General Enquiries

The new Data Protection Act ( GDPR) comes into force on the 20th of May 2018 and there are new wide ranging implications for the storage and retention of personal data.

The 2 main factors are with regards to personal data from a civic perspective is that we need the express permission of the subject to hold their data and the permission is time limited.

We would need to maintain records of permissions and data review dates.

I would be interested to obtain other Civic Officer views on this highly important topic which will affect us all very shortly. Including NACO!

Is this topic being included at the conference? I would like to raise to raise it as a point of discussion time permitting?

Your thoughts as ever greatly appreciated.

Hi "Swampy",

I've only just turned my mind to this from a Mayoral office point of view. Am also responsible for electoral services and that's a minefield.

However, having just started a spreadsheet to record the processing of data (using an ICO template), I have identified three areas so far - those on the civic & corporate guest list, those who invite the Mayor to an engagement and those on our charity mailing list. The more I think about this subject, the more things come to me so I'm sure there are more.

Our current practice isn't too awful on reflection but we will certainly need to get explicit consent from all those involved and send them a privacy notice of some sort.

Am surprised there's not been more take up of your offer for a discussion, unless everyone's too busy working on their action plans to respond!

I didn't attend conference myself, but the person who did, doesn't recall it being raised, but would also be interested to see if anyone else is ahead of the game with privacy notice for example to save us all reinventing the wheel so to speak.

Good luck everyone!

Jane Ringham
jane.ringham@medway.gov.uk