DAta Protection and the Freedom of Information Act provides a common-sense set of rules which prevent the misuse of your personal information without stopping it being used for legitimate or beneficial reasons.
The details of the Data Protection Act are quite complex, but there are eight common-sense rules known as the Data Protection Principles.
These require personal information to be:
- fairly and lawfully processed;
- processed for limited purposes;
- adequate, relevant and not excessive;
- accurate;
- not kept longer than necessary;
- processed in accordance with your rights;
- kept secure;
- not transferred abroad without adequate protection.
Organisations using personal information ('data controllers') must comply with these Principles.
The Act provides stronger protection for sensitive information about your ethnic origins, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, health, sexual life and any criminal history.
Getting access to your information
The Act, with some exceptions, gives you the right to find out what information is held about you by organisations. This is known as the 'right of subject access'. On written request, you are entitled to be supplied with a copy of all the information an organisations holds about you.
The organisation may charge a fee for providing the information, up to a maximum of £10 in most instances and up to £50 in the case of manual (i.e. non-electronic) medical records. To see what information is held on you by credit reference agencies costs £2.
Stopping direct marketing
You also have the right to stop organisations using your personal information for direct marketing purposes. You can do this by registering your details with one of the preference services..
The Act is enforced by an independent authority called the Information Commissioner. He has powers to take action against organisations that misuse information about you.
ENEHL Publication Scheme
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) gives a general right of access to all types of recorded information held by public authorities to encourage them to be more open. It sets out exemptions from that right and places a number of duties on public authorities. ENEHL is classed as a ‘public authority.’ The general right of access to our information is in section 1 of the Act.
Anyone who wants to access our information needs to ask us in writing. We must then tell them whether we hold that information and, subject to exemptions, let them have it within the legal time limit of 20 working days.
This is the publication scheme we have prepared that meets Sections 19 and 20 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI). It adopts the Information Commissioner’s Model Publication Scheme.
Our publication scheme commits ENEHL to:
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Proactively publish information that is covered by the classes below that we hold.
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Proactively publish information in line with the statements contained in this scheme.
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Maintain and review the information covered by the scheme regularly.
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Produce a guide to the information within each class.
We have organised our publication scheme as a directory of information which groups documents and describes the area they cover. This is done by setting out:
The classes of information we publish or aim to publish:
- Who we are and what we do
- What we spend and how we spend it
- What our priorities are and how we are doing
- How we make decisions
- Our policies and procedures
- The services we offer
- Lists and registers
- Forms
- Leaflets
- A guide to what the information is.
- How we publish the information.
- Whether we may charge for the information.
- A description of any exclusions that might apply.
- Any legal provisions governing the publication of information in that class.
Use the link on the right to download the ENEHL Publication Scheme
Page updated June 2011