Public Health - privacy notice

Calderdale Council is registered with the information Commissioners Office (ICO) under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 2018. The Council takes its responsibilities under the Act very seriously.

Our Public Health Service is responsible for protecting and improving the health of Calderdale's population. To do this we provide services, guidance and advice to the public and professionals (such as about infections). We monitor and publish intelligence about trends in health. This helps the NHS and other providers to plan services that meet the needs of Calderdale's people.

The datasets we manage can contain Person Identifiable Data (PID). This can be: address, age, sex, ethnicity, disease, use of hospital services and/or NHS Number. Some data might not be easy to identify. However, there may be the potential to deduce individuals' identities through combinations of information.

Calderdale Council will have access to:

• Primary Care Mortality Database (PCMD). This holds mortality data as provided at the time of registration of the death. Also, more GP details, geographical indexing and coroner details (where applicable).
• Births and Vital Statistics datasets. Births files include date of birth, sex, birth weight, address, postcode, place of birth, stillbirth indicators and age of mother. Deaths data include deaths broken down by age, sex, area and cause of death sourced from the deaths register.
• Hospital Episode Data (HES). Contains details of all admissions, outpatient appointments and A&E attendances at NHS hospitals in England. This data is collected during a patient's time at hospital. It is then submitted to allow hospitals to be paid for the care they deliver. HES data is designed to enable secondary use, that is use for non-clinical purposes.

Our Public Health service will access health and related information to analyse the health needs/outcomes of the local population. Also, to monitor trends/patterns of diseases and the associated risk factors.

Information accessed, processed and stored by us is used to measure the health, mortality or care needs of the population. This is for planning, evaluating and monitoring health; protecting and improving public health. It is used to carry out and support:

• Health needs assessments.
• Health equity analysis.
• Commissioning and delivery of services to promote health and prevent ill health.
• Public health surveillance.
• Finding inequalities in the way people access services.
• Joint strategic needs assessment.
• Health protection and other partnership activities.

Any information held by Calderdale Council, about individuals, will be held securely and in compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018. Information will not be held for longer than required and will be disposed of securely.

Confidential public health data will only be shared with other local NHS partners. This includes clinical commissioning groups, local authorities or care organisations with the permission of the public health Caldecott guardian. (When the necessary legal basis has been established and data protection safeguards have been verified.) This is so that the data is managed and used under the same restrictions. Anyone who receives information from Calderdale Council public health is under a legal duty to keep it confidential.

Information is held by the Public Health and Business Intelligence teams at Calderdale Council. Note: It is not shared with any other departments.

We will not disclose any public health information to anyone without appropriate permission. This is unless we have a legal reason to do so. For example, disclosure may be necessary to protect a person from suffering significant harm or to prevent or detect crime.

Processing is necessary for reasons of public interest in the area of public health. The legal basis for the flow of data for the above purposes is set out in:

• Section 42(4) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act (2007), as amended by section 287 of the Health and Social Care Act (2012).
• Regulation 3 of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002.

The data controller is Calderdale Council:

• Address: Town Hall, Crossley Street, Halifax, HX1 1UJ.

You have the right to opt out of the Council's Public Health service receiving or holding your personal identifiable information. You can contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer at information.management@calderdale.gov.uk.