Formal complaint by UNLOCK leads to Staffordshire Police and Cannock Chase Council agreeing to cancel plans to share criminal record data
In December 2011, a local newspaper ran an article on a new process that the local council, Cannock Chase, had set up with Staffordshire Police to check prospective council tenants. You can read the article here. We were invited to take part in a regional radio programme to discuss this with the council leader (see below).
Following this radio interview, we made contact with the local council and put a number of questions to them about
the policy. The responses to these questions were cause for concern to us, and so we made an official complaint to the Information Commissioners Office.
We later received the following response from the ICO: "I can confirm that the initiative due to start in April 2012 whereby Cannock Chase Council would be, through an agreement with Staffordshire Police, undertaking criminal records checks on all applicants for housing tenancies will not now be going ahead. This has been confirmed by the Head of Information Assurance at Staffordshire Police who were not aware that this agreement had been set up."
We are delighted with the outcome of this case. However, this is not an isolated example. We have been informed that initiatives have been formed between other police forces and local authorities to undertake pre-housing checks.
Do you know the policy of your local authority in relation to criminal records and social housing? Do they have a processing of carrying out pre-housing checks of criminal records? Let us know the situation in your local area by posting on this section of the Forum.
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