Dorset Community Safety Partnership Privacy Notice

1. Dorset Community Safety Partnership Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice is issued by the Dorset Community Safety Partnership (CSP). It explains how personal and confidential information is collected, used and shared by a range of organisations to meet the requirements of a domestic homicide review (DHR) and how it will be used by the Dorset CSP.

Dorset CSP is made up of a wide range of agencies including the police, probation, local authorities and health services. The Dorset CSP are committed to tackling not only crime and the fear of crime, but also the causes of crime.

1.2. Why the CSP needs your personal information?

The organisations that make up the CSP are required by law to undertake DHRs. The purpose of a domestic homicide review is to:

establish the facts that led to the homicide and whether there are any lessons to be learned from the case about the way in which local professionals and agencies worked together to safeguard the family
identify what those lessons are, how they will be acted upon and what is expected to change as a result
apply these lessons to service responses including changes to policies and procedures as appropriate
prevent domestic violence and abuse homicide and improve service responses for all domestic violence and abuse victims and their children through improved intra and interagency working

To achieve this, the CSP is required to identify which agencies had contact with the victim, perpetrator or families, how they worked with those individuals and how the agencies worked together. Personal information contained in the DHR will only ever be used for the DHR and for improving responses to domestic abuse at a national and local level.

The CSP are required to publish a suitably anonymised version of the Review Overview Report and the Executive Summary, unless there are compelling reasons not to do so. The aim of publishing these reviews is to restore public confidence and improve transparency of the processes in place across all agencies to protect victims.

1.3. What is the lawful basis for sharing your information?

Any decision to disclose or share information will adhere to the six Data Protection principles.

processing must be lawful and fair
purposes of processing must be specified, explicit and legitimate
personal data must be adequate, relevant and not excessive
personal data must be accurate and kept up to date
personal data should be kept for no longer than necessary
personal data must be processed in a secure manner

Article 9 of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) requires that the processing of ‘special category’ or sensitive personal data must have a lawful basis. For the purposes of a DHR that lawful basis is Article 6 (e) of the GDPR which states ‘processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.’

The following legislation provides the statutory powers for the partner organisations to share special category (sensitive) personal data:

General Data Protection Regulations (2018)
The Law Enforcement Directive (2018)
The Data Protection Act (2018)
The Human Rights Act (1998)
The Crime & Disorder Act (1998)
The Domestic Violence Crime & Victims Act (2004)
The Children Act (1989 and 2004)
The Care Act (2014)
The Common Law Duty of Confidentiality

1.4 Sources and Categories of Information

Personal information is sourced from partner organisations’ record systems already used to record information about individuals. The police, probation services, health services, education, adult and children social care and drug and alcohol services may all be asked to provide personal information. We will only request and use relevant information to meet the specific requirements of a DHR.

Under GDPR regulations, the information is classed as personal data, and is also classed as special category data. This means it includes sensitive data and therefore needs to be protected.

1.5. How will we store your information?

We handle personal information according to the requirements of the UK Data Protection Act. Any personal information stored by the CSP is secure and access is restricted to a minimal number of individuals to achieve the purposes of the DHR.

1.6. Who will see and share the personal information?

To meet the requirements of a DHR the Dorset CSP will approach relevant organisations including the police, health providers, probation services and social care organisations for personal information.

All partners will be signatories to the Dorset Information Sharing Charter (DiSC) which provides partner agencies with a robust foundation for the lawful, secure and confidential sharing of personal information between themselves and other public, private or voluntary sector organisations that they work with. Underneath this is a Personal Information Sharing Agreement (PISA) which gives further detail regarding the type of personal information requested and how it will be used.

All of those with access to your data have a legal duty to protect your personal information. We take confidentiality very seriously and are committed to ensuring all personal information obtained for a DHR is managed in accordance with the relevant legislation to ensure your information is safe, secure and confidential.

Access to this personal information is limited to the DHR Review Panel which is made up of statutory and voluntary sector partners.

1.7. How long will your information be kept for?

Those organisations providing services directly to the individual will have their own privacy notice detailing how long personal information will be held. Any minutes of DHR panel meetings referring to personal information will be held for six years after the publication of the anonymised report.

1.8. How can you contact us with queries or concerns about this privacy notice or wish to make a complaint.

If you have any queries, concerns or you wish to complain regarding the information we hold about you or you have a question regarding the privacy notice, then please contact us.