Privacy notice – substance misuse treatment service

North Somerset Council is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office for the purposes of processing personal data.  Your privacy is important to us and we take great care to protect it. The information provided will be held and used in accordance with the requirements of UK and European data protection law. The processing of this information is lawful as it is necessary for the provision of treatment, care and harm minimisation in relation to substance misuse to ensure that the best care possible is provided (GDPR Articles 6(1)(d) and 9(2)(h).

Substance misuse treatment services are provided on behalf of North Somerset Council by our partners; Addaction, Locality Health Centre CIC and local pharmacies who provide the following services:

• Addaction – substance misuse treatment for all problematic drug and alcohol use, including detox and facilitation to residential treatment where appropriate
• Pier Health Group Limited – shared prescribing service for opiate substation therapy in collaboration with Addaction
• Pharmacies – supervised consumption of opiate substitution therapy (all pharmacies) and needle exchange services (selected pharmacies)

Treatment services

The information provided will form part of your case file and will be shared between Addaction, Locality Health Centre, your GP and designated pharmacy where appropriate to ensure your treatment needs are met safely and to minimise any associated risks.  Some information will also be shared with North Somerset Council for the purpose of monitoring service provision. Only aggregated anonymous data will be included in published reports. Anonymised treatment data will also be submitted to Public Health England for national reporting. We will not use your personal information in a way that may cause you unwarranted nuisance, we do not share information with other organisations for commercial purposes and at no time will any of your personal information be made public. Information will be held for a minimum of eight years after finally leaving all substance misuse related services.  At no point is your data shared or processed outside of the UK.

Information will also be shared with safeguarding if there are any concerns about a risk of harm to either you or anyone connected to you (for example children, vulnerable adults). We may lawfully disclose information to public sector agencies to prevent or detect fraud or other crime, or to support the national fraud initiatives and protect public funds under the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. Under the conditions of the Digital Economy Act 2017, we may also share personal data provided with other public authorities as defined in the Act, for the purposes of fraud or crime detection or prevention, to recover monies owed to us, to improve public service delivery, or for statistical research.

Needle exchange service

This is an anonymous service, any personal information shared with the pharmacy is not disclosed to any other organisation other than in an anonymous form to North Somerset Council for the purpose of monitoring the service delivery.

You have the right to see the personal data we process about you, as well as the right of rectification and restriction to destruction of records.  

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we process your personal data, contact our Data Protection Officer at DPO@n-somerset.gov.uk