Number of Agency staff having access to sensitive information

The request was successful.

Dear Cheshire East Council,

Recent news articles relating to council's lack of control over Data security http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33856785 raises alarm bells with me. It seems the obvious risk is that staff not directly employed by the council have access to sensitive information such as vulnerable persons data, finance data, payroll etc.

I would to know how many agency staff are engaged by the authority in roles were they have access to sensitive information as above.
How does the authority control this access by persons not directly employed by the council.

Yours faithfully,

Derek Ainsworth

FOI East, Cheshire East Council

Dear Mr Ainsworth

Thank you for your email.

It will be treated as a request for information within the meaning of the Freedom of Information Act: this means that we will send you a full response within 20 working days, either supplying you with the information which you want, or explaining to you why we cannot supply it. The due date is 09/09/2015. However, before we forward your request on to the appropriate department, we need you to clarify certain points in your request. Firstly, could you please define 'staff not directly employed' and also, could you specify what form of personal data you are particularly concerned about. As it stands at present, the request could entail more than the statutory 18 hours to deal with, so we would ask if you could be as specific as possible. I will place your request 'on-hold' until I hear back from you.

In the meantime if you wish to discuss this further please contact the department. It would be helpful if you could quote the log number 810774.

Yours sincerely

Martin Johnson
Compliance & Customer Relations,
1st Floor Westfields,
c/o
Municipal Buildings
Earle Street
Crewe
CW1 2BJ

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Dear FOI East,

It has been sometime since you replied with your holding email yet I have not received an answer to my question. Please reply as a matter of urgency or I will be forced to lodge a complaint with the LGO.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Ainsworth

FOI East, Cheshire East Council

Dear Mr Ainsworth

Thank you for your email, concerning the response to your request. I've attached your original request for your information.

As I mentioned in my original acknowledgement of your request below, we were asking for clarification of some of the points in your request, before we could pass it to our HR team for response. I advised that I would put your request on hold until I heard back from you.

As I have not received anything from you until now, I am afraid the request has not been passed through to HR for the response. The clarification we needed is in the original email below, so if you could come back to me as soon as possible on this, I will get HR to put a response together for you.

Yours sincerely

Martin Johnson
Customer Relations & Compliance
Cheshire East Council

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Dear FOI East,

Staff not directly employed would include those employed by an agency or contractor.

Access to financial data such as acoounts, payments, or other financial information using the councils financial system.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Ainsworth

FOI East, Cheshire East Council

Dear Mr Ainsworth

Thank you for the clarification.

I will relay this back to our HR team and hope to get a response to you as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

Martin Johnson
Customer Relations & compliance
Cheshire East Council

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FOI East, Cheshire East Council

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Ainsworth

 

Freedom of Information Request 810774.

 

Thank you for your request for information.  Our response to your request
(as provided by our HR department) is detailed below:

 

Recent news articles relating to council's lack of control over Data
security [1]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33856785 raises alarm bells with
me. It seems the obvious risk is that staff not directly employed by the
council have access to sensitive information such as vulnerable persons
data, finance data, payroll etc.

 

I would to know how many agency staff are engaged by the authority in
roles were they have access to sensitive information as above.

 

During the month of September 2015, we had 230 agency staff that could
potentially have had access to sensitive information.

 

How does the authority control this access by persons not directly
employed by the council.

 

All agency staff are required to sign the attached confidentially
agreement.

 

Social workers must also adhere to the Health and Care Professional
Council standards.

 

I hope this information will be of assistance to you, but if you are
unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your request and
wish to make a complaint or request a review under the Freedom of
Information Act you should write to the Compliance Unit, Cheshire East
Council, Westfields Floor 1, C/O Municipal Buildings, Earle Street ,
Crewe, Cheshire CW1 2BJ

               

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the
ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the complaints
procedure provided by the Council. The Information Commissioner can be
contacted at: The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water
Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Martin Johnson

Customer Relations & Compliance

Cheshire East Council

 

 

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References

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1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33856785