Request to receive corespondence by Clerk about me, a parishioner, sent to county council highways officer.

Question

During this year's annual inspection of parish council accounts, the Clerk prompted by the parish council chairman who had just arrived at the inspection ('to protect the clerk'), suddenly produced from their bag and read out to me - and the person accompanying me - an email they had sent to our county council highways officer naming me about an issue about poor work carried out on a road I'd raised at the parish council meeting the night before. The Clerk then read out the response from the highways officerr which also named me. The Clerk and Chairman then both accused me of being a liar which I refuted. I asked for a copy of the two emails but was told this wasn't going to happen. Not only was this intrusion, accusation and publication verbally of these emails by the Clerk and Chairman into a private session by two members of the public who had quite properly arranged to inspect the council's accounts during the set period extremely rude and offensive, it had nothing to do with our inspection session, and was I believe designed to discredit and demean me in the eyes of the person accompanying me, who had never before met either the Clerk or the Chairman, who seemed bent on disrupting the session and behaving in a deeply uncivil and vile manner, humiliating and embarrassing to both me and my companion. This interruption and the manner in which it was orchestrated and managed by the Clerk and Chairman put an end to our legitimate inspection session, having not had the time or opportunity to inspect all the documents we wished to see. It left both of us both bewildered and concerned that the Clerk, colluding with the Chairman of the parish council had not only interferred with our legal right to inspect all the annual accounts documents but also made false allegations and used the time for our inspection to attack me personally and read from emails that I had no prior knowledge or and have still not seen. I wish to see the emails as I would like to pursue the matter with the Monitoriing Officer who needs all the documentation. How can I obtain these emails which name me? The emails have not appeared under Correspondence on any subequent meeting agendas, but I need to know whether  any/all the other parish councillors was copied into the correspondence - and whether there has been any further correspondence by the Clerk/Chairman/parish council about this matter. Does the inclusion of my name in such correspondence breach any GDPR rules?

Answer 1

Submit a Subject Access Request under Article 15 of the UK GDPR to both the parish council and the highways authority, specifically requesting your personal data in relation to the communications you describe. If your parish council has a Data Protection Officer, submit the request to them as they should be independent of the parish council and look at your request objectively and fairly. To find out whether your parish council has a DPO, search the ICO's Data Protection Register.

If you need any help in drafting your SARs then please let me know.

In matters relating to concerns surrounding your personal identifiers (name), the parish council's privacy notice or data protection policy should define how your information can be shared in such situations.

Comments

The Clerk is DPO and has already beached GDPR in respect to my signaature. Our DPO is not independent - far from it.

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It is only public authorities that need to appoint an independent DPO. DPA 2018 Secton 7(3)(a) specifies that a Parish Council it not considered a public authority within the DPA.

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There is a potential conflict if the Clerk of the parish council also serves as the council's Data Protection Officer (DPO).

The UK GDPR states that the DPO must operate independently and without a conflict of interest. Specifically, the DPO must not have any role that leads to a conflict between their duties as a DPO and other responsibilities that involve determining the purposes and means of processing personal data.

As the Clerk of the parish council typically has operational responsibilities, including managing records, overseeing staff, and implementing council policies (including those related to data processing), this could present a conflict of interest. The Clerk may be involved in decisions about how personal data is processed or managed, which could make it difficult to independently oversee data protection compliance and advise the council without bias.

For this reason, many councils avoid appointing the Clerk as the DPO, opting instead for an external DPO or another individual who does not have operational control over data processing activities. This helps ensure that the DPO can maintain independence and carry out their duties objectively, in accordance with the UK GDPR.

Whilst I appreciate you may feel the Clerk has breached the UK GDPR, in respect of your signature the only real way of determining this is by raising a data protection concern with the parish council. If you are not satisfied with its response, you can then send your concern to the ICO.

Answer 2

I have absolutely no doubt that my comments here are going to generate a barrage of angry responses, but here goes.  An alternative comment.  There are always two or more sides to every story.

Firstly, your inspection of the council's accounts should not have been hijacked and you should be raising this with the external auditors although it is the end of September now so the period for raising this has probably passed.

Secondly, I understand you raised concerns about poor highway repairs at the parish council meeting the day before your appointment to view the accounts.  Parish councils are not highway authorities so have no jurisdiction over the highway or repairs to it.  I am amazed that by the following day they had passed your comments to the highway authority and actually received a response which they then attempted to share with you.  I agree that they should have checked whether you were happy for your name to be included in this exchange and you certainly have a right to object to this, but in reality you should/could have raised this yourself directly with the highway authority and any report to that authority would undoubtedly have required you to do so by giving your personal details so that they can report back to you with their response to your comments.  I'm not defending the clerk/chair for doing this without checking with you but I am saying that they responded quickly to the matter you raised at the meeting so presumably you expected them to actually do something.  

As has been said, you can lodge a subject access request to ask for those emails but I can't help thinking here that what might have started out as good intentions seems to have gone horribly wrong.  We are all a bit quick to blame without looking a bit deeper into intentions.  

Comments

I was also shocked to see how quickly the highways department had replied. Lucky to get any reply at all where i am. If you do get one it's weeks later.

They raised the highways issue in a public meeting so they cannot be that concerned about who knows they raised the issue. Anyone would have been in their rights to record the meeting and publish it online in its entirety for the world to see, names and all.

Yes, technically there is a breach of GDPR, but i feel that the OP's concerns about his stem more from a general hatred towards the parish council and looking for more things to nit-pick about rather than any real concern that the highways department now knows their name.

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I did raise the badly potholed and damaged road with the Highways Officer - who I know and had met well before the council meeting - but nothing had been done which is why I raised my concerns at the parish counci meeting. I too was astonished to find tha the Clerk had not only had the time to write to the Highways Officer but also recieve his reply the day after the council meeting, but also to be accused of lying about the matter by both th Clerk and Chairman in front of the person who accompanied me to the annual accounts inspection session was incrible. It shoudl also be pointed out that the Clerk was not at the accouonts session as Clerk - but as RFO - and therefore had no right to raise any other matter in that session - let alone deliberately collude with the Chairman at that session to humilliate and embarrass me when I was there to inspect the council accounts only. It was quite obvious from the behaviour and convesation of both Clerk and Chairman that they had no intention of my being able to complete my inspection of the council account books, docs, receipts etc - that this was a deibarate deflection tactic they had decided upn and rehearsed prior to the inspection session.

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Maybe missing the point in some of the responses so far...

I rather doubt the issue is that the person's name was included in the email between the PC and the HA (since that was already in the public domain following an open point raised at a PC meeting) but rather the content of the email from PC to HA, I'm guessing, with a derogatory tone or content in relation to the parishioner would more likely be the issue and the reason for initial refusal to realise by PC.

Naming a person in an email after they have publicly raised a concern at a PC meeting is unlikely to be considered crime of the century.  It's the content of the narrative forwarded within the email which I think this PC is reluctant to release.

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Actualy - although I raided the problems with the road surface and the dangers it posed at the council meeting, my comments were not minuted nor did the councl respond to me in writing or even acknowledge the matter had been brought up at all - except when both bits of emailed correspondoence were read out by the Clerk reading out the email they had sent to the Highways Officer and his response during the annual accounts session. I have never been given any right of reply to the allegation of lying re the matter by either the Clerk or the Chairman who hijacked the annual accounts inspection session without any warning, or permission on our behalf.