Strict new rules on how town and parish councils hold emails hits Shropshire
Town council officials in Newport say they have ticked all the boxes of new requirements on handling information about residents.
All town and parish councils in Telford & Wrekin and nationally – even the smallest – are being told to upgrade their emails, websites and to comply with data protection regulations.
By the end of this financial year smaller councils have to prepare Annual Governance and Accountability Returns with new requirements. It is being done to streamline processes, enhance transparency, and improve governance standards, councillors heard.
These mean that every council must now have a generic email account hosted on an authority-owned domain, for example, clerk@abcparishcouncil.gov.uk or clerk@abcparishcouncil.org.uk rather than abcparishclerk@gmail.com or abcparishclerk@outlook.com.
Websites must also be ‘accessible’.
Louise Tunks, Newport Town Council’s deputy town clerk, told a meeting on Wednesday that there is ‘no extra work’ for them to do “we’ve done it.”
“People have to be able to go on a website to find the information we hold,” she said. The council is set to make changes to various policies and to make sure that councillors can be trained on how the changes impact them.
The meeting of the council’s resource and finance committee was told that so-called Assertion 10 means councils can only hold on to a limited amount of data on individuals and must delete it when issues are resolved.
Jo Reay, the town clerk, said they must only hold on to relevant data for the purpose that they need it for. And this must not include sex, race, age or other ‘protected characteristics’.
“That data is not relevant to knowing about an allotment,” she said.
Emails that are held on individuals must be deleted, she said, adding that she had the power to go into any Newport Town Council email account to retrieve data.
Former town mayor Councillor Ian Perry (North Ward) asked whether personal email addresses should be used for council business. He was told council issues need to be dealt with by using council emails.
“What about talking to people in the pub?” Councillor Perry asked.
He was told as there is no record of conversations that data could not be stored or deleted.
“There are lots of grey areas,” he was told.
Members of the public also have a right to make subject access requests to find out what data councils hold on them.
The clerk added that she had “lived and breathed GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) since it came out.”
The meeting was told that the issue came to a head some years ago after private companies stored data about individuals and passed it on to others. Small councils are now being impacted by legislation passed on the issue.
