The client
Hampshire County Council is one of the largest local authorities in the United Kingdom, serving a population of approximately 1.4 million residents. Its Social Services Department provides care and support services in various areas, including:
- Adult Social Care
- Children and Family Services
- Mental Health Services
- Disabilities and Learning Support
What did they need?
Like many local authorities, Hampshire County Council receives a significant amount of subject access requests (SARs) every year. Post-COVID, and with the awareness surrounding individual rights expanding across the UK, an increasing number of requests had been received. This new demand, together with the difficulties of hiring and training SAR officers quickly, meant that outsourcing would be the most efficient way for the Council to ensure subjects received their information.
Hampshire County Council approached us at DPAS to provide additional redaction support and assistance, to help them in meeting the requirements set out by legislation such as the GDPR.
How did we help?
DPAS worked closely with Hampshire County Council to redact a number of SARs. Our experienced subject access request (SAR) team provided expert SAR redaction services tailored to the requirements of Hampshire County Council’s procedures, and the specifics of each request.
Due to our extremely comprehensive SAR onboarding procedure, the DPAS team were fully briefed on the council’s redaction style to ensure that processes were aligned, giving them full confidence in the quality of our team’s work. The DPAS internal quality assurance procedure meant that the council could be certain the SARs were redacted in line with the law, the data subjects would not be at any harm from the released information, and that third parties’ data was adequately protected.
Thankfully for the council, Data Privacy Advisory Service boasts a large team of expert redactors, all with extensive knowledge and experience from assisting numerous organisations from different sectors in completing complex SARs. This meant that we could offer an accurate and efficient redaction service, in line with the timelines specified by the council.
What the client had to say:
“In our experience, DPAS have shown expertise in redacting Children’s Services records, which can often be highly complex and contain particularly sensitive information. The relationship that has been built between the County Council and DPAS is one we highly value and is based on strong communication between the teams. DPAS are always approachable and respond to any of our queries in a timely fashion with enthusiasm and a willingness to help. We would certainly recommend DPAS’s services to any other local authority who find themselves requiring support with the processing of SARs.”
James McKenzie, Deputy Head of Service IGBS & Complaints Manager at Hampshire County Council
