Church and State blog: Information Commissioner: Declan battles the Commissioner's Lead Case Officer over the nature of his data complaint against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's (WITH UPDATE 31/1/2019)

Friday, January 04, 2019

Information Commissioner: Declan battles the Commissioner's Lead Case Officer over the nature of his data complaint against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's (WITH UPDATE 31/1/2019)

Our Church and State website has no less than 42 Nobel Laureates on it; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State" (updated today).

County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice

Heavey v St Mungo's (2016)

Trial held in the Central London County Court, Royal Courts of Justice on 20 February 2017.

On 23 August 2018, Declan complained to the Information Commissioner's Office about case notes St Mungo's Executive Director Dominic Williamson assured the Court at trial in February 2017 had been rectified by him but were in fact being held under my name. It took the scheduling of a preliminary hearing in October 2016 to have case notes from two meetings so-called rectified by Williamson as Declan had requested all along; and that rectification only took place after a failed attempt by an international firm of solicitors, Osborne Clarke, to have Declan's claim struck out on the papers. The judge at the preliminary hearing dismissed St Mungo's application to strike out Declan's claim for compensation. DJ Avent's order dated 11 March 2017 does not state why he dismissed the claim at trial. Williamson: "The court case concerned your complaint about the notes on your record. My understanding is that following the court case it became apparent that the note in contention was mirrored on your wife's record - which I don't recall being aware of at the time - and this was subsequently amended to reflect the change we had made to yours. The court was therefore not misled." We do not accept that the court was not misled.

20 February 2017: Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

Declan and I are tenants of the Clearing House, which is run by St Mungo's on behalf of the Mayor of London. Only last August, Declan came within days of filing in the Central London County Court a second claim against St Mungo's in two years; see my post of 28 August, St Mungo's: Discrimination; Declan's claim against the Mayor of London's service for the Central London County Court. Still no response from St Mungo's CEO Howard Sinclair to Declan's pre-action letter (WITH UPDATE 30/8/2018). Over a month ago, Declan reverted to data protection law in his dealings with this charity for the accurate recording of his complaint of unfair treatment against Newham Council. He is just off the phone with the Information Commissioner's Lead Case Officer. It seems that whether Declan likes it or not, his complaint of data tampering against St Mungo's has been rehashed into a complaint about inaccurate data as follows:

4 January 2019

Case Reference Number: RFA0779534

Dear Mr Heavey,

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding your complaint about St Mungo's Community Housing.

Your complaint

You have explained that case notes relating to you have been inaccurately recorded by St Mungo's including a redaction which appears to be inaccurate.

I have now written to St Mungo's asking them to explain why the redaction was made to the particular case notes you supplied. I have also asked them to explain their handling of your complaint about the accuracy of the data held.

Once I have received their response, I will be in touch with you again.

If you would like to discuss this further, please reply directly to this email or call me on the number below.

Yours sincerely,

Geraldine Goreham
Lead Case Officer
Information Commissioner's Office
0330 414 6245 (Tuesday to Friday)

We do not recognise the above complaint. Declan's complaint stands as follows:

18 December 2018

Dear Ms Goreham,

Case Reference Number: RFA0779534

Thank you for your e-letter dated 16 November 2018.

On 23 August 2018, I complained about case notes St Mungo's Executive Director Dominic Williamson assured the Court last year had been rectified by him but were in fact being held inaccurately under my wife's name.

I have this morning learnt that the case notes in question under my name (and I assume this also applies to the same case notes under my wife's name) have been changed to read as follows:

Met with Declan and [REDACTED] at their home. Phoned active Newham and was informed of the process of how to apply to the scheme. The application form has to be completed online and [REDACTED - 3rd Party].

Whilst the second redaction could be said to indicate information relating to a third party (in this case my wife), the first unqualified redaction has the potential to undo the settlement the Court accepted last year, thereby posing a high risk to my rights and freedoms and causing distress.

I understand, in respect of changing data, that an organisation can face criminal charges if they tamper with data that has been requested by an individual.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

UPDATE 31 January (1.35pm): On 9 January Declan agreed that the Information Commissioner's Lead Case Officer could close her rehashed complaint above so that she could write to St Mungo's about partial disclosure - we had only learnt that morning that St Mungo's were holding outrageous communication notes against Declan without his knowledge or consent and that they did not disclose to him with his Subject Access Request result last month. Declan also went along with her that, given the then seriousness of the situation, it would be quicker for him to pursue the deletion of every single one of these notes through the courts rather than to start afresh with the ICO for a new case reference number and then wait three months or more for a caseworker to be allocated. She then wrote to St Mungo's with a series of questions, and received a response from them on 21 January. This afternoon she closed the case on partial disclosure without a finding basically on the grounds that Declan went along with her on 9 January on legal proceedings!

Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2019 at 13:15
Subject: Message from the ICO - Recent updates[Ref. RFA0779534]

31 January 2019

Case Reference Number RFA0779534

Dear Mr Heavey,

Thank you for your recent updates and telephone call.

Due to the withdrawal of your complaint, the ICO is unable to comment on any further information you have supplied; this is particularly relevant should there be any legal proceedings undertaken.

I acknowledge that we have received correspondence from St Mungo's Housing Association and will write to them acknowledging receipt however I will explain that the possibility of ongoing legal proceedings due to your pre-action correspondence may prevent us from discussing the case any further.

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

Yours sincerely,

Geraldine Goreham
Lead Case Officer
Information Commissioner’s Office
0330 414 6245 (Tuesday to Friday)

On 11 January, this Lead Case Officer wrote: "I have considered the information available in relation to this complaint and it is likely that St Mungo's have not complied with their data protection obligations. This is because they have not properly responded to your subject access request. We have written to St Mungo's about your complaint and asked for some further information with regards to the missing data. We have asked them to provide a response as soon as possible and in any event within 10 days. Once I have received their response, I will be in touch with you again."

What an experience!

From My Picks:

27 January: Particulars of Claim: Declan is forced to issue court proceedings against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's without further notice (WITH UPDATE 31/1/2019)

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

http://churchandstate.org.uk/about/

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Friday, January 04, 2019

Information Commissioner: Declan battles the Commissioner's Lead Case Officer over the nature of his data complaint against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's (WITH UPDATE 31/1/2019)

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