Privacy Notices - Carer’s vaccination programme Privacy Notice

Eligible carers are in Priority Group 6 for the coronavirus vaccine.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and the Public Health England (PHE) Green Book  have decided that unpaid carers eligible for the vaccine are:

• those who are eligible for Carer’s Allowance, or those who are the sole or primary carer of an elderly or disabled person who is at increased risk of COVID-19 mortality and therefore clinically vulnerable (page 11 of the Green Book)

The vaccination programme has now reached Priority Group 6, meaning eligible unpaid carers will soon be receiving an invite for their vaccination.

For now, eligible unpaid carers will be identified in four ways.

You could be identified:

• if you are registered as an unpaid carer with your GP. This is known as having a Carers Flag on your primary care records.
• if you receive, or are entitled to, Carer’s Allowance. The Department for Work and Pensions will share this information with the vaccination programme.
• if you are known to the local authority as a carer, and are receiving support following a statutory carers assessment
• if you are supported by a local carer support organisation

We are required to submit details of Carers to NHS Digital, to identify those who need to be contacted to receive a vaccine. This includes Swindon Carer’s Centre sharing details of unpaid carers registered with them who are eligible to receive the vaccine with the council and the Council providing this data to NHS digital.

A Privacy Notice is a statement issued by an organisation which explains how personal and confidential data about individuals is collected, used and shared.

Swindon Borough Council will act as a “Data Controller” for any personal data that you provide to us.  We will ensure that the data given to us is processed in line with our Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 18) and the EU General Data Protection Regulations. (GDPR).

To find out more about Swindon Borough Council’s data protection policies please contact our Data Protection Officer dataprotection@swindon.gov.uk or in writing to Data Protection Officer, Civic Offices, Euclid Street, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN1 2JH.

Swindon Carer’s Centre are the data controller for all Carer’s Centre data submitted as part of this initiative. When submitting this data to NHS Digital, Swindon Borough Council is the Data Processor.

Personal data relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data. Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the data controller’s possession or likely to come into such possession. The processing of data is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the “GDPR”).

We need to collect a range of data about you to submit your eligibility to receive a vaccine to NHS Digital.

This includes:

• forename
• surname
• date of birth
• gender if known
• post code
• NHS number if known

We comply with our obligations under the GDPR by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; by protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure and by ensuring that appropriate technical measures are in place to protect personal data.

The information is required to support the delivery of the Coronavirus Vaccine Programme and ensure that priority groups receive the COVID-19 Vaccine as part of this programme.

The following is the legal basis for the processing of eligible unpaid carers data in line with this privacy notice:

• The council, as part of the national health and social care system, is required under Regulation 3(4) of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 (COPI) to take action to manage and mitigate the spread and impact of the current outbreak of Covid-19.

This information will be shared with NHS digital only.

We will do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and we will only make them available to those who have a right to see them.

Examples of our security include:

• encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code, or what is called a 'cypher'. The hidden information is said to then be 'encrypted'.
• pseudonymisation, meaning that we will use a different name so we can hide parts of your personal information from view. This means that someone outside of the Council could work on your information for us without ever knowing it was yours.
• controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it
• training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong
• regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches)

There is often a legal reason for keeping your personal information for a set period, so we try to include all of these in our corporate Retention & Disposal schedule and they are often explained within each service-related Privacy Notice.

For each service, the schedule lists how long your information may be kept for. This ranges from months for some records to decades for more sensitive records.
 

The law gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us.

You can ask for access to the information we hold on you.

We would normally expect to share what we record about you with you whenever we assess your needs or provide you with services.

However, you also have the right to ask for a copy of all the information we have about you and the services you receive from us. When we receive a request from you in writing, we must give you access to everything we have recorded about you, however, we cannot let you see any parts of your records that contain: 

• confidential information about other people
• data a professional thinks will cause serious harm to you or someone else’s physical or mental wellbeing
• information we think may stop us from preventing or detecting a crime

This applies to personal information that is in both paper and electronic records. If you ask us, we will also let others see your record (except if one of the points above applies).

If you cannot ask for your records in writing, we will make sure there are other ways that you can.

If you have any queries about access to your information contact DataProtection@Swindon.gov.uk.
 

In the event that you wish to complain about the way that your personal data has been handled by Swindon Borough Council, you should write to the Data Protection Officer and clearly outline your case. Your complaint will then be investigated in accordance with our customer complaint procedure.

If you remain dissatisfied with the way your personal data has been handled, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ICO.org.uk. You may refer the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office whose contact details are below:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

This website also contains information on data protection and your rights and remedies.
 

You are under no statutory obligation to provide personal data to Swindon Borough Council or Swindon Carer’s Centre to inform the Coronavirus Vaccination Programme. However, if you do not provide the data, we will not be able to provide this to NHS Digital, to enable you to be identified for receipt of a vaccine in a priority group.

A yearly audit will take place on personal data to ensure that we remain legally compliant in accordance with current data protection legislation.

You are viewing the Privacy Notice for the carers vaccination programme.

Read the main Privacy Notice