Domestic Abuse Related Death Review privacy notice

This privacy notice should be read in conjunction with Colchester City Council’s Privacy Policy.

This privacy notice sets out what personal data we will use, how we will use it, and why we need to in respect of Domestic Abuse Related Death Review. 

Colchester City Council may need to collect personal data so that we can:

1. establish what lessons can be learned from the domestic homicide regarding the way in which local professionals and organisations work individually and together to safeguard victims
2. identify clearly what those lessons are both within and between agencies, how and within what timescales they will be acted on, and what is expected to change as a result
3. apply these lessons to service responses including changes to inform national and local policies and procedures as appropriate
4. prevent domestic violence and homicide and improve service responses for all domestic violence and abuse victims and their children by developing a co-ordinated multi-agency approach to ensure that domestic abuse is identified and responded to effectively at the earliest opportunity
5. contribute to a better understanding of the nature of domestic violence and abuse and highlight good practice

Information collected

In the course of conducting a domestic homicide review we collect the following personal information about the deceased and others associated with them from statutory and voluntary bodies who have been directly involved in the case.

Personal information:

• Name
• Relationship to deceased
• Contact details
• Minutes from meetings and interviews

We also collect the following ‘special category data’ from medical records, social care records and information from specialist providers (such as providers of domestic abuse services or provider of substance misuse services):

• Racial or ethnic origin.
• Religious or philosophical beliefs.
• Health.
• Sexual orientation.

We also collect the following criminal offence data:

• Criminal record information supplied by crime prevention services such as the police or youth justice service.

Agencies we may share your data with

When the decision to initiate a DHR is taken, an Independent Chair is appointed and a multi-agency Review Panel is convened. The review panel is made up of representatives from a range of organisations who are best placed to contribute to the review and take forward any recommendations that come out of the process.

We will securely share information relevant to the review with those organisations participating in the review process.

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law or in connection with legal proceedings.

The purpose and lawful basis for processing

The lawful basis for the processing of your personal data is Article 6(1)(d) Vital interests. The lawful basis for processing special category data is Article 9 (2) (c) Vital interests.

We require the above information in relation to the following legislation:

• Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (preventing crime and disorder, Section 17 – Duty to consider crime and disorder implications, Section 115 – Disclosure of information).
• Children Act 2004 (Section 10 – improve wellbeing of children, Section 11 – safeguard and promote the welfare of children).

We only request the minimum amount of information and ensure that is it stored securely.

How long will we keep your personal data?

We will only hold your personal data for as long as necessary and in line with our retention schedules.

How we protect and store your personal data

We take the confidentiality of personal information very seriously and use recognised security and access controls to protect your information from unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration or corruption. We have procedures and processes in place to ensure that your personal information is managed appropriately.

Your information may be held outside of the UK. Where this is the case, we ensure that additional measures are in place to protect your data and to ensure that we continue to comply with data protection requirements.

We use cloud providers and online application providers to help us run our business. Therefore the use of some of our systems may include the transfer of your personal data to other countries. Your data will only be transferred to other countries which have adequate provision in place to protect personal data to an equivalent level as personal data held in the UK.

Updates to this privacy notice

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect changes in our processes and procedures, as well as to comply with changes in the law. When such changes occur, we will revise the 'last updated' date on this notice. We encourage you to periodically review this notice and to be informed of how we are protecting your information.