Kent and Medway Information Partnership

Kent and Medway Information Sharing Agreement

Signatories

We are a group of local authorities and other public bodies who have joined in an information sharing arrangement. Sharing personal information is crucial to the successful delivery of local services. The Agreement we have all signed provides for openness and transparency in information sharing, as well as appropriate governance and support, which assists us to share personal information lawfully, safely and securely.

Why we share personal information:

One of the most important things that the Agreement does is set out the broad reasons why we share personal information. This means we will only share personal information for legitimate and lawful purposes.

How we share information lawfully, safely and securely

The Agreement enables us to share information only when:

we have proper reasons to share and use personal information (linked to the purposes below), and we share only the information relevant to and adequate for those purposes
we tell individuals why and how we will share their information, including identifying for them (and for ourselves) the lawful basis for sharing the information
we ensure that the personal information is factually accurate
we store personal information for the minimum time necessary for the purposes for which the information was obtained
we take practical steps to prevent loss of or damage to the personal information and
we adopt good governance and record keeping procedures concerning our use of personal information

More information

The Agreement reflects the updated protection of personal information in the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the UK Data Protection Act 2018.

For further information on the Kent and Medway Information Sharing Agreement or to join the Kent and Medway Information Partnership, please contact the current secretariat.

Secretariats contact details: dataprotection@canterbury.gov.uk

Purposes

The current purposes includes:

To provide direct health or social care to individuals, including mental healthcare
To maximise individuals’ access to benefits
To support individuals in, or into, employment
To assist individuals with housing and enforce housing standards
To support individuals who are homeless and help to prevent homelessness
For reasons of environmental protection
To help individuals who have been identified as at risk, or who may be so identified
To address fuel poverty and water poverty
To provide counselling services
To safeguard vulnerable adults
To support vulnerable families
To safeguard children and young people
To support or improve educational provision
To detect, prevent or provide assistance in cases of domestic abuse
To enforce professional standards
To support the Prevent Strategy
To aid with the detection or prevention of crime
To support Liaison and Diversion Schemes
For reasons related to the detection and prevention of terrorism
To aid with the detection and prevention of non-criminal acts that are nevertheless unlawful
To address anti-social behaviour
To support release from custodial settings
To improve the efficiency of service provision
To improve operational efficiency
For reasons of public safety and emergency planning
To assist emergency responders
For research purposes
To calculate and levy tax and to investigate matters relating to tax
To combat fraud
For purposes of immigration control
For purposes related to inquests or investigations by Coroners
To facilitate reimbursement of costs or to apply charges for services
To support or promote democratic engagement (ie: the range of activities inside and outside the election periods)