Councillors fail to take GDPR Compliance training putting ‘residents at risk’
Folkestone & Hythe District Councillors wear three hats when it comes to the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, these are:
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As a Cllr in the Chamber they are protected by FHDC as FHDC are a data controller.
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Also a member of Political Party, they are protected by the Data Controller of their party, if they have one. Cllr Govett, Lawes & McKenna do not belong to a political party – they are Independents.
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However, as a constituency Cllr, they themselves – the Cllr – is a data controller.
FHDC Cllrs through their role have access to sensitive information and data.
It is not known how many Folkestone & Hythe District Cllrs could be putting vulnerable people at risk after failing to complete GDPR Compliance training. FHDC are unable to say who has and who has not completed the training they offered on the 9th May 2018.
FHDC have said:
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Unfortunately the Council does not hold itemised lists of training received by individual Councillors, as sign-in sheets were not distributed at these sessions.
The sessions they are talking about for Cllrs took place on the 9th May, sixteen days before the implementation of the new GDPR legislation.
(*This sum includes x3 seminars for Council staff and x1 seminar for Councillors over the course of the day. This was procured as a single package, so no specific figure is available for the costing of the Councillor session.)
The compliance training for GDPR would have included such items as:
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Lawfulness, Fairness and Transparency
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Purpose Limitation
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Data minimisation
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Accuracy
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Storage limitation
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Integrity and confidentiality
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Accountability
Unbelievable, but I am quite sure this applies to very many Cllrs around the country and ALL Council should NOT continue to provide information and access to their systems to those who have failed to complete the training, as each and every one of them may compromise their respective Councils systems. They to have failed to follow their Councils agreed policies and procedures.