West Midlands Ambulance Service is a Foundation Trust. A Foundation Trust has more freedom from central government control, though it remains fully part of the NHS. Foundation Trusts are duty-bound to deliver free care, based on need, not ability to pay, but they are more accountable to the local community. This is because local people and staff can become members of the Trust and elect representatives to serve on the Council of Governors or even stand for election as a governor themselves.
Foundation Trusts are:
- Part of the NHS and subject to NHS standards, performance ratings and inspections. They must also work in partnership with other NHS organisations and co-operate with local partners
- Accountable to Monitor (the independent regulator of NHS Foundation Trusts) and the CQC (Care Quality Commission), who oversee and monitor them against their terms of their licence and have powers to intervene.
More information about being a Foundation Trust can be found here
Public Membership
During the course of our activities, West Midlands Ambulance Service collects, stores and processes personal information in relation to its staff and those who have signed up to be a public member (a member must be at least 16 years old). We recognise the need to treat all personal data in a fair and lawful manner.
What types of personal data do we handle?
In order to carry out our activities and obligations as a Foundation Trust we handle membership data in relation to:
- Personal demographics (including gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, date of birth)
- Details of involvement preferences such as attending events, responding to surveys or becoming a governor.
- Contact details such as names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses.
- Medical information (any declared disability)
Our staff are trained to handle your information correctly and protect your confidentiality and privacy. We aim to maintain high standards, adopt best practice for our record keeping and regularly check and report on how we are doing. Your information is never collected or sold for direct marketing purposes.
Processing Personal Data
To enable effective administration of its membership, West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust membership register is held securely with an external company. Their full privacy notice is below:
https://secure.membra.co.uk/Documents/MESPrivacyStatement.pdf
The company is compliant with ISO27001 (the international standard for best practice for an information security management system).
Data Protection laws gives individuals rights in respect of the personal information that we hold about you. These are:
- To be informed why, where and how we use your information.
- To ask for access to your information.
- To ask for your information to be corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
- To ask for your information to be deleted or removed where there is no need for us to continue processing it.
- To ask us to restrict the use of your information.
- To ask us to copy or transfer your information from one IT system to another in a safe and secure way, without impacting the quality of the information.
- To object to how your information is used.
- To challenge any decisions made without human intervention (automated decision making)
Should you have any further queries on the uses of your information please contact the Foundation Trust team on foundationtrust@wmas.nhs.uk or you wish to lodge a complaint about the use of your information please contact the Trust’s Data Protection Officer – Chris Kerr at Data.Protection@wmas.nhs.uk or telephone 01384 215555.
If you are still unhappy with the outcome of your enquiry you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/