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Information, Advice or Guidance

Accurate record keeping is also important in law; a number of laws exist to safeguard
client information and ensure it is being kept accurately. The Data Protection Act 1998
was passed by Parliament to control the way information is handled and to give legal
rights to people who have information stored about them.

In May 2018, some new regulations which run with the Data Protection Act 1998
came into force. These are known as the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 or
GDPR. The GDPR is about how organisations store your information and how they are
allowed to use it. Though some of the regulations are similar to information already
held in the Data Protection Act, the GDPR reinforces the process and applies much
more widely. For example, if a company that is based outside of the EU has your
personal information because you purchased an item from them, then they will also
have to abide by the regulations, as will organisations which work within the UK and
the EU but are registered to another country.

One of the key requirements of the GDPR is that data must be accurate and be kept
up to date. There is a duty to keep it up to date and, for example, to change an address
when people move. Failure to do so can result in criminal proceedings.

You will look at this legislation in more detail later in the course, but in order to comply
with GDPR, an organisation that holds your details must be much more transparent as
to why they are doing this and what they will do with this information. The introduction
of GDPR in May 2018 means that you can ask an organisation that has your personal
data to remove that data from their records; this is called data erasure or ‘the right
to be forgotten’. This can be requested where your data is no longer relevant to the
original reason that it was given and where the person or data subject, as the person
is called, withdraws consent. Failure to do so can result in criminal proceedings for the
organisation and significant fines. These can be as much as 4% of the annual global
turnover for a company up to £20m.

Key Facts

It is important to ensure accurate records are kept because:

1. Good record keeping helps you to make good referrals or to
signpost to other agencies (for example, having up-to-date
phone numbers and client details)

2. Good record keeping can help you justify your decisions
3. Records can be kept electronically, paper-based or a mixture
of both

4. Records must be kept up-to-date and accurate, by law.

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