Charities Breakfast Briefing: Serious incidents and Data Protection

Serious incidents are reportable to the Charity Commission and cover a range of issues where there is a harm (or risk of harm) to the beneficiaries, staff, volunteers as well as loss of the charity’s assets, damage to property or harm to the charity’s reputation. Serious incidents can happen by mistakes made by trustees, employees, or volunteers or because of external or unforeseen factors.

The Charity Commission expects trustees to self-report and take steps to mitigate and prevent serious incidents and this series will consider what serious incidents look like, how to mitigate them and what governance issues can lead to serious incidents. The series will then look at averting incidents from a governance perspective, how compliance with data protection laws can prevent serious incidents from occurring and positively focus on what steps that can be taken in relation to avoiding serious incidents arising from an employment law perspective.

In the second part of the series, and will be joined by , Data Protection Partner, where the session will focus on trustees’ duties in respect of charities and data protection.

All charities are involved someway in relation to controlling or processing personal data either in relation to their beneficiaries, the trustees, their staff, or volunteers as well as other third parties.

James will discuss through the key aspects of data compliance, keeping data safe whilst Gerry and Harriet will discuss the steps for the trustees to take where an incident has occurred to comply with their trustee duties and maintain a charity’s good reputation.

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