General Data Protection Regulation

Yup, but they should be passed to Wing who will handle the archiving and eventual destruction.

So we are told being the operative term.
If we do have to keep them a year at the absolute tops.
The info is only about current conditions and if anyone is going to make a claim for injury, it would happen at the time (not in the next 5-12 years) and then whoever can keep that one bit of paper for as long as they want.
If someone made a claim about one of the headline grabbing 30 year later things, I’m not sure where that would be found on a consent form and the form would have been long gone anyway.

I remember the archives we had at work when I started and being financial they had to be kept 7 years. It was a huge room with shelving on rollers with the wheels at the end. I quite liked it as I like smell of old books. Now we only have a rolling 2 year paper archive in a much smaller room, where we throw stuff at the end of each quarter and have electronic back ups going back 7 years. On a Wing of a thousand cadets you could expect at least that many bits of paper if not more per year, so keeping them for ages is a nonsense.

Actually legally records of children need to be kept for something like 90 years. At least that’s what we have to do at work.

1 Like

I started forwarding TG21s to WingHQ for our Wing Shooting weekends (~30-40 Cadets each visit) claiming we didn’t have room at Squadron for them.

I have never kept forms longer than a year…a pointless exercise for the exact reasons you list

I scan and email to WHQ, then shred.

Saves the postage, and our ADmin Staff scanning the TG forms and shredding once they receive.

The scan is then held until the youngest cadet is 25, I believe somewhere on MODNET

Our WHQ struggles with attachments at the best of times. They claim it’s the system I think it’s the people.

Where as your statement was based on carefully-collated statistics?

No just going around places and doing things. Plus I know my area and we do not get very many join any of the squadrons that do not fit in with my comment.
We have quite a large African, Afro-Carribean and Asian communities, along with quite a number of East Europeans and they don’t join the ATC. When I visit schools with leaflets, with one in particular seems to have a large African, Afro-Carribean cohort, yet they don’t join. Not that it concerns me that much, as the Air Cadets is voluntary, but if HQAC was to do a diversity audit there would be a massive skew, even taking into account large cities.

Havig worked with wings from LaSER in the past, I can assure you that they have quite a number of cadets from ethnic minorities.

3 Likes

When you look at L&SER I would imagine that the further you get away from Greater London. the fewer the number of ethnic minorities. So if you’ve done things with squadrons from Greater London then you would see a greater number.

At our Legion meeting last night the sec said that from his reading of things surrounding this, it would seem that organisations can hold information BUT you have the right to say how you are contacted and if your information appears in things such as county handbooks for the RBL. Apparently the branch return this year had a box for people to consent to their details to appear in the county handbook.
I don’t see why HQAC are prevaricating and getting all shirty as per the email? What are they scared of? Losing control? They’ve been increasingly losing the plot.

Yeah - you might think that. But no; you’re wrong. Its a wonderful plethora of multiethnic harmony across LASER - and far beyond!

I have no doubt of that and have seen many African, Afro Caribbean and Asian cadets from Inner and Greater London squadrons. Move away from these areas and they decease in number.
Round our way, despite having schools that are ‘ethnically diverse’ and as I said having substantial local ethnic communities, such that many high streets have ‘ethnic’ food shops (not take-aways and restaurants) and local supermarkets carry similar. None of the squadrons have more than 1 or 2.
I can count the number of non-white cadets we have had join on all the squadrons I’ve been on, on the fingers of two hands in the last 30+ years.

A chap was granted the “right to be forgotten” online http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43752344

Can we opt out of having our information held in an online database SMS and contacted in a similar vein? Why do all of our details need to be held and open to anyone wanting to have a look at it? At work fine, but I know my work record only has employment dates, payroll and NI number and NOK contact info. My ATC entry has all manner of inconsequential nonsense, which is more for others than me. I know what I’ve got etc.

Yes, you should have seen the email from SO1 Coord on 26 March

The 2018 Data Protection Act also includes a right to erasure, also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’. The broad principle underpinning this right is to enable an individual to request the deletion or removal of personal data where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing. Because CFAVs and cadets choose to be a part of the RAF Air Cadets and we only gather the personal information about CFAVs or cadets that is essential to the running of the organisation, a request to erase the personal information about an individual would result in that individual having to leave the organisation.

My Bold.

However it says nothing about an individual making a Subject Access Request to see what data is held.

Yes I saw that and took the last sentence as a typical HQAC response as they think they are more important than they really are and seem to think they are an employer, when they have said they aren’t. I don’t have a problem with it being held on paper, but no online/electronically. Keeping it on paper doesn’t affect the running of the organisation.

The only information essential to the organisation is whether we are DBS cleared, everything else is superfluous piffle.

Do we need to record attendance online? As long as you have a record on the squadron for evac purposes that should be enough.

Should we record cadet details etc like we do? Do parents have the right to have all but the very basic information removed from the electronic systems?

We’ve been banging the Electronic Ways of Working for ages, and now you want to just use paper, it slows the entire organisation down, everything takes twice as long as it should and stuff gets lost.

If you think your bank details are superfluous ask for them to be removed, but don’t complain when you have no HTD, no 1771 Travel Expenses & no VA.

Attendance is recorded online to facilitate HTD payments, and to identify those who are not attending, both staff/cadets… is that not useful to you?

Please do tell us what information is superfluous piffle and why, you may well be able to get this removed for everyone.

1 Like

I know who is attending or not, I can look back through the tick lists, I’ve never used the online registers.

We should be able to choose how we are contacted and decide what information is held and how.

I don’t know one CO who uses the information held. The only people who use it are Wing upwards, as seen from WSO visits. We missed a couple of months registers and there was a moan as they couldn’t see any numbers etc. My disinterest was taken to kindly.

The information held on SMS is not for us, but we are the ones who have to keep it updated.

I do… When I’m away from the Sqn and I see that there’s a good opportunity for cadets with a very short deadline (e.g. 2 days) then I use the information held on SMS to contact those cadets who are eligible and might be interested.

As for paper registers, I’d rather not have all the books/papers wasting space when I got an easier audit trail online.