Infectious disease - investigation questionnaire privacy notice
Privacy notice for infectious disease - investigation questionnaire.
Who we are and what we do
Elmbridge Borough Council are what is known as the ‘Controller’ of any personal data that you provide to us. For further information please see our corporate privacy notice.
What we need
As part of an infectious disease investigation we may ask you to complete a medical questionnaire. The information required will include; name, sex, address, phone number, email, date of birth, doctor’s surgery address, details of places visited, details of food and water consumed. In certain circumstances details of sexual activity may also be requested.
We will do this if you are a resident in the borough that submitted a stool sample following a gastrointestinal illness, and the laboratory test has shown the presence of an infectious disease or you where you may be linked to an outbreak under investigation.
Following national arrangements under the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations 2010, Elmbridge Borough Council Environmental Health team will be informed of this result. Your information will be stored in line with the Council’s privacy policy. More details can be found in our corporate privacy notice.
In order for us to establish the cause of your illness it is important that we investigate the case as fully as possible. We would therefore request your cooperation in filling out the appropriate questionnaire related to your illness.
Where a significant outbreak occurs an incident investigation report into the incident may be created.
Why we need it
The purpose of providing the information is to enable investigation and to minimize the spread of infectious disease and contamination in the community.
What we do with it
The information that you provide will be held by the Council and will be accessed by authorised Council employees. The information may be shared with other enforcement and health agencies including (but not exclusively) Public Health England, GP’s, HSE and other Local Authorities. The lawful basis for the processing of personnel data is for the purposes of protecting public health.
We may pass on your personal information if we have a legal obligation to do so, this includes exchanging information with other government departments for legal reasons.
We will also use this information to contact you to provide updates if deemed necessary in order to protect public health.
How long we keep it
Your personal data will be removed from our database, in line with our retention policy.
(i) Notifications of Infectious Diseases and
(ii) Outbreak Investigation questionnaires
Will be deleted 18 months after the completion of the investigation.
(iii) Outbreak/incident investigation reports (local outbreaks, incidents)
Retention period depends on whether children were involved in the outbreak:
If Yes - retained for 25 years
If No – retained for 8 years
What are your rights?
These are contained in our corporate privacy notice.