MK Together Service forms part of Milton Keynes City Council.  This Privacy Notice sets out how we deal with your personal information within this Service.  It links in with the Council’s Corporate Privacy Notice and should be read alongside it.  For more details about our Corporate Privacy Notice, please visit MKC Corporate Privacy Notice

Who we are

We are a partnership team that supports the activities of the Milton Keynes Safeguarding Board and Health and Wellbeing Board. This includes the statutory duties to review incidents where someone has died or suffered significant harm and there are opportunities to learn and improve.

Everything we do with information about people, such as how we collect it and who we share it with, has to comply with the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into force in May 2018.  A key part of this is being open about what personal information we hold about you, how we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for, etc.  You also need to know what rights you have in this respect.

What information do we hold?

Most of the information we hold starts as a result of:

• A professional directly contacting us wanting us to look into an incident.
• Another organisation, such as an NHS body, police or local authority, making a referral to us for a review, notifying us of a reportable incident to the department for education (where a child has died or suffered significant harm and abuse or neglect are known or suspected, a looked after child has died, or a child has died in a secure setting) or informing us of a child’s death.

Members of the public contacting us with a safeguarding concern for a child or vulnerable adult will be directed to the appropriate front line service.

All information we hold about individuals is provided by organisations that are required to provide it to us and have had involvement with the individual and/or family. This may include organisations like the police/NHS, education and local authority. They will have their own Privacy Notices that explain what information they collect and who they share it with.

Personal information that we might hold within MK Together Service includes the likes of name, address, phone number, email address, etc.  We might also hold sensitive personal data (referred to as Special Categories of data under GDPR) including ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disabilities, medical conditions, criminal convictions and child protection proceedings etc.

Why do we have it and what do we use it for?

We have a legal obligation to provide the above services under the Care Act 2014 for adults with care and support needs, and Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 and to deliver these we need to collect and use personal information of those using or affected by these services.

If you access our services then the requirement mentioned above will be our lawful basis for collecting and using your personal data, as we can’t provide you with the service without it.

Whenever we use information, we always limit this to only the details that are needed and we ensure that it is used safely and securely. We require anyone we share information with, or who uses it on our behalf, to do so too. All our staff receive training on data protection and information security.

All of the personal information we hold is kept securely on our Council servers. However we commission external reviewers to facilitate the learning reviews and they will have their own arrangements regarding storage of their data. There is also no automatic decision-taking regarding any personal information that we process.

Who we share information with and why

We share information with a number of different partner agencies depending on the service being provided or the statutory requirement that we have to comply with.  The types of recipients include:

• Service users and families where appropriate (this will be anonymised)
• Local government organisations
• Central government departments
• Our contractors which will include our external reviewers.
• Law enforcement agencies, such as Thames Valley Police
• Probation services
• Bucks Fire and Rescue Services
• Health and social care organisations and professionals (NHS bodies such as GPs, Milton Keynes Clinical Commissioning Group, Milton Keynes University Hospital)
• Education establishments such as schools, colleges and early years settings
• Regulatory bodies, investigators and ombudsman (for example Ofsted, CQC, Local Govt Ombudsman)

How long we keep hold of information for

We only keep information for as long as it is needed. This will differ according to what information we hold and its purpose.  It will be based on either a legal requirement (where a law says we have to keep information for a specific period of time) or accepted business practice. Within our Service, we keep the following information for the following periods:

• Information relating to the case of a child (under 18) 10 years or until the child turns 25, whichever is the longest amount of time.
• Information relating to the case of a vulnerable adult 10 years.

What rights you have

You have various rights around the data we hold about you. More information on these can be found on our MKC Corporate Privacy Notice

If you would like any further information about how your personal information is used within MK Together, then please contact:

Email: MKTogether@milton-keynes.gov.uk

Tel No: 01908 254373

Post: MK Together, Milton Keynes Council, Civic Offices, Milton Keynes, MK9 3JB

If you wish to access a copy of your personal information, or are unhappy with any aspect of how your information has been collected and/or used, you can make a complaint to the corporate Data Protection Officer.

Data Protection Officer Contact Details

Email: data.protection@milton-keynes.gov.uk

Tel. No: 01908 254900

Post: Data Protection, Milton Keynes Council, 1 Saxon Gate East, Central Milton Keynes, MK9 3HS