How much data can I gather?
You also need to consider other aspects of data protection.
Be proportionate – only gather and use Covid-19 data where you need to.
Keep data to a minimum – you shouldn’t gather more data than you need. You need to know someone has Covid-19 but you don’t need to know all their symptoms. Data minimisation also applies to who gets access to the data. It’s unlikely that a spreadsheet, accessible to everyone updating them on the health status of all employees, would be appropriate. Data should be shared on a need to know basis. You need to balance the privacy of individuals against your duty of care to be responsible with regards to the data of your employees, visitors, customers and suppliers.
Keep it up to date – make sure you update data. People’s health status will change and if you keep a record of this, you need to make sure it is accurate and up to date (although this doesn’t mean you should batter individuals with constant requests for updates on health status. Again, be proportionate).
Identify individuals only when you need to – although you will need to know who has Covid-19, that doesn’t mean you need to tell everyone in the organisation. As soon as you can, you should remove personal data from any information you gather. For example, you might want to update employees on the health status of their fellow employees but you probably don’t need to name individuals and even if you feel it is necessary, you should keep the information you provide to a minimum. Removing personal identifiers in a document is also a good data security technique.
Keep the Covid-19 health data secure – Covid-19 data will be special category data and deemed high risk. This means that if you have a breach of this data you will need to notify it to the ICO. A breach could happen by someone losing a print-out of the names of Covid-19 employees, customers or visitors. It could also happen if you set access rights to lists of Covid-19 sufferers open to more people than need to know the information. The risk of ICO enforcement action increases with the potential harm the disclosure could cause. Although the ICO has indicated that it will be understanding about the impact of Covid-19 on normal operations, this doesn’t mean that they will not prosecute you if the breach is sufficiently serious.
Destroy the data once you don’t need it – Finally, of course, make sure that you delete data at the end of your needs. This might last longer than the pandemic, for example if you have an insurance claim or ongoing litigation. If you do need to keep it, consider whether or not you can delete some of the data to minimise what you hold.
Related FAQs
CMA guidance suggests that it will not take enforcement action in respect of agreements which:
- Are appropriate and necessary to avoid a shortage, or ensure security, of supply
- Are clearly in the public interest
- Contribute to the benefit or wellbeing of consumers
- Deal with critical issues that arise as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic
- Last no longer than is necessary to deal with these critical issues
The Chancellor has announced that all retail and hospitality firms will be exempt from paying business rates for 12 months in a bid to combat the financial damage caused by the outbreak.
This covers pubs, restaurants and shops. After initially covering businesses with a rateable value of less than £51,000, this has now been extended to cover firms of any size, “irrespective of rateable value.”
Smaller businesses have also been offered the option of a £25,000 grant to cope with the impact of coronavirus.
Since the announcement, the Government has also introduced a wide-ranging package of targeted measures to provide financial support to businesses during the coronavirus crisis.
A claim for indirect discrimination is the most likely risk here. The first point to make is that the decision to review duties is being made based on the growing amount of medical evidence that the BAME community is being disproportionately adversely affected by the COVID 19 pandemic compared to other ethnic groups. The key is to ensure that blanket policy decisions are not taken, nor should assumptions be made about the risk to each individual concerned. Decisions should only be made on an individual basis with an open dialogue with the individual concerned. You as their employer, need to ensure that the individual feels listened to and heard; that this is not just a tick box exercise.
Consider having a working group which has an overview of the policy decisions being made. That working group should contain representatives from across the staff groups including staff side, but importantly, representatives from different ethnic backgrounds to ensure the important voices are heard. Accountability should be built into that group. This group should also be a safe environment for staff to raise concerns about their health and safety and safe systems at work.
Maintenance Orders embodied in a Court Order are variable. If you have lost a very large part of your income, then the Courts ought to take that into consideration when looking at a Court Application to reduce or end spousal maintenance payments. The outcome of any Court Application will, however, depend on a number of factors.
Technically, you should not just stop paying or reduce the maintenance payments, as your ex-spouse could then make an Application to Court for enforcement and payment of the arrears. You could ask the Court to forego you having to pay those arrears if you had evidence to prove that you could not make the payments, however, the Court will need to take a fair approach and you should not assume this request will be agreed.
You should first try to negotiate a reduction or termination of the maintenance with your ex-spouse, either directly or through a Solicitor. If this is possible, you should obtain a Court Order reflecting that agreement. Where a sensible compromise cannot be reached, a Court Application may be necessary.
It is the individual assessment by an organisation of its Covid-19 risk in its workplace that will be central. There may be common features across sites or areas of a site but every workplace will have a different risk profile depending on the service it offers and the workers who deliver those services. No one size fits all.
The context of managing Covid-19 risk is the need to tie in with UK government guidance and HSE advice – which despite being a lot more comprehensive than it was, is not a panacea and will continue to evolve. The difficulty we have with this in the context of the known increased risk to BAME employees from Covid-19 is that our understanding of the risk is, we would suggest, at a pretty early stage which makes it more difficult to address. However we know the increased risk exists and we owe our BAME workers a duty to manage that risk and keep them safe.
We also have a duty to consult employees. This is critical in managing this risk – ensuring BAME workers have a loud voice in the assessment process will be very important.
Where an individual has a particular characteristic, for instance they’re pregnant, they have physical or mental disabilities etc, the law requires us to look at that individual or, where it is a group, that group of individuals and assess the risk to them and take any reasonably practicable steps to control the risk to them.
Risk control hierarchy is key. In “normal” businesses we reduce our Covid-19 risk by keeping people away from the workplace – “avoid, eliminate and substitute” then changing work practices (e.g. social distancing measures) before we arrive at PPE. In a healthcare context, we arrive at PPE a lot more quickly.
We need to ensure our people are given sufficient information, instruction and training so they can do their jobs safely and we must consult workers and involve them in workplace safety – this is going to be critical in the context of Covid-19.