Privacy Notice - COVID and PHE

Privacy Notice Public Health England

Being transparent and providing accessible information to individuals about how we use personal information is a key element of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679).

The information being processed

The Council is collecting personal data and special category data for the purpose of delivering services to patients, clinicians, the health services and adult social care services workforce and the public about and in connection with Covid-19, including the provision of information, fit notes and the provision of health care and adult social care services.

This information will be used for:

(a)        Understanding Covid-19 and risks to public health, trends in Covid-19 and such risks, and controlling and preventing the spread of Covid-19 and such risks;

(b)       Identifying and understanding information about patients with Covid-19 and collecting information about services in relation to testing for Covid-19;

(c)        Monitoring and managing the response to Covid-19 by health and social care bodies in relation to testing for Covid-19;

(d)       Research and planning in relation to testing for Covid-19.

Information Sharing 

To ensure that the council provides you with an efficient and effective service we will sometimes need to share your information between teams within the council as well as with our partner organisations that support the delivery of the service you may receive. In this case, the information collected will be shared with:

Those teams within the Council tasked with leading the public health response to the pandemic at the discretion of the Director of Public Health.

We will only ever share your information if we are satisfied that our partners or suppliers have sufficient measures in place to protect your information in the same way that we do.  

We will never share your information for marketing purposes. 

Retention Periods

We will only keep your information until 30 September 2020 or until such time as the ‘Covid-19 – Notice under Regulation 3(4) of the Health Service Control of Patient Information Regulations 2002’ from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to Local Authorities in England dated 20 March 2020 is extended.

Purpose of Processing Personal information

As a local authority, the council delivers services to you. In order to do this in an effective way we will need to collect and use personal information about you.

The Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation ensure that we comply with a series of data protection principles. These principles are there to protect you and they make sure that we:

• Process all personal information lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner.
• Collect personal information for a specified, explicit and legitimate purpose.
• Ensure that the personal information processed is adequate, relevant and limited to the purposes for which it was collected.
• Ensure the personal information is accurate and up to date.
• Keep your personal information for no longer than is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was collected.
• Keep your personal information securely using appropriate technical or organisational measures.

Your Rights

You have certain rights under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), these are:

• The right to be informed via Privacy Notices such as this.
• The right of access to any personal information the council holds about yourself.
• The right of rectification, we must correct inaccurate or incomplete data within one month.
• The right to erasure. You have the right to have your personal data erased and to prevent processing unless we have a legal obligation to process your personal information.
• The right to restrict processing. You have the right to suppress processing. We can retain just enough information about you to ensure that the restriction is respected in future.
• The right to data portability. We can provide you with your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine readable form when asked.
• The right to object. You can object to your personal data being used for profiling, direct marketing or research purposes.
• You have rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling, to reduce the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention.

Consent 

During your contact with the council you will be informed of how you, or your children's, information will be used and shared with other services or organisations.

• We will usually seek your consent prior to processing or sharing your information, If you object you must inform the council, however, if there is a legal reason, as outlined under the Data Protection Act, we may not require your consent, for example:
• To protect a child, an adult with care and support needs, or member of the public
• Where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/or detection of crime.
• Tax or duty assessment
• Required by court or law

Where we need to disclose sensitive or confidential information such as medical details to other partners, we will do so only with your prior explicit consent or where we are legally required to. We may disclose information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to an individual. 

Details of transfers to third country and safeguards 

Your personal and sensitive data will only be stored and processed on servers based within the United Kingdom. 

Data Controller

Torbay Council is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner's Office (registration number: Z5125989).

Contact details for the council's data controller are:

Data Protection Officer, Town Hall, Castle Circus, Torquay, Devon, TQ1 3DR

Email: infocompliance@torbay.gov.uk

Also

• Privacy Notice - Mortality Records / Primary Care Mortality Database
• Privacy Notice - Hospital Episode Statistics (Pseudonymised)
• Privacy Notice - COVID and PHE
• Privacy Notice - Births Records