Access to school safeguarding files
Dear Northamptonshire County Council,
A school sometimes holds, maintains or retains a safeguarding file on some pupils.
1)Please provide all policies that schools within Northamptonshire must abide by with regards to safeguarding files
2)If a school has a safeguarding file on a pupil, and a parent requests access to the file, under what circumstances may the school deny the access request?
3)May a school deny parent access to a safeguarding file for a child who has been clearly identified as not falling under Children's Act s47 "child protection"by Northamptonshires Social Services team? And if so, under what legislation is this?
Yours faithfully,
Richard Newton
Dear Mr Newton
As schools are data controllers in their own right and hold a DP registration in line with DPA 1998; you would need to direct these questions to a school to ascertain the answer. NCC can only answer for Local Authority held and recorded information.
I have provided a link to the schools directory should you wish to make contact with a particular school.
http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/en/co...
Kind regards
Gillian Hollowell
Senior Freedom of Information/Data Protection Officer
Business Intelligence and Performance Improvement
Northamptonshire County Council
Room 223
County Hall
Northampton NN1 1ED
Tel: 01604 367407
Fax: 01604 367004
[email address]
www.northamptonshire.gov.uk
Dear Freedom of Information,
Thank you for your response to this freedom of information request.
Please confirm that Northamptonshire County Council and/or Local Education Authority issues no guidance, policies or procedures to Local Education authority Schools and/or School Data Controllers within Northamptonshire with regards to safeguarding files.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Newton
I am writing to acknowledge your request for information dated 9th October 2014.
Our team is dealing with your request and we will be in contact with you soon. If you have any queries about this email, please contact me.
Kind regards
Gillian Hollowell
Senior Freedom of Information/Data Protection Officer
Business Intelligence and Performance Improvement
Northamptonshire County Council
Room 223
County Hall
Northampton NN1 1ED
Tel: 01604 367407
Fax: 01604 367004
[email address]
www.northamptonshire.gov.uk
Dear Mr Newton
The FOIA 2000 gives a requester the entitlement to held and recorded
information; NCC does not have a system where it would record if it had
issued
guidance, policies or procedures to Local education authority Schools
and/or
School Data Controllers within Northamptonshire with regards to
safeguarding
files.
However, to advise and assist you any files held by a Local Education
authority Schools and/or School Data Controllers would mean that by
definition
they are the data controller for them and information recorded in them and
are
not the responsibility of the Local Authority. Under the Data Protection
1998
regulations accessing pupils information held by schools in England would
be
dealt with by the Board of Governors.
As previously stated Schools are data controllers in their own right and
their
advice would be obtained from the ICO for either a subject access right or
the
rights to the education record - under the Education (Pupil Information)
(England) Regulations 2005 via the Board of Governors.
Kind regards
Gillian Hollowell
Senior Freedom of Information/Data Protection Officer Business
Intelligence
and Performance Improvement Northamptonshire County Council Room 223
County
Hall Northampton NN1 1ED
Tel: 01604 367407
Fax: 01604 367004
Dear Northamptonshire County Council,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Northamptonshire County Council's handling of my FOI request 'Access to school safeguarding files'.
Thank you for your reply. I have specifically asked for all policies that Northamptonshire county council have provided schools regarding this subject (#1 in the original FOI request). Your reply indicated I should speak to schools directly, but my origin request was for all policies issued by Northamptonshire County Council, not individual schools. You should be able to provide me the policies you have created. Please review this FOI request and either confirm Northamptonshire county council has never printed policies for schools in Northamptonshire, or provide the policies in full.
It is worthy of note that some of the policies I have requested are already publicly available which confirms that these do exist, for example - http://www.overstoneprimaryschool.org.uk...
I therefore do not accept that Northamptonshire County Council is acting honestly and in good faith with its refusal to provide me these documents which have been lawfully requested under the Act.
I request a full review of the FOI request from your legal department and require the policies, created by Northamptonshire County Council, to be provided within 7 days as the legal timeframe for this FOI request has now passed.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...
Yours faithfully,
Richard Newton
Thank you for your request for a review of FR5217 (1) dated 6^th November
2014. Your request has been dealt with under the Freedom of Information
Act 2000 and is detailed below in italics with our response in bold.
Relevant issues
· A request for information dated 9^th October 2014 @ 00:26
outside of business hours; was deemed to be received by the FOI/DP team on
Friday 10^th October 2014, this fell within the scope of FOIA 2000 and
was duly acknowledged, logged and allocated the FR5217 reference number. A
responded to this request was sent to you on 6^th November 2014 @ 15:19.
· We are required under the scope of this review to determine if
our response was given within the mandatory timescale of the Act 2000.
· We are required to consider whether NCC responded to all
questions asked with “held and recorded information” to the requester
within the time frames.
· If we relied on any exemptions we must set this out in the
letter in an explanatory manner.
Our response
o Dates of relevant response. Noted.
o Timeliness of our response. I am satisfied this requirement was met.
o Adequacy of response. I am satisfied this requirement was met.
o Relevant exemptions. Not relevant as no exemption was applied.
If our internal review does not resolve the issue to your complete
satisfaction, you have the right to apply to the information Commissioner
for a decision at the following address:
Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Penny Osborne (Reviewing Officer)
Business Intelligence and Performance Improvement
Email – [1][email address]
Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.
References
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