Public Health privacy notice

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Public Health

All local authorities have a duty to improve the health of the population they serve. The Barnet Council Public Health Team is responsible for protecting and improving the health of the population of Barnet.

The Public Health Team has a wide range of responsibilities related to understanding and improving the health, wellbeing and care needs of local communities and ensuring that differences in health outcomes are tackled and addressed by working to improve the health of the most disadvantaged members of the community.  

To help with this, we use data and personal information to exercise our statutory public health functions. 

Barnet Council collects and holds information for public health purposes about: 

  • Residents of Barnet 
  • People receiving health and care services in Barnet 
  • People who work or attend school in Barnet 
  • All to whom Barnet Council has a public health duty of care, this can include people not resident in Barnet but who are registered with a general practice located in Barnet 

This information is collected in two ways: 

  • It may be provided to us directly by a member of the public when they sign up to use a service we are providing 
  • It may be shared with us by another organisation due to us having a role in a service they are providing, or as part of research and intelligence necessary for Public Health functions like the commissioning of services or improving and protecting the public’s health. This will include organisations such as national and local NHS bodies and the Integrated Care Board, the Office for National Statistics, NHS Digital, the UK Health Security Agency, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, other local authorities, and schools 

We hold the following data collections that contain various different types of data about individuals and populations: 

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) 

We have anonymous data on Hospital Episode Statistics via the NHS Digital Data Access Environment (DAE).  

Primary Care Mortality Database (PCMD) 

The Primary Care Mortality Database (PCMD) provides Barnet Council with access to identifiable mortality data as provided at the time of the registration of death.

The PCMD includes the residential address of the deceased, postcode of the place of death, NHS number, date of birth, date of death, name of certifier and cause of death. Data is anonymised if published.  

Births data tables 

This is identifiable data about births, including the baby’s NHS number and date of birth and the residential address of the mother. Data is anonymised if published. 

Support and Treatment Services 

We employ professional agencies to deliver public health commissioned services, such as Substance Misuse Support and Smoking Cessation Support.

We receive regular anonymised information, which is used to make sure the contract is running properly, to understand the quality and quantity of services provided to clients, and to support service development.

In a few cases person identifiable information is required to make decisions about onward referral to specialist services which some clients require to give them the additional care they need. More details about these commissioned services are described in privacy notices specific to them are available in the Community and health privacy notices

Thrive London Suicide Prevention Real Time Surveillance System 

This dataset provides Barnet Council with access to identifiable data about suicides, including the residential address of the deceased, details related to the suicide, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, employment details, next of kin contact details and details of contact with partner organisations.

Personally identifiable data is excluded from any analysis or publication. 

COVID-19 

The council has a COVID-19 Privacy Notice which covers the work we did during the two years of the main outbreak from March 2020 to March 2022.

Outbreaks 

For further flares of COVID-19 or any other type of illness outbreak, we have responsibilities to support public health.  

Depending on the incident we may: 

  • Run or support testing or vaccination sites 
  • Undertake contact tracing 
  • Analyse locations and trends to manage an outbreak and prevent further people falling ill 
  • Employ contractors to help do this work, such as running the administration of a testing site 

Public Health Duties 

We use data to perform our statutory public health functions, such as: 

  • Planning and commissioning services 
  • Improving the quality and effectiveness of commissioned services 
  • Reviewing and assessing the performance of the local health and care system and to evaluate and develop them 
  • Investigating incidents and in the management of risks to public health 
  • Approving evidence-based interventions 
  • Controlling infection 
  • The National Child Measurement Programme 
  • The NHS Health Check Programme 
  • Supporting health visiting and school nursing services 

We never publish public health information that identifies individuals. 

This information is used to produce data and intelligence about the health and care needs of Barnet residents, in particular: 

Personal information collected

  • Name 
  • Address & contact details 
  • DOB 
  • Equalities Information 
  • Health/Medical Information  
  • Education Information 
  • Family/Relationship Information  
  • NHS Number 
  • Referral/Assessment Information 

Who we share the information with 

  • Health Agencies like the NHS and GPs 
  • Specialist service providers such as smoking cessation provider 
  • Police where necessary to prevent harm 
  • Judicial Agencies, e.g. Courts  
  • Council services such as Registrars 
  • Professional regulatory bodies 
  • Other local authorities 
  • Voluntary Agencies /Third Sector for outbreaks 
  • London Resilience (Emergency Planning) 

The council works in partnership with the London Resilience (Emergency Planning) service and where a serious incident is declared, this will include sharing data with police, fire and ambulance services, as well as health, or other specialist organisations like utility companies such as: London Resilience Partnership

We sometimes cross reference data, for example, information from death certificates may be used with information from healthcare provider records (GPs and hospital) to investigate the events leading up to the death, to see if there are lessons to be learnt.  

Legislation that applies 

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

How long we keep your information

Data is kept for 10 years.  

Individual privacy notices for commissioned services like Substance Misuse Support list the retention periods are available in the Community and health privacy notices

Personal data processed for COVID-19 public health purposes between March 2020 and March 2022 will be retained for 12 months from 1 April 2022, for analysis and research purposes.