Agenda item

Sally Brooks, Data Protection Officer:

a.    sought approval of the Information Management Policies required in accordance with the EU General Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018

b.    advised that data protection was critical to the Council to ensure that the data received, processed, retained and shared was protected in accordance with the legal framework

c.    reported that the Data Protection Act 1988 had been replaced by a new Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA), which supplemented the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) directly applicable from 25 May 2018, although both documents needed to be read side by side

d.    emphasised the need for the Council’s policies to be compliant with the new legal framework, the Information Governance team were required to roll out the policies in order to increase awareness of the GDPR to officers’ and councillors in order that members of the public could be confident that the organisation was aware of its new legal responsibilities

e.    outlined the background to the implementation of the information policies and the data protection principles as detailed at paragraphs 3 and 4, attached for consideration within Appendices A-J of her report

f.     requested members’ comments in respect of the content of the report prior to referral to Executive for approval.

Jane Nellist, Independent Member, highlighted the following points:

·         Formatting issues –headings within the presentation of the GDPR/DPA Policy had failed to come out in bold on the last few pages.

·         The flowchart on page 87 of the Information Sharing Policy was not clear.

Sally Brooks, Data Protection Officer, thanked Jane Nellist for these comments. She confirmed that the issues identified would be rectified before the policies were published.

Jane Nellist, Independent Member, further enquired how the policies would be communicated to staff and whether a record of learning would be kept.

Sally Brooks, Data Protection Officer, confirmed that GDPR/DPA Policy had already been delivered to all staff via our new IT system Netconsent. All staff were required to confirm that they had read and understood the Policy as evidence for the first time of individual sign up to the Policy. The other Information Management policies would be released to all staff via the Council’s Communications Team and staff would be asked via Netconsent again to confirm that they were aware they had been reviewed and knew where to find the policies.

RESOLVED that the Information Management Policies be forwarded to Executive for approval.