What is this information?
Personal information about births in Lambeth is supplied to local authorities by the NHS Digital and contains data provided at the time of registration of birth along with additional geographic information. Lambeth Council has a Data Access Agreement with NHS Digital and data are supplied under section 42(4) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 as amended by section 287 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and Regulation 3 of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002. Information held includes NHS number, date of birth, place of birth, birth weight, sex, address of mother, occupation of father and mother, marital status and an indicator for stillbirths.
Who uses this information?
The Public Health Intelligence Team in Lambeth Council.
What do we do with this information?
This information is used for the purposes of statistical analysis, the monitoring of population health and demographic change in the local authority and GP population, and the planning and commissioning (buying) of health services.
This information is used specifically to identify patterns and trends in birth rates, low birth weight, and stillbirths, highlighting differences between geographic areas, age, sex and other characteristics. It is also used to identify differences between areas and inform the planning and targeting of health, care and public health services. This information is used in the Annual Public Health Report, Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (which informs the Health and Wellbeing Strategy and local commissioning plans), and health needs assessments, as well as for the monitoring of seasonal patterns, and population projections.
The term person identifiable data relates to any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. The following fields in the Birth Record are classified as person identifiable: address, place of birth, postcode of usual residence of mother/postcode of place of birth of the child, NHS number of child, date of birth of a child. These identifiable data are processed by Lambeth County Council for specific purposes including determining catchment areas, distances and drive times for providers of fertility and maternity services, and to monitor trends in monthly births to identify patterns in birth rate across the year. For other purposes, a pseudonymised version of the dataset is used. Pseudonymisation is a process through which identifiable fields within a data record are replaced by artificial identifiers or pseudonyms which means that individuals are no longer identifiable.
No personally identifiable information is published, and numbers and rates in published reports, adhere to ONS disclosure control guidance, to further protect the confidentiality and anonymity count fewer than 5 at the local authority are not published.
Why do we use this information?
This information is used to ensure that health, social care and public health services are designed to address local health needs and are focused on reducing health inequalities (differences in health status in relation to birth rates, low birth weights and stillbirth between groups and areas). We also use information from this dataset for work on planning fertility and maternity services.
Who do we intend to share this information with?
This information will not be disclosed to anyone other than those stated above without your permission unless we have a legal reason to do so, for example, disclosure is necessary to protect a person from suffering significant harm or necessary for crime prevention or detection purposes.
How do we keep this information secure?
Information is held in a secure database only accessible to analytical staff within the Lambeth Public Health Intelligence Team. The database is on a secure internal network protected by AES 256 encryption.
Data will be held be for births registered from 1996 onwards consistent with the data access agreement between NHS Digital, the Office for National Statistics and Lambeth Council.
What are your rights?
You have the right to request Lambeth Council to stop processing your personal data in relation to any council service. However, if this request is approved this may cause delays or prevent us delivering a service to you. Where possible we will seek to comply with your request but we may need to hold or process information in connection with one or more of the Council’s legal functions.
You have the right to opt-out of the Lambeth Council Public Health Intelligence Team receiving or holding your personal identifiable information. There are occasions where service providers will have a legal duty to share information, for example for safeguarding or criminal issues. The process for opting out will depend on the specific data is and what programme it relates to. If you have any questions about our use of these data, wish to request a copy of the information we hold about you, or if you wish to discuss your rights in relation to opting-out from these processes, please contact the Information Governance Officer, 7th Floor, Phoenix House, 10 Wandsworth Road, London, SW8 2LL. More information about how the Council will protect your privacy is available from our privacy notice page.
If you have concerns about the use of your personal data, the Information Commissioners Office is an independent body set up to uphold information rights in the UK. They can be contacted through their website: www.ico.org.uk, through their helpline (0303 123 1113) and in writing at their head office: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.