Policy and performance

How Medway Council uses your information

Medway Council is committed to compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998, as well as your rights to confidentiality and respect for privacy. The council will ensure that it keeps your personal information accurate and secure to provide you with efficient services.

The council will only use the information it holds about you for the purpose you provided it. It will also only collect the minimum information necessary to fulfil that purpose. When it no longer has a need to keep information about you, it will be disposed of in a secure manner.

At the time of collecting your information, the council will inform you for what purpose the information is required, what it will be used for and with whom it will be shared. Please note, however, that the council is required to share your information on occasion with third parties, such as agencies that help reduce crime or investigate fraud.

In particular, it will use information about you on the following basis:

• For all law enforcement, regulation and licensing, criminal prosecutions and court proceedings, the council will use all the information it holds to undertake those functions efficiently and effectively. The council may also need to share your personal and sensitive information with other councils and partner agencies.
• For all uses of information relating to situations where money is owed to the council or the council is making a payment in response to a claim for grants, housing or council tax benefits, your personal information (other than just your name, address, dates of occupancy etc.) will be kept secure and used only for that range of purposes (and for the reasons stated above).
  
  By processing your personal data in this way, the council can ensure that it is able to:
  
  
  • provide you with a better level of service, ensuring that its information about you is accurate and up to date;
  • ensure that public money is spent wisely and efficiently;
  • avoid people being paid money to which they are not entitled;
  • avoid having to ask people to pay money back when it has been paid to them incorrectly;
  • reduce fraud and crime generally.
• For other functions of the council (listed below) it will seek to ensure that your personal data is used appropriately, so that it treats you as its customer and minimises inefficiency. The council will always try to keep all its records up to date.
• The council will not pass any of your information to any other organisation unless either you ask it to or the law requires it to.

Services

Why does the council collect and retain personal data?

To provide you with efficient and effective services, Medway Council needs to collect personal data. The council may also need to share your personal data with other service providers who are contracted to carry out services on its behalf. These providers are obliged to keep your personal details secure and use them only to fulfil your service request.

Medway Council ContactPoint

Medway Council’s ContactPoint team will process personal data in accordance with guidance issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

ContactPoint is a contacts list for professionals who work with children and young people. It will provide professionals with a quick way to find out who else is working with the same child, making it easier to deliver more co-ordinated support. ContactPoint lists contact details for all children in England up to their 18th birthday, their parents and carers and services working with a child.

Medway Council will disclose basic information on children to the DCSF for inclusion on ContactPoint, as it has a duty under the Children Act 2004 to work with partners to improve the wellbeing of children in the area.

Further information about ContactPoint can be found at www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/deliveringservices/contactpoint.

The Audit Commission

Medway Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers. It may share information provided to it with other bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds to prevent and detect fraud.

The Audit Commission appoints the auditor to audit the accounts of Medway Council. It is also responsible for carrying out data matching exercises.

Data matching involves comparing computer records held by one organisation against other computer records held by the same or another organisation to see how far they match. This usually involves personal information. Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found, it indicates that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether fraud has taken place, there is some kind of error or there is another explanation for the discrepancy until an investigation is carried out.

The Audit Commission currently requires the council to participate in a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. The council has been asked to provide particular sets of data to the Audit Commission for matching for each exercise. These are set out in the Audit Commission’s guidance, which can be found at www.audit-commission.gov.uk/nfi.

The use of data by the Audit Commission in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under its powers in Part 2A of the Audit Commission Act 1998. It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under the Data Protection Act 1998.

Data matching by the Audit Commission is subject to a code of practice. This may be found at www.audit-commission.gov.uk/localgov/audit/nfi/Pages/code.aspx.

For further information on the Audit Commission’s legal powers and the reasons why it matches particular information:

• visit www.audit-commission.gov.uk/nfi/fptext.asp;
• phone the Head of NFI on 0844 798 2222 or
• email: nfiqueries@audit-commission.gov.uk.

Further information

For further information on data matching at Medway Council, the use of your data or making a subject access request for copies of your personal data held by Medway Council, please use the contact details below.

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