To keep our records up-to-date.
- For audit purposes.
Our legal basis for processing this information is usually contractual necessity, where processing is needed to provide membership services, and legitimate interests, where processing is needed to administer the NFA, maintain member networks, communicate with relevant contacts and support our work as a membership body.
How we collect information
We will ask you to provide information when, for instance, you contact us by telephone, if you email an almos.org.uk email address, enter an NFA competition, attend one of our events or complete a survey. If you ‘like’ or ‘follow’ any of our social media accounts we will collect general information about this such as how many people have liked or shared a post, but no information about the identity of followers. We do no analysis of social media followers and we don’t use this type of information to market services or products.
6. Sharing information about you.
We do not sell, rent or share your personal data with third-party marketers. We share personal data only where needed for NFA purposes, including with Housemark as our managing agent and data processor, essential technical service providers such as website hosting or secure storage providers, or where we have your consent or are required by law to do so.
We keep personal data only for as long as it is needed for the purposes described in this policy, for as long as the relevant organisation remains a member, or for as long as required by UK law, audit requirements or good governance practice.
7.Other uses.
We do no direct marketing or data processing using information harvested from apps or analytics.
8.Our website and cookies
Website cookies are small computer files sent to your PC, tablet or mobile phone by websites when you visit them. They stay on your device so that the website they came from recognises your device when you visit it again.
Cookies store information such as your choices and preferences which are recorded as you use a site. While some of this data does not contain personal details about you or your organisation, it is still protected by the NFA privacy policy.
Visitors using our website are asked whether they agree that we can place these types of cookies on a user’s device, and they have to option to block these cookies using web browser settings.
9.Access to your information
Under UK data protection laws, you have rights in relation to your personal data. These include the right to access your personal data, ask for inaccurate data to be corrected, ask for data to be erased in certain circumstances, restrict or object to certain processing, and raise a data protection complaint.
To ask for a copy of some or all the personal information held in the NFA database about you, please write to us at the following address:
NFA Administrator, Unit 1A Viscount Centre, Millburn Hill Road, University of Warwick Science Park, CV4 7HS.
We will ask for proof of your identity before we supply a copy of any personal information. Requests to exercise your data protection rights are usually handled free of charge. We may only charge a reasonable fee, or refuse to act, where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, or where further copies of information are requested.
10.Data protection complaints
The NFA is committed to protecting people’s privacy rights and handling personal data in accordance with data protection legislation, including the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. We operate a formal internal procedure to handle data protection complaints from individuals free of charge and without undue delay.
A data protection complaint may include concerns about misuse or unauthorised sharing of personal data, failure to respond to a request to exercise data protection rights, inaccurate data, a suspected data breach, or any other concern about compliance with this privacy policy.
Complaints can be submitted free of charge by email to info@almos.org.uk, using the subject line “Data Complaint”, by post to the NFA Administrator at Unit 1A Viscount Centre, Millburn Hill Road, University of Warwick Science Park, CV4 7HS, or through the data protection complaints form on our website here.
When we receive a data protection complaint, it will be forwarded to the person responsible for data protection matters and recorded in an internal complaints log. The log will include the date received, the complainant’s details, the nature of the complaint and the person responsible for handling the case.
We will acknowledge receipt of a data protection complaint within 30 days of receiving it and, where possible, aim to acknowledge it sooner. We may ask for further information or proof of identity where this is necessary to investigate the complaint or protect personal data.
We will investigate the complaint, make appropriate enquiries and keep the complainant informed. We will provide an outcome without undue delay and will normally aim to provide a full response within one calendar month. If the complaint is complex, we may need longer to respond and will explain the reasons and expected timescale.
Our final response will explain the outcome of the investigation, whether the complaint has been upheld, and any action we have taken or will take. Where a complaint indicates a potential personal data breach, we will consider it under our data breach response arrangements at the same time.
Please note that while Housemark handles day-to-day managing agent services as our data processor, the NFA remains legally responsible for handling, investigating and resolving data protection complaints. If you remain unhappy with how your complaint has been handled or with our final response, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection. The ICO can be contacted at:
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, or by telephone on 0303 123 1113.
11.Changes to our privacy policy
We review our privacy policy regularly. Any changes we make will be posted on our website.
Updated June 2026