Manchester Alliance for Community Care

Data Protection

Purpose
MACC has produced this standard to ensure best practice when requesting or holding personal information about you and other people; how you can get access to your personal data; and what you can do if you think standards are not being met.

Your rights are protected by the Data Protection Act 1998. This standard does not replace the law. It aims to show how MACC will obey the law when information is collected.

Data Protection Statement

This is our policy statement;

“MACC is committed to a policy of protecting the rights and privacy of individuals, voluntary and community group members, staff and others in accordance with The Data Protection Act 1998. The policy applies to all voluntary and community group members and staff at MACC. Any breach of The Data Protection Act 1998 or The MACC Data Protection Policy is considered to be an offence and in that event, MACC disciplinary procedures apply.

As a matter of good practice, other organisations and individuals working with MACC, and who have access to personal information, will be expected to have read and comply with this policy. It is expected that any staff that deal with external organisations will take responsibility for ensuring that such organisations sign a contract agreeing to abide by this policy”.

About Personal Information
Personal data means information about a living individual who can be identified from that information and other information, which is in, or likely to come into, the data controller's possession e.g. It can be your name, address or telephone number. It can also be the type of job you do and the services you buy. It does not include information relating to dead people, groups or communities of people, organisations or businesses.

This is how MACC looks after that information; when we ask you for personal information, we promise to:

make sure you know why we need it,
only ask for what we need,
not to collect too much or irrelevant information,
protect it and make sure no unauthorised person has access to it ,
let you know if we share it with other organisations, to give you better public services - and if you have the right to refuse,
make sure we don't keep it longer than necessary,
not make your personal information available for commercial use (such as marketing) without your consent.

In return, to help MACC keep your information reliable and up to date, we ask you to:

give accurate information,
tell MACC as soon as possible if there are any changes to your personal circumstances, such as your address.

How to Find Out What Information MACC Holds About You
You can find out if MACC hold information about you by making a “subject access request” under the Data Protection Act 1998. To exercise your right to access please write/email Shamina Ghurry, our Information Worker at the address below or email: shamina@macc.org.uk

A request must include enough information to enable MACC to satisfy itself as to your identity and to find the information. Remember to include;

Your full name and address.
Any other information to assist in identifying you, for example the ID number quoted in correspondence with MACC (located top-right corner of mail out label).
Administration fee of £10, made payable to MACC. Under the Data Protection Act we are allowed to charge for responding to a subject access request.

We will reply to you within 40 days, this is on the condition the necessary fee has been paid. If we hold personal information about you, we will;

Give you a description of the data.
Tell you why we are processing the data.
Tell you who the data could be disclosed to.
Provide you with a copy of the data in an understandable form.

Other Relevant Information
Where the information you are seeking is contained in files that are not appropriately structured or referenced, it may not be easy to locate and to identify whether personal information is held or being used. MACC keep as little 'unstructured' information as possible, since it is difficult to access and use.

If you require access to information held in these ‘unstructured’ manual files, you should describe the information in a way that would allow MACC to find it. It will help us to process your subject access request if you can be as specific as possible about what you want.

Even if you describe the information, MACC are not obliged to provide you with access to unstructured manual data if the cost of locating and extracting the information would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as set by the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Fees for Information in Other Formats
You can ask for information to be in any reasonable format and in languages other than English but there may be an additional charge for this. MACC will discuss the likely cost of your request with you so that you can decide whether to go ahead.

If someone else has copyright on the information you want, you may have to pay them to use it. If so, this cost will be outside MACC’s control.

Agreements MACC Have with Other Organisations for Sharing Information
MACC are committed to providing the best and most efficient service to our users. We may share personal information; within our organisation, with other bodies where it would be compatible with the purpose for which they collected it, and/or where we are required or permitted to do so by law.

There are some circumstances where we can pass on your personal information without telling you, for example, to help with the prevention and detection of crime or to produce anonymised statistics. In all cases - whether data is shared internally or externally - MACC will act in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and other relevant legislation.

How to Make a Complaint
When MACC ask you for information, we will keep to the law, including the Data Protection Act 1998. If you are unhappy with the way they we handled your personal information and wish to make a complaint, please write/email Shamina Ghurry, our Information Worker at the address below or email: shamina@macc.org.uk

MACC will acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days and let you have a full response within 20 working days. If it is not possible to respond fully within this time-scale, we will write and let you know why and say when you should receive a full response.

For More Information
For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data-sharing issues, you can contact:

Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545 745
Fax: 01625 524 510
www.ico.gov.uk

Monitoring and Evaluation
MACC employs various mechanisms to assess if we are meeting our data protection standards. These mechanisms include;

Annual review/update of MACC’s entry on the data protection register,
Annual review/update of MACC’s contact database,
Annual review/update of MACC’s Data Protection Policy,
Data protection audit and,
User feedback.

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