Privacy Policy

Welcome to NHS England Getting It Right First Time Programme (GIRFT)’s privacy notice. GIRFT respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Important information and who we are

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how GIRFT collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website (regardless of where you visit it from), the exercise of our statutory functions or when you exercise certain rights under legislation.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

GIRFT is part of an aligned set of programmes within NHS England and therefore, NHS England are the legal entity and data controller with respect to statements in this privacy notice. There is a separate NHS England Privacy notice which outlines the data within NHS England for GIRFT purposes. Please click here to access the NHS England Privacy Notice.

This privacy notice is issued on behalf of GIRFT but where we use the terms ‘GIRFT’, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ in this privacy notice in a legal sense, we are referring to NHS England as the relevant legal entity for GIRFT.

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about our privacy notice or information we hold about you:
Customer Contact Centre
Telephone: 0300 311 22 33
Email: england.contactus@nhs.net
General Post (including complaints, but not legal proceedings): NHS England, PO Box 16738, Redditch, B97 9PT

Our Customer Contact Centre opening hours are 9am to 3pm Monday to Friday, except Wednesdays when we open at the later time of 9.30am. We are closed on bank holidays.

Contact details of our Data Protection Officer

NHS England has appointed a Data Protection Officer. If you have any queries about this privacy notice or about how NHS England processes personal data please contact our data protection officer at the address below.

Carol Mitchell
Head of Corporate Information Governance and Data Protection Officer
Transformation & Corporate Development Directorate
NHS England
Quarry House
Quarry Hill
Leeds
LS2 7UE

E-mail: england.dpo@nhs.net

Further information regarding NHS England Data Protection Officer can be found at NHS England » The role of the Data Protection Officer

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes (for example your email address) during your relationship with us.

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender. This information will be held only for GIRFT staff and for no other persons.
Special Categories of Personal Data (non-health) includes information about disability, race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation or information about political opinions. Again, this information will be held only for GIRFT staff and for no other persons.
Other personal data which does not fall within any of the above categories (such as employment status and contract type, criminal convictions and offences or bank details) is held to fulfil our functions in the recruitment, appointment, development, and appraisal of GIRFT staff. This includes information and correspondence related to recruitment and appraisal, performance and development information for those who have either applied for roles that we advertise, have expressed an interest in applying for these roles or who have been appointed to the GIRFT programme.
Contact Data includes email, postal address and telephone numbers. We may hold this information for people that the GIRFT programme works with. No information of this type will be held for patients or any person who is unknown to the GIRFT programme.
Health Data includes information received by GIRFT in the form of parliamentary questions; internal investigations due to complaints or internal whistle-blowing; information received relating to patient safety incidents recorded via the National Reporting and Learning System; information shared by NHS Resolution about litigation claims; and diagnostic and procedure information about the healthcare services that patient have received. This latter data we collect either directly or indirectly from GP practices, healthcare commissioners or providers of healthcare services.

Click here for further information about use of litigation claims data from NHS Resolution >

How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you
where it is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest
where we have your consent
where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and the legal bases we rely on to do so.

Purpose/activity	Type of data	Type of data Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To send bulletins and email updates	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Consent
To engage with stakeholders and send stakeholder e-newsletter	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Necessary for our legitimate interests to keep people information of issues
To inform trusts of the programme’s work and findings	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Necessary for our legitimate interests to keep people informed of issues
To deliver relevant website content and measure or understand the effectiveness of website or services	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Necessary for our legitimate interests to keep people informed of issues
To respond to a request under the Freedom of Information Act, enquiries, the Data Protection Act, or the UK General Data Protection Regulation	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation
To investigate and respond to a complaint (including whistle-blowing) raised by you	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest
To recruit, appoint, appraise and develop GIRFT staff	B(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Special Categories (d) Other personal data related to recruitment and development	Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest
To understand the delivery of health care services	(c) Health	Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest
To learn from patient safety incidents	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Health	Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, our NHS England Privacy Cookie Policy.

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us england.contactus@nhs.net.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Disclosures of your personal data

We never disclose personal data to another organisation in any circumstance.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements have been considered.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see ‘Request erasure below for further information.

Your legal rights

REQUEST ACCESS to your personal data (commonly known as a subject access request). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

REQUEST CORRECTION of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

REQUEST ERASURE of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

OBJECT TO PROCESSING of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

REQUEST RESTRICTION OF PROCESSING OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at england.contactus@nhs.net.

WITHDRAW CONSENT AT ANYTIME where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise this right set out above, please contact us on england.contactus@nhs.net.

Please note that we don’t require you (whether under statute or contract) to provide personal data and we do not make use of automated decision making in relation to personal data. If this changes, we will let you know.