A breach too far: Information Commissioner's Office admonish Brent Council over how they dealt with data breach concerns

Following the recent  data breach when an email from Brent planning was sent openly to 970 email addresses LINK  that could be accessed by any recipient, the Information Commissioner's Office has given Brent Council 28 days to respond to the complainant, former councillor Alison Hopkins.  She had complained to the ICO that the response to her concerns over the breach were 'wholly  inadequate' when she was told that most of the other 969 recipients were mainly staff or stakeholders and the risk of misuse of her data was low.  The email was about the Neasden Stations Development Plan.

The ICO said:

Accountability is one of the data protection principles and makes you responsible for complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

 

You must be able to demonstrate your compliance to your customer and work hard to promote trust and resolve their concerns without the need for the individual to come to us. The attached document provides more detail about this.

 

As a regulator we look to organisations to effectively manage and resolve the data protection complaints they receive. When your customer comes to us to complain, they are in effect telling the regulator that they believe you are breaking the law. Reports of this kind are something that we will treat seriously and robustly.

 

We do not expect to receive complaints when there is still further work that you can do to better explain the processing in question to your customer, or to put things right when they have gone wrong.

 

We therefore require you to revisit the way you have handled this matter and consider what further action you can now take to resolve this complaint. We expect organisations to deal with the data protection complaints they receive and to proactively work with their customers to provide an appropriate resolution.

 

If you believe that you have complied with the data protection law, you need to explain this in detail to your customer. You also need to be confident that you have done all you can to find an appropriate resolution. If your organisation could have done more to resolve the concern then we expect you to take steps now to resolve the issue with your customer.

 

Shortly after this breach there was another breach via a  similarly addressed email about the Kilburn Square development LINK.

The ICO's letter reminded me of an incident back in 2017 reported on Wembley Matters LINK.

On this occasion the ICO wrote to the complainant:

You have contacted us to complain that Brent Council appears to have inappropriately disclosed your personal data.

Summary of case

In this case, your email address was cc’d into an email and disclosed to other individuals.

It would therefore appear that Brent Council has breached the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA).

Role of the ICO

Our role is to ensure that organisations follow the Data Protection Act 1998 properly. If things go wrong we will provide advice and ask the organisation to try to put things right. Our overall aim is to improve the way organisations handle personal information.

Next steps

Although it appears that Brent Council has breached the DPA, it would seem that this is down to human error, and the ICO does not consider it necessary to take any further regulatory action at this stage.

However, we have contacted the council to advise them of our view. We have also asked that they take the following measures to ensure that similar breaches do not occur in the future:

• To remind all staff to take extra due care and attention when sending emails by double checking addresses and only sending out relevant and appropriate information in future.
• To use the bcc feature when sending emails to numerous individuals with external email domains, to ensure that email addresses are not disclosed to other parties.
• To check that all staff have undertaken data protection training within the last 12 months.
• Inform any other parties whose data may have been inappropriately disclosed in this case.

 

Why you should oppose the Health & Care Bill - Keep Our NHS Public

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/339224764333387/

 Statement from Keep Our NHS Public

The Health and Care Bill will be launched this week, as Prime Minister Johnson overrules his new Health Secretary and Covid cases soar. KONP calls for widespread public opposition to the Bill, and for MPs and Lords to vote against it at every opportunity. The Bill will break the national NHS into 42 separate “Integrated Care Systems” (ICS), each with its own tight budget forcing cuts in care. Local NHS provision will be tied to a plan written by the ICS Board, open to the private sector, dragging local authorities into a financial project without real democratic accountability or public control.

The Bill will be promoted as an end to privatisation. It is the opposite, a transition to an unregulated market in healthcare. The Government is responsible for delaying lockdowns in March 2020 and before Christmas, untested discharges to spread infection into care homes, key workers dying without adequate PPE, failure to stop the Delta variant when it first appeared, exhausted and demoralised healthcare staff and150,000 deaths.

Despite this appalling list of errors, it claims the Bill is based on its record of pandemic management and points the way forward for the NHS as a whole. In practice this will mean unbridled collaboration with the private sector, openly celebrated by Matt Hancock before his fall, and certain to be endorsed by former banker and Chancellor, now Health Secretary Sajid Javid, and by the Prime Minister’s NHS advisors including the former CEO of Operose, the UK branch of US health insurance giant Centene, Samantha Jones. Already, some 200 firms, at least 30 of them US-owned and prominent in the health insurance market, are accredited to support the development and ongoing management of ICSs. They include Operose (which now controls dozens of GP surgeries and community services), Optum (owned by the largest US health insurance firm UnitedHealth), IBM, and Palantir.

As money drains from healthcare to shareholders, what will it mean for patients, and for NHS staff whose wellbeing is essential if they are to provide effective care?

For patients:

●more companies given access to confidential patient information, with no clear protection for patient privacy

●more digital services, creating a two-tier health service, depending on whether you’re able to make use of computers or smart phones

●fewer face-to face appointments with GPs, and less chance of seeing the same health worker

●more patient care given by less qualified (cheaper) staff, directed by computers and manuals

●growing expectation that patients will ‘self-care’, using phone apps or websites for advice or information

●more risk that services will be cut or rationed, and non-urgent referrals to hospital delayed or refused because of pressure on ICSs to make savings

●faster discharge from hospital, with family carers expected to take on more unpaid care due to lack of community services

For staff

●threat to national agreements on pay, terms and conditions as each ICS Board will have their own limited budget and seek to cut costs ●flexible working, with staff redeployed across and even beyond the ICS area, undermining team working, union organisation, continuity of care, and bad for the environment with increased travel

●deregulation, as nursing and other jobs are advertised to candidates without the right qualifications

●deregulation, as the Secretary of State will have the power to remove jobs from regulation -supposedly justified by new technology but actually risking harm to patients and interfering with professional judgement and staff development.

For democratic accountability and Local Authorities

● the Secretary of State for Health will assume decision making power to impose local service reconfigurations

● the right and power of scrutiny by local authorities of significant health changes will be weakened or abolished

● the right of access by the public to board meetings and papers may also be threatened

For legal protections

●exempting the NHS from the Public Contract Regulations 2015 will remove the right to reject bids on the grounds of non-compliance with environmental, social, or labour laws (ILO conventions guaranteeing Freedom of Association and the Right to Strike), and on the basis of a bidder’s track record.

During the pandemic, the government dished out over 3000 covid contracts, many of them without tendering, some to companies whose only qualification was being mates with a Minister.

That is the Brave New World the government plans for the NHS as a whole. The threats to staff should ring alarm bells for every trade union with members in the NHS, and the threats to patients should concern us all. Let’s stop this Bill now.

Can you contribute to the Brent Community Cookbook 'From Brent to Bowl' with recipes to reduce food waste by using leftovers?

 

From Brent Council

Brent Community Cookbook – planet saving recipes!

We are looking for winning community recipes that make use of leftovers (reducing food waste!) or are plant-based. ‘From Brent to Bowl’, an exciting new community cookbook is being launched that will tantalise your taste buds, and showcase the best food in the borough with recipes from around the world representing Brent, that help to tackle the climate emergency.

All recipe entries will be shortlisted by Brent Council and Veolia, and the winning 20 recipes will be published in the cookbook, as well as receiving a £75 voucher for the London Designer Outlet, which can be spent at any shop or restaurant. The book will be hosted for FREE on Brent Council’s website in September.

If you have a winning recipe, applications are open up until 1 August 2021, submit your recipe here. For more information, please email  recyclemore@brent.gov.uk.

Brent Lead Members answer some pertinent questions from councillors on support for pandemic's financial victims, climate action, tackling poverty and access to Recycling Centre after ULEZ expansion

Questions to Cabinet members from opposition councillors and non-Cabinet members are sometimes worth reading, although there are so few opposition councillors they tend to be 'friendly' questions enabling lead members to showcase their achievements.  These are the questions tabled for Monday's Full Council and the full answers are in the document posted below. Remember click bottom right for full page.

1.    Question from Councillor Parvez Ahmed to Councillor Margaret McLennan, Deputy Leader:

 

Can the Deputy Leader set out what is being done to support those of this borough’s residents whose financial situations have been hardest hit by the pandemic? Likewise, can the Deputy Leader explain what steps this council is taking to help the types of small businesses that local economies like Brent’s depend upon?

 

2.   Question from Councillor Orleen Hylton to Councillor Krupa Sheth, Lead Member for Environment:

 

In July 2019, Brent Council declared a climate and ecological emergency and committed to do all in its gift to strive for carbon neutrality by 2030. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic and the current efforts towards recovery, can the Cabinet Member for Environment set out how Brent’s efforts to build back better will help deliver on this borough’s climate commitments?

 

3.   Question from Councillor Gwen Grahl to Councillor Eleanor Southwood, Lead Member for Housing & Welfare Reform:

 

Can the Cabinet Member for Housing and Welfare Reform update on how Brent has so far delivered on its promise to tackle poverty, in all its forms, as so starkly laid out in last year’s Independent Poverty Commission’s findings.

 

4.    Question from Councillor Michael  Maurice to Councillor Krupa Sheth, Lead Member for Environment:

 

From 25 October 2021, the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ)is expanding from central London to create a single, larger zone up to the A406 North Circular Road. Petrol cars registered before 2006 and diesel cars registered before 2015 are likely to incur a £12.50 daily charge should they travel into the ULEZ area. This means that Brent residents living north of the North Circular Road with an older vehicle will incur a charge should they use the Household Waste and Recycling Centre situated at Abbey Road. This will impact those on low incomes disproportionately and potentially result in an increase of fly tipping. Will this Council make representations to Transport for London and the Mayor of London seeking an exemption from the charge for Brent residents legitimately using the HWRC. Alternatively, will the Council request that Brent residents living north of the zone be allowed to utilise Harrow Council’s facility at Forward Drive, thus avoiding the requirement to enter the ULEZ area? A map has been attached for further background

 

Fryent Way closed 2pm-Midnight Today, Wednesday and Sunday due to increased number of fans at Wembley matches

Fryent Way back in  2011 when it was closed for the  Championship League match between Barcelona and Manchester United

 Statement from Brent Council

Due to the increase in the number of fans attending the EURO 2020 Semi-Final and Final at Wembley Stadium, Fryent Way will be closed and used for parking on Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday this week.

This is to allow for more fan parking in designated zones and has been planned to help minimise disruption to residents. The closure will go into effect at 2pm with vehicles diverted via Kingsbury Road and Church Lane, and will be lifted at midnight. The road will have a central lane open for emergency vehicles only.

We would still encourage Ticketholders to travel by public transport or coach. Wembley Stadium will not provide parking for private vehicles during the event, except accessible parking.  Nearby street parking is reserved for local residents and businesses. 

Event Day parking restrictions will be active from 8am to midnight on main roads and from 10am to midnight on residential roads. If you have a paper Event Day permit, please make sure it is clearly displayed in the vehicle. Electronic permit holders do not need to display a permit.

 

2011 (Photos: Philip Grant)

 

The Myth of UK Housing Shortage Exposed by the Bank of England

 Guest comment piece by Nan Tewari

Given the unconscionable volumes of building going on in the borough (and elsewhere) we might hope the numbers of homeless families would be falling.  Yet this is far from being the case.  

The housing shortage rhetoric is somewhat at odds with the content of this article. It may well be time for public policy to recognise that having a home must be, first and foremost, a human right.  Housing as just an asset should be coming way down the list of what is acceptable in a civilised society when so many remain without a secure roof over their head.  

 Extracts from Posiitve Money's coverage of a Bank of England  LINK

If we look at the data, [...]. Housing stock levels have consistently risen at a higher rate than population growth even in the past couple of decades, and even in London. So, according to the laws of supply and demand, if houses were a simple consumer good, prices should have fallen – obviously not the case.

In the 1930s a typical three bed house was just 1 and a half times the average annual salary. By 1997 the average house price was 3.6 times the average salary. But in just twenty years that has more than doubled to nearly 8 times, and in London an ‘affordable’ home is 13 times first-time buyers’ salaries.

ALERT: Submissions to Wembley Park Station/Brook Avenue Planning Inquiry have to be in by Thursday July 8th - Read Philip Grant's submission

 

Submissions to the Planning Inquiry on the Wembley Park Station/Brook Avenue have a deadline of Thursday July 8th.

The referral to the Planning Inspectorate was made by Robert Jenrick MP, the Communites Secretary, after concern that the Planning Committee's approval decision was unsound as it was alleged to be in breach of Brent Council's own policies. LINK

Local historian Philip Grant has made a detailed submission that you can find below. Click bottom right for a full page view.

The closing date for comments, ahead of the Public Inquiry, is Thursday 8 July. Anyone who wishes to, but has not yet done so, can submit their comments to: leanne.palmer@planninginspectorate.gov.uk , quoting the reference: APP/T5150/ V/21/3275339. 

This may affect YOU! Far-reaching Neasden development plan consultations start tomorrow

 I am very familiar with residents saying they haven't heard about development plans and consultations in Brent - sometimes only realising something is afoot when building starts. This consultation has had some extra publicity due to the data breach caused when emails were sent in open format, so that everyone's email address could be seen by all recipients. LINK

Often afterwards the Council will give a long list of people written to, web announcements and consultation events. Those I have been to often attract fewer people than the number of developer/council and public relations staff attending.

This plans covers a wide area including industrial sites around Neasden Lane, the side of the railway and eventually the College of North West London site on Dudden Hill Lane. 'Neasden Stations' is a bit of a misnomer as it covers such a big area. It could take a decade to complete.

The Council says the the Draft Neasden Stations Growth Area Masterplan:

 '...Aims to provide at least 2000 new homes and employment and support infrastructure to bring the physical and social-economic regeneration of the area.'

 

THE MASTER PLAN

DESIGN OPTIONS VIABILITY REPORT 

LINK TO ON-LINE CONSULTATION