INFORMATION COMMISSIONER’S OFFICE ... GDPR... PUBIC REGISTER AND KEEP OFF OUR RANKS!
If you have previously read any of my ramblings you will be aware that I have been having protracted correspon- dence with the Information Commissioner’s Office with regard to Lewes District Council, which is a neighbouring licensing authority, that has the majority of its licensed private hire drivers/cars predominantly working here in the city of Brighton.
The issue being is that as there has been little or no enforcement by its licensing officers in Brighton. The consequence of this is that we have made over a hundred reports of these cars regarding missing livery due to the allowance of magnetic door signs/licence plates /repeater licence plates. Very clearly, where there is no active enforcement then why should drivers / vehicle proprietors bother with licensing conditions. No doubt this is repeated up and down the country where licensed vehicles predom- inantly work out of area.
Although Lewes District Council does not have an online accessible Public Register, it did provide me with a list of all of its hackneys and private hire vehicles which con- tained the make / model of the car, the licence number, date of licence expiry and the vehicle registration number.
This was supplied to me once a month when I requested an update. This allowed us to match up any suspected licensed car that had removed its licensing identification which of course is a breach of licensing conditions. And in fact, all of these reports were actually assisting the Lewes District Council officers in doing their job - and for free as well!
The main issue is that we have many cars working here as cabs but no means of identifying them, so what I normally do is check on local licensing authority Public Registers and if these match up they get reported for removing vehicle identification.
However, when I last asked for an update from Lewes DC, which was over a year ago now, it then refused to include the VRM which makes its Public Register completely pointless.
I questioned Lewes Licensing on this and I was informed that the VRM of a vehicle is considered to be private data. This was based on a case in which the ICO was involved a few years ago when someone wrote to a licensing authority to obtain the details of licensed vehicles for the purpose of
82
producing a database that showed if a vehicle had ever been used as a taxi/private hire. I believe that the intention of the database was to be sold on.
I went in to great detail about the need for the public to be able to identify what is and what is not a licensed vehicle on the very basic principle of public safety.
My only recourse was to refer this to the ICO which I did. The trouble is that you have to go through a process of stages which included an appeal to Lewes District Council on its decision to refuse to supply the VRM.
At this point I would like to clarify that my own licensing authority, being Brighton & Hove, has an excellent online Public Register that enables instant identification of all of its licensed vehicles. Additionally, TfL also has an online Public Register as well as many other local licensing authorities, including Portsmouth and Southampton, both of which I have had the need to communicate with over similar issues.
So having made the appeal, which was really a waste of time, I was then able to refer this back to the ICO and I was then given a time period of six months before this could be attended to.
So the months came and went and I finally received an update from the ICO with it backing Lewes District Council in its decision to withhold all VRMs on the principle that these are regarded as being private data. I was also sup- plied with various cases where this very subject has been used for ICO decision notices and the following was stated:
“As you can see from these decision notices, the Commissioner has consistently found that the disclosure of this type of personal data would not be lawful under the UK GDPR and DPA, and consequently that it is exempt from disclosure under the FOIA. Furthermore, the complainants in two of the above cases went on to appeal against the Commissioner’s decision, with the appeals being dismissed by the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights).”
So where does this leave everything?
Well firstly I would say that every licensing authority, which includes TfL, that has a Public Register that includes
MAY 2022
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96
