Community safety team privacy notice

The Community Safety Team is based within the Neighbourhoods and  Environment division at Waltham Forest Council.

We aim to raise awareness of community safety issues in Waltham Forest and provide information about services that are available to help combat these.

We work in the following areas:

• Preventing gang violence
• Preventing extremism and radicalisation
• Preventing violence against women and girls
• Providing information and support about Hate Crimes
• Raising educational engagement via wider schools work
• Utilise criminal analysis to identify the most effective interventions for individuals, groups, and communities with a safe response

If you have any questions regarding our privacy practices you can contact us by email or in writing at the address below:

Community Safety

Willow House
869 Forest Rd
London
E17 4UH

Email: communitysafety@walthamforest.gov.uk

Where relevant to do so and appropriate we may hold the following information about you:

• Name and contact details
• Date of birth
• Racial and ethnic origin
• Religious, faith or other beliefs of a similar nature
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Social and lifestyle  circumstances
• Financial details
• Housing needs
• Family details
• Physical or mental health details
• NHS number
• Personal appearance and behavioural details
• Education details
• Unique reference number or social care ID
• Case file information
• Offences (including alleged offences)
• Social care support outcomes
• Advocacy or outreach details

The processing and use of your personal data is underpinned by our compliance with and legal obligations, primarily under the Children Act 1989 and Care Act 2014, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 in order to safeguard children, young people, adults and their families from possible harm in England.

 We consider your privacy with great importance and will only use your personal information to:

• inform you about our services
• provide services you have requested from us
• enable us to carry out specific functions for which we are responsible
• derive statistics that inform decisions such as the funding of community safety projects
• assess performance and to set targets for the Council and for service planning or improvement to develop service delivery

We may also use your personal data for the prevention or detection of fraud/crime or research.

If we use the information for research purposes this will be anonymised data only and may assist us to improve our performance and delivery of services in the future.

We have a number Multi agency panel meetings that are currently in operation across our service including:

• ASBRAC (Anti-Social Behaviour Risk Assessment Conference to provide support to individuals affected by anti-social behaviour )
• MARAC (Multi agency Risk Assessment Conference to provide support to individuals who are at high risk of domestic violence and abuse)
• CHANNEL PANEL (The Channel process is a multi-agency approach to identify and provide support to individuals who are at risk of being drawn into terrorism)
• BRONZE PANEL (multi agency panel to review referrals where interventions are required for those involved with, or at risk from, or victims of gang activity)

As part of the support and services that we provide, a number of agencies will decide whether the threshold is met for support and best this can be provided and this may include sharing your information, reviewing actions already taken, and if necessary, making recommendations on how to reach the best outcome for you.

We will only ask for personal information that is appropriate and proportionate to enable us to deliver our services effectively. This is in accordance with legal obligations under the Children Act 1989 and Care Act 2014, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 to uphold the support, protection, and fulfillment of our community safety functions.

In most cases, we will obtain your personal data directly from you, either on registration forms or when we communicate with you. If the information about you is provided from another source then we will notify you of this within a reasonable period after obtaining the personal data. Where needed appropriate consent will be obtained from the young person and parent through consent forms.

We are obligated to dispose of your information in a safe and secure way to maintain and comply with GDPR regulations.

In line with our safeguarding guidance and thresholds, we will retain your information for a minimum of 7 years from the last contact date or the case closure date, whichever comes first if there have been identified emerging or multiple needs.

According to threshold guidelines for acute or complex needs, we may hold your information for up to 20 years or more depending on the identified needs.

We will also advise you of our duty to disclose or if we envisage disclosing personal data to another party.

You reserve the right to refuse to provide your details if you deem the request to be inappropriate. Please remember that if we cannot use your data this may impact our ability to provide you with or make arrangements for services to assist your needs.

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018, we need a "lawful basis" for collecting and using information about you. There are a variety of different lawful bases for processing personal data which are set out in the Data Protection Act.

The lawful basis on which we rely in order to use the information that we collect about you for the purposes set out in this notice will be: 

• Consent
• Legal Obligation

It may be necessary for us to share personal data with both internal and external partners or agencies:

• Social care (Adults/Children’s)
• Health providers
• NHS agencies (GPs, hospitals, ambulance, health visitors)
• Education providers (welfare, schools, colleges and institution)
• Residential/nursing care providers
• Mental health services
• Government agencies (department of health, department of work and pensions)
• Central government
• Local government
• Police
• Probation services
• Youth offending service
• Other local authorities
• Substance misuse agencies
• Fire and rescue services
• Housing associations
• Advocacy services

In line with our safeguarding guidance and thresholds, we will retain your information for a minimum of 7 years from the last contact date or the case closure date, whichever comes first if there have been identified emerging or multiple needs. If we identify acute or complex needs, we will retain your information for a maximum of 20 years or more from the last contact date or the case closure date, whichever comes first.

We are obligated to dispose of your information in a safe and secure way to maintain and comply with GDPR regulations.

When determining how long information should be held for, we consider particular criteria and this may depend on the circumstances that are presented to us (such as, the age at which a referral has been received, the nature of the information, how long an intervention or support may be in place for and if there are any other restrictions on retaining information due to crime or abuse).

Our Data Protection Officer

Our Data Protection Officer is Mark Hynes. You can contact him by email at data.protectionofficer@walthamforest.gov.uk

Protecting your information

Please see the relevant section of the Corporate Privacy Notice.

Your information choice and rights

Please see the relevant section of the Corporate Privacy Notice.

Complaints and contact details

These are included in the relevant section of the Corporate Privacy Notice.

Information Commissioner’s Office

If we’re unable to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)