Doug Paulley's blog

disability, data protection, activism and other such

Leonard Cheshire Disability’s CEO Clare Pelham on poverty

Posted on by Doug Paulley

Clare Pelham had this to say in Leonard Cheshire’s annual accounts 2014-2015:

Disabled people are more likely to be living in poverty and less likely to have savings than most. The pressures on social care funding available to councils in this country have increased and this has affected many disabled people.

She ought to know about poverty; after all, she’s only paid between £140,000 and £150,000 per year. She is one of 25 staff earning more than £60,000 – none of whom are directly engaged in the core activity of providing personal care and support to disabled people. Indeed, the number of staff in the charity earning £100,000 or more actually increased this year. To put that in context, MPs’ salaries are £67,060.

The report also lists the following risk and mitigation: (my emphasis)

Rising wages costs and our ambition to pay all staff at least the Living Wage could impact the financial sustainability of some or all of the Charity’s operations
  1. Annual increases in our fees requested from commissioners to offset the cost of wage increases and to support our efforts to work towards paying the Living Wage.
  2. Annual budget and business planning cycle.

 

This is perhaps progress, because even though Clare Pelham had this to say in September last year:

At the very least we should celebrate care as a wonderful career choice with great training; and nothing less than a living-wage should be acceptable.

the charity continues to pay its carers less than the living wage. They claim it’s because commissioners don’t pay them enough:

Commissioners are working under increasing financial pressure, so in many cases achieving living wage rates is not possible immediately

Yet until I kicked off about this in January, they’d not asked any commissioners to pay more so they could pay carers the living wage – and even now they’ve only recently written to a small proportion of commissioners to start the conversation. (At least I’ve forced them to go through the motions.)

In fact, the company reduced their spending on staff wages by over £2,000,000 in financial year 2014-2015 compared to 2013-2014, despite receiving an increased income of over £1,000,000 from fees paid by councils, part of their £7,500,000 overall increase in income. (£6,000,000 of the increased income is sat in their bank accounts – Goodness knows where the rest is.)  Check their annual reports and accounts (PDF file) – hold your nose to get past the odious self-congratulatory bollocks in the first half of the report; their figures for income are on p64, staff costs on p91, and the salaries of their most senior employees on p92.

One wonders if the reflection in their annual report may indeed by correct. It’s my view that they don’t give a stuff about their low wages to carers; they are only interested in appearing to give a stuff about their carers’ pay, and they don’t view the living wage as something to aspire to but as a threat to their business model.

Mechanisms for payment of £10 SAR fee

Posted on by Doug Paulley

There’s a paucity of guidance on what mechanisms organisations must offer when charging the £10.00 SAR fee. It bugs me when an organisation accepts payments for other services via card payments and/or bank transfer, but insist on cheques for subject access requests.

The only related guidance I can find is the ICO’s DPA LTT on payment mechanisms for SAR fees, which says that an organisation must act as if the fee has been paid if it’s been sent in a commonly acceptable form, so for example if the organisation tries to insist on payment by card but the requester posts a cheque, they must still process the SAR even if they don’t cash the cheque. The difference is that receiving the cheque doesn’t require any co-operation from the organisation, it’s essentially passive. To pay the fee by card the organisation would have to operate their card machine etc.

So I’ve sent the ICO the following email, but if anybody happens to know of other guidance please do let me know!

Please can you tell me what payment methods an organisation should offer for payment of the £10 SAR fee?

Please can you provide any guidance on this subject? I can only find this DPA LTT which addresses a subtly different question.

In specific, can an organisation insist on SAR fees being paid by cheque, even if they accept payment by card and bank transfer for other elements of their business? I hate cheques; they can go missing in the post, they take time to clear, it’s a pain for me to get to the pillar box in my wheelchair, and they’re very out of date. Is there best practice or statutory or other guidance that says that a company must accept payment by other mechanisms where these are already in use in other areas of their business?

Could I just transfer £10.00 into their account via bank transfer and present them with a printout proving I’ve done this as a fait accompli?

ADDENDUM 11th September

Correspondence with the ICO has provided some elucidation. It has taken a little while, though…

ICO to me: 28th August 2015:
An organisation is able to specify a preference with how they receive the fee. Ultimately as long as they allow the individual a method of payment, then this is likely to be acceptable.
For example, there may be reasons why an organisation are unable to accept payment for SARs via card. This may be because card payments have to show that you are paying for goods etc, and that their systems may put constraints in place that would not allow them to take SAR payments.
I therefore suggest that you contact the organisation and ask them the reasons why they cannot accept payment via card and if there is any other alternative to paying by cheque.
However, there are unlikely to be issues as long as they allow you to make a request and provide some way for you to make a payment.

Me to ICO: 28th August 2015:
Your DPA LTT says that an organisation must act as if they have successfully received payment when proffered, even if it isn’t done so using their preferred payment mechanism. The difference is, I guess, that when paying by card the organisation has to actively participate in the transaction, instead of passively receiving a cheque or cash. Is that the difference between your reply and the LTT?
In my specific case, my SAR was to (X company). They give bank details for (X purpose). I transferred £10.00 into that account and emailed them the transfer details, explaining that it was the SAR fee. Could you please confirm if based on your LTT I have paid them the fee and they are now under obligation to supply the info?

ICO to Me: 2nd September 2015:
As previously mentioned an organisation can specify how they would like to receive a payment for a SAR. As long as they offer you a method that allows you to pay then they are unlikely to be doing anything wrong.
As you have paid the fee via bank transfer, in to an account for (X purpose), and you wish to know whether they are obliged to accept this payment.
Essentially, if they do not accept payment for subject access via this account, and have offered you an alternative way of paying, then there are not going to be obliged to accept the payment. This is because they may not have the facilities to transfer the payment in to the correct place. These constraints may mean that they are unable to process your fee.
We would therefore advise that you contact (X company) and ask them if the payment has been received. If they are unable to process the fee this way then we would consider that you would need to pay the fee via the methods that they offer and it would not be a valid SAR until this happens.

Me to ICO: 2nd September 2015:
Thanks for your opinion on this. As I understand it your response is that (X company) don’t have to consider my bank transfer into an account that they probably don’t use for SAR fees as valid. “As long as they offer you a method that allows you to pay then they are unlikely to be doing anything wrong.”
The reason I am querying is that the Information Commissioner’s Office’s DPA “Line To Take” document “SAR fee – acceptable payment types” says this:

  • Background
    If a data subject provides the correct fee in a format which is legally recognised in the UK to denote payment eg cash, cheque or postal order etc. and assuming that they have correctly provided all the other elements of a subject access request eg adequate identification etc, the moment the data controller has received the request (section 7(2)), its obligations under section 7 begin.
  • Line to take
    A data controller does not have to accept the payment, but the obligation begins nonetheless – acceptance is not a condition of receiving. A data controller is well within its rights to state a preference for a particular format of payment, but it cannot demand it.

So your guidance says that if I turn up in person at their offices with a £10 note to pay my SAR fee, then (X company) are judged to have been offered payment and must process my SAR, even though they say they only accept cheques for such payment.
I guess I’m asking where the line is drawn between when a payment of a SAR fee is deemed as having been properly offered, thus putting them under the obligation to respond. What’s the difference between me turning up at their office with a £10 note, and me electronically transferring £10 into their bank account? They’re both mechanisms that they don’t offer or want people to use, but certainly in the latter case (physically bringing £10 cash) your guidance says they have to act as if they’d been paid the fee.
I guess I’m asking for a line. Turning up at the office with a tenner = fee considered paid (even though they want people to pay by cheque). Offering to pay by credit or debit card, given that this is “a format which is legally recognised in the UK to denote payment” = fee not considered paid? Direct transfer into bank account = fee not considered paid?
Where’s the line?

ICO to me: 11 September 2015:
I have sought further advice on this and our view would be as follows –
If a payment is made via a non-preferred method, in this instance by bank transfer, then as long as you have provided or offered the payment in legal tender, they would need to comply with your request.
The only difference to this would be if you were trying to pay via a method that they have no means of accessing. For example, if you wished to pay via PayPal and they didn’t actually have a PayPal account, they would not be expected to create one.
Therefore, if you have made the bank transfer in to one of (X company’s) bank accounts, even though this would not be their preferred method of payment, they would need to deal with your request as you have provided them with a valid fee.
I hope this clarifies the matter and I must apologise that the advice may have been contradictory.

Me to ICO: 11 September 2015:
Thank you, this is interesting and useful.
I wonder if I could ask the ICO to define the line even more clearly. You’ve established that transferring £10 into their bank account means they have to comply with my SAR; but that is essentially a passive act on their behalf. I am wondering if they should have to co-operate in other mechanisms.
They accept payment (for X purpose, unrelated to SARs) by debit and credit cards. As they use this mechanism, would they have to accept payment of the £10 SAR fee by debit or credit card if I told them that’s how I would like to pay it?

“Why don’t you wait?”

Posted on by Doug Paulley

Laurence Clark reckons that wheelchair users travel 4th class on Britain’s railways, somewhere below the catering trolley. I think I experienced this today.

I was traveling from York to London by Grand Central. I generally rate Grand Central, an open access operator providing a niche York to London non-stop service, also providing the Mackems with a link to civilisation in London 🙂 (actually, I suspect it may be the other way round!) Even if they have been bought by soul sapping über-giant Arriva.

Today was different, though. I dutifully bought my tickets and booked wheelchair space and assistance with them 48 hours in advance, as we are sadly forced to do, and duly turned up the requisite 30 minutes early to allow general pfaf time.

An excellent, solicitous young gentleman from VTEC set up the ramp onto the train a few minutes before it was due to board, but I discovered he’d set it up at the wrong door – which was not his fault because Grand Central had neglected to employ the RVAR mandated and widely used space hopper sign indicating the correct door for the wheelchair space.

image

Never mind, it’s a few minutes early, so still time to discover that there was a pushchair with baby and two suitcases in the wheelchair space. On I get, and it’s left to me to shout to get them moved – even though there was a sign stating the space was for a wheelchair, and even though I’d booked the space. The mother was noticeably sniffy and unpleasant at having to move.

Of course, I couldn’t even get to the wheelchair space, because passengers had left another buggy and two suitcases in the vestibule so I couldn’t pass, leaving me in the doorway area. Nobody arrived to claim these, even though I shouted down the carriage. I was tempted to offload them and call the police as unattended luggage, but in the end I sat in the doorway and refused to move to allow the train doors to shut until they were shifted.

Now I’m a firm believer in public transport and in it being available to all, and I know it’s difficult for parents with buggies. I’m up for adaptations for buggy users, and I don’t mind wheelchair spaces being used by buggy users, when they aren’t required for wheelchair users. But it’s the only space I can travel in! I booked the space. It wouldn’t be considered acceptable for somebody to leave their buggy on reserved chairs, so why is it OK in the wheelchair space? And when politely asked to move, why should I be subject to sniffy pissed-offness from the mother concerned, and exasperation from the guard for daring to refuse to move until I could get into the carriage?

Yeah, the guard. I’d booked the space, and I’d booked assistance. She knew I’d be getting on. So, the question arises, why did she not ask the woman to move her buggy BEFORE I got on? Being proactive would have made me feel a bit less like an inconvenient afterthought, reduced inter-passenger tension and been generally helpful. But maybe I’m asking too much. Et tu, Grand Central?

So I continue my journey as an afterthought, hemmed into the space by pushchairs and luggage blocking the aisle, when ten minutes before arriving into London, I decided to go to the loo before braving the Underground in my wheelchair. It was engaged, so I waited, and my trusty carer (the wonderful Mike) asked the buggy owners to move their charges so I could physically get to the toilet.

Then the upsetting incident happened. I’d coped with everything up to now, the shabby treatment, the huffiness, the accusing looks for daring to want to use the wheelchair space, but it was four tiny whispered words, so quiet I thought I had misheard, but then repeated. They emanated from a businessman in the seat opposite, who had been troubled to move his luggage out of the wheelchair space. These four, tiny, innocuous words?

Why don’t you wait?

That’s all it took to finally get to me, the idea that I should wait till I got off before going to the loo, that I was being unreasonable by wanting people to shift their buggies so I could get from the wheelchair space to the wheelchair accessible toilet on the train, to avoid having to navigate and find one on the station.

Mike was marvelous. I sat there in hurt silence, unable to cope with this small-minded berk shoving his nose in to a situation that didn’t involve him with his snidey sotto vice unhelpful comment; he asked what the problem was, and that all I wanted was to use the loo like 200 other train passengers. (He also got in an excellent jibe afterwards, by telling the guy that the loo was free when I’d left. Lol.)

I wonder: if Grand Central had treated me like a human being by e.g. affixing the wheelchair sign by the exterior door, ensuring the wheelchair space was free for me and keeping the entrance clear, would this guy have kept his trap shut? I wonder…

It’s amazing how it’s not the sign, the space or the corridor that got me (I’m used to those), it was those four whispered, snidey, demeaning words that brought home just how much of an unreasonable inconvenience I was perceived as. It’s these four seemingly innocuous words that will ring in my brain:

Why don’t you wait?