Privacy statement

Your personal and health information

Sydney Water is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring that your personal and health information is managed according to NSW privacy laws. This statement explains how we may use and disclose your personal and health information.

Personal information

Personal information is any information or opinion about an individual whose identity is apparent or reasonably ascertained. This may include:

• a person's name and contact details
• property identification records
• customer account numbers
• amount of water used at a specific property
• financial payment history, debts outstanding
• banking and credit card details
• photographs, images, audio and video footage.

Health information is personal information or opinion about an individual's physical or mental health or disability. This may include details of medical conditions or injuries. 

Information we collect

We only collect relevant personal information for lawful purposes that are directly related to our activities.

When you purchase a property, the NSW Land and Registry Services registers the title deed and provides this information to us so we can bill you for the water and wastewater services.

We generally only collect basic customer contact information such as address, phone number and email.

We may collect additional personal information from you if you apply for a concession, rebate or customer program.

When we collect your personal information, we’ll explain to you how it will be used and to whom it might be disclosed. 

How we protect personal information

We protect personal information from misuse and unauthorised access by storing it in systems we have built or procured. Many of these systems are hosted by third parties. We ensure these systems and commercial agreements are reviewed for privacy vulnerabilities.

We will limit access to your information to those staff and contractors who need it for their work.

We securely dispose of information when it is no longer required for business purposes. 

When we use personal information

We take reasonable steps to check the accuracy of your personal information before we use it.

We only use your information for the purpose it was collected, or for related purposes. For example, customer information may be used for billing, debt collection, auditing or evaluating to improve our services such as asking for feedback in surveys, conducting our maintenance activities or offering you other Sydney Water products or services.

You can be sure that we do not give your information to other organisations for marketing non-Sydney Water products and services. If we are asked to give water usage details for a specific community or suburb, we only disclose the information if individual properties cannot be identified. 

When we disclose personal information

We will only disclose your personal information to third parties for the following reasons.
 

We are authorised or required to by law.

Some organisations, including the police, Courts and some government departments, have the legal right to ask us to disclose information. We manage these requests with care to ensure we are acting within the law. For example, we require the police to provide a warrant or subpoena before we will disclose the relevant personal information.

We may provide information to the Energy and Water Ombudsman of NSW (EWON) to resolve customer complaints. 

We may be required to provide the information under a Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 request.

If a property is being sold, we are required to provide potential buyers with details of any outstanding debts on the property under the Sydney Water Act 1994.

To avoid restriction or disconnection of services, we may provide details of outstanding debts and payment arrangements options to a tenant of a property under the Sydney Water Act 1994.

We check your eligibility for concessions and rebates through Services Australia.
 

When more than one person owns a property.

If you jointly own a property with one or more people and they register for My Account, they'll be able to access:

• payment history for the past 3 years
• whether direct debit is set up to pay the bill (but not the banking details).

They will also be able to update the mailing address of the bill whether the bill is emailed or sent as a paper bill.

To understand more, please review our terms of use and managing agents' terms and conditions of use for My Account.
 

When we're sure they're a nominated contact.

We only discuss your customer account for your residential property with you or your nominated contact.

If you would like to nominate a representative to deal with us, such as a spouse, friend or family member, you need to call or write to us confirming this. This will assist us in progressing matters quickly and smoothly with your representative if you are unavailable.

If you've set up a nominated contact, we'll only discuss your property account or customer profile with them if they identify themselves to us and provide us with other information to verify their relationship to you and the property.

We recommend you do not share your username and password to our electronic bill service with anyone.
 

We can, in certain circumstances, reasonably assume that you have consented.

We may, for example, share information with managing agents or solicitors who have been instructed by customers to act on their behalf. Managing agents commonly ask us to redirect a customer's water bills to them. 
 

There is a danger of injury or loss of life.

In the event of serious bushfire, or other emergency, if we believe it is necessary to lessen or prevent a serious threat, we may share your details with Fire and Rescue NSW or other emergency services.
 

Our contractors are required to carry out essential activities.

We use third parties:

• to construct and maintain our assets
• to deliver technology solutions
• to install, read and replace meters
• to print and send bills
• to provide banking services
• to collect outstanding debts or perform credit checks
• to conduct recruitment activities
• as part of our claims management process
• for marketing campaigns
• (sometimes) to conduct research or surveys
• to provide registration and ticketing services for our events.