Statutory guidance

Privacy Information Notice - Piloting of offensive weapons homicide reviews

Updated 29 April 2024

Applies to England and Wales

The Home Office is based at 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF.

The Home Office has appointed a Data Protection Officer to help ensure that we fulfil our legal obligations when processing personal information. You can contact the Department’s Data Protection Officer for more information at:

Email: dpo@homeoffice.gov.uk

Or write to:

Office of the DPO
Home Office
Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

This notice reflects your rights under the law and lets you know how we will look after and use your personal information for the purposes of the piloting of Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews.

For the purposes of the piloting of the review then the Home Office is the data controller in connection with any personal data that it handles in respect of any notifications required under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the receipt, redaction of the final reports into reviews conducted during the pilot. This includes information that has been provided to us in relation to the notification of any qualifying homicide and the completed review report which has been sent to the Home Office for the purposes of publication.

How and why the Department uses your information

The Home Office collects, processes and shares personal information to enable it to carry out its legal and official functions. The Home Office is only allowed to process your data where there is a lawful basis for doing so.

Relevant review partners (being the police and local authorities in England and Wales, integrated care boards in England and local health boards in Wales) are required by Part 2 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 to arrange a review into a person’s death in certain circumstances. This is where the person was aged 18 or over and that the death, or the events surrounding it, involved the use of ana offensive weapon. These are known as Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews (OWHRs).

The purpose of OWHRs is to ensure that when a qualifying homicide takes place, local partners identify the lessons that can be learnt from the death, to consider whether any appropriate action needs to be taken and to share the outcome of the review. The intention is that these reviews will improve the local and national understanding of what causes homicide and serious violence and better equip services to prevent homicides involving offensive weapons and, in doing so, save lives.

The reviews are being piloted for a period of 18 months from 1 April 2023 in three areas:

1. London (in Barnet, Brent, Harrow, Lambeth and Southwark);
2. West Midlands (in Birmingham and Coventry); and
3. South Wales.

The ways in which the Home Office will process your personal data as part of the OWHR pilot are shown below.

In each case the lawful basis for processing the information will be that under Article 6(1)(e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation: processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested on the controller.

Where the Home Office is required to process special category data as part of the pilot, it will in addition rely on the condition for processing under Article 9(2)(g) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation: processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

The purpose of processing

Every homicide is a tragedy, and the Government wants to do all it can to prevent them and tackle serious violence.

Homicide rose by about a third between 2014 and 2022.  It has become the fourth leading cause of death for men aged 20-34 (behind suicide, drug overdoses and road traffic collisions).  The cost of homicide is significant and is annually estimated to be more than £2.6bn in 22/23 prices.

Homicides involving offensive weapons make up a large and growing proportion of all homicides – analysis suggests 347 of 696 homicides in 2021/22.  The Government are concerned that many of these homicides are not currently formally reviewed by multi-agency partners to learn and share lessons in the way that happens when a person aged under 18 dies, a vulnerable adult dies, a person dies due to domestic violence, or someone in receipt of mental health care commits homicide.

Of the 696 offences initially recorded as homicides in 2021/22, we estimate that 483 did not meet the criteria for an existing review, and that 220 of the unreviewed homicides involved an offensive weapon.

The purpose of the processing is to test out the review process during an 18-month pilot. Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews were introduced by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. The Act places a requirement on the police and local authorities in England and Wales, integrated care boards in England and local health boards in Wales to review the circumstance of certain homicide where the victim was aged 18 or over, and the event surrounding their death involved, or were likely to have involved, the use of an offensive weapon.

Receipt by the Home Office of written notifications

For the purposes of the pilot, the Home Office will receive written notifications from relevant review partners following such a death.

The written notifications will confirm one of the following:

• that the review partner is under a duty to arrange for there to be a review of the person’s death;

• that the review partner is not under a duty to carry out a review in respect of the death; and

• that the review partner has not been able to take the decision on the matter. If this is the case, a notification must be made to the Secretary of State confirming the decision once made.

The information provided in the notifications would be the names of any persons being considered for an OWHR, the date of their death, any supporting evidence for the decision on whether or not review partners were under a duty to conduct a review which might include information on the circumstances of the homicide, the victim’s age, confirmation that there was an alleged perpetrator, whether an offensive weapon was used and the details of the lead practitioner completing the notification.

For any reviews conducted in the South Wales pilot areas notifications will be sent to both the Secretary of State and the First Minister for Wales under the Single Unified Safeguarding Review process.

Receipt and publication of reports by the Home Office

Where a review has been completed, the relevant review partners must prepare a report on the review and send it to the Home Office. The names of the victim and alleged perpetrator(s) of the homicide will be anonymised in the report prior to receipt by the Home Office.

The completed reports will set out the circumstances of the homicide and include information on where the victim lived, a summary of any connection between the victim and perpetrator, the cause of death, information which may have been provided by the family following engagement with them and with their agreement, a chronology of events leading up to the death capturing key events and contacts with services. Alongside this the report will cover practice and organisational learning and any actions to improve services and practice

The Secretary of State (e.g. the Home Secretary) has a statutory obligation under section 28(7)-(8) of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 to publish, or make arrangements for the publication of, that report. This is unless the Secretary of State considers it inappropriate for the report to be published, in which case the Secretary of State must publish, or make arrangements for the publication of, those parts of the report in respect of which it is considered appropriate to do so.

The published report will not contain any personal information. The relevant review partners, must not include in the report any information or material that they consider might jeopardise the safety of any person or might prejudice the investigation or prosecution of an offence.

Review of notifications and reports by the OWHR Oversight Board

The notifications and completed reports will also be assessed and reviewed by the OWHR Oversight Board. The Board is an expert committee which is accountable to Home Office Ministers. The Board has oversight of the local delivery of OWHRs. The purpose of the Board’s review is to ensure consistency in approach by reviewing and assessment completed reports to draw together OWHRs at the national level to identify and disseminate learning, themes, issues in service provisions and areas of good practice which can be shared. No personal information would be shared with the OWHR Oversight Board and any personal information contained within the notifications or reports would be redacted.

Our legal basis for processing your information

The Home Office is only allowed to process your data where there is a lawful basis for doing so. In the context of the piloting of OWHRs then the legal basis for the processing of your data will be covered under Article 6(1) (e) of the UK GDPR. This is that “processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested on the controller”.

The Home Office is also able to process your data under Article 9(2) (g) of the UK GDPR and under section 10 of the Data Protection Act 2018 in relation to “substantial public interest” given the purpose of OWHRs to identify any learning and actions arising from the death which may help to prevent future homicides.

The processing also meets the condition set out in Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 as the processing is necessary as it is for the exercise of a function conferred on a person by legislation and in exercising the function of a Government department and Ministers. The supporting legislation is the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Act 2022.

The relevant review partners are required under section 27 of the 2022 Act to provide notifications to the Secretary of State on whether or not a review will take place. Furthermore, under section 28(7) of the 2022 Act, the Secretary of State must publish, or make arrangements for the publication of the report, unless the Secretary of State considers it inappropriate for the report to be published. Under section 28(8) of the 2022 Act, if the Secretary of State considers it inappropriate for the report to be published, the Secretary of State must publish, or make arrangements for the publication of, so much of the contents of the report as the Secretary of State considers appropriate to be published.

Sharing your information

The Home Office will retain the notifications as relevant review partners are required to notify the Secretary of State of their decision on whether the homicide qualifies for a review or not or whether the review partner has not been able to take a decision on the matter. The notifications would be shared with the OWHR Oversight Board but any personal information within them would be redacted by the Home Office secretariat.

The completed review reports must be published by the Secretary of State as required under section 28(7) of the 2022 Act. However, the relevant review partners are required to consider the need for the redaction of any sections of the review for data protection purposes to ensure that no information is published within the review which could undermine any ongoing criminal investigation or proceedings or jeopardise the safety of any person, such as the family of the victim or vulnerable witnesses. The Secretary of State also has powers to redact any information considered to be inappropriate to publish and then publish the remainder of the report.

The design and development of a platform to store the reports is ongoing and as the reviews are a new process this is aimed to be in operation by early 2024 when the first completed reports are ready for publication. The Home Office plans to provide a single source for review reports for England and Wales where key characteristics of the reviews can be searched for as a national database, for example, by area or age group, however, this function is not going to be available for the pilot.

In addition, for any reviews carried out in Wales during the pilot under the Single Unified Safeguarding Review process then the reports will be published in the Wales Safeguarding Repository. The Wales Safeguarding Repository is not open to the public and access is only available to those who are authorised to do so.

The Home Office OWHR Oversight Board will also review completed reports and draw together OWHRs at a national level to assess and disseminate common learning, themes, issues in service provision and areas of good practice at set intervals. Membership of the Board, consists of individuals with expertise or background in policing, local authorities and health. The Board will also be supported by a secretariat function provided by the Home Office.

Storing your information

The data received will be in the form of word templates for both the notifications and for the completed review reports. The notifications and completed reports will be stored on the secure Home Office network and access to these notifications will be controlled and restricted to only Home Office staff who have been security cleared. Personal data received within the notifications will be held for the purposes of the pilot. The Home Office will publish the final reports on Gov.UK.

For any reviews conducted in the South Wales pilot area, notifications and completed reports will be sent to both the Secretary of State and the First Minister for Wales under the Single Unified Safeguarding Review process. The completed report will be published by Regional Safeguarding Board on their official websites and the reports will also be stored within the Wales Safeguarding Repository which is not public, and access is controlled.

Data is not transferred outside of the United Kingdom.

The retention periods for your personal data

The Home Office will retain the notifications it receives from the relevant review partners for up to 2 years. Where the relevant OWHR is completed and the report provided to the Secretary of State for publication within this time period then the information will be deleted at the earliest opportunity following publication of the report.

The review reports being submitted to the Home Office will be published on Gov.UK and as these will be in the public domain no retention period applies to these. For any reports where personal information has been redacted prior to publication then these versions of the reports would be securely stored on the Home Office network for up to 5 years following publication on Gov.UK before being deleted.

Sources and categories of information

In determining whether the conditions for an OWHR have been met, relevant review partners will gather facts about the case both from their own records and from other sources where appropriate. This may include details about a particular organisation’s engagement with the victim or alleged perpetrator(s), and any persons with a connection to the death if appropriate to be disclosed and relevant to the review.

Notification template

In the notification template, the Home Office would receive the following information:

Data	Categories of data
The name of the person who had died	Personal Data to the extent that it also relates to an identifiable living individual
The date of their death	Non-Personal Data
Confirmation that there is an alleged perpetrator (where appropriate)	No Personal Data shared
Any supporting evidence which could include information on the circumstances of the death, the age of the victim, whether an offensive weapon was used	A mix of Personal Data and potentially Criminal Offence Data if any offence is provided on the circumstances of the homicide
The date of the notification	Non-Personal Data
The name of the lead practitioner completing the notification, their organisation and location.	Personal Data

The completed review report submitted to the Home Office for publication would contain the following:

Data	Categories of data
Circumstances of the homicide	Criminal Offence Data
Where the victim lived (if it reveals information on other persons)	Personal Data but only to the extent that it relates to another identifiable living individual
Where the homicide took place	Criminal Offence Data
Cause of death	Personal Data
Details of the post-mortem and inquest and/or Coroners Inquiry (if appropriate to be disclosed)	Personal Data
Summary of those with a connection to the death	Criminal Offence Data
How the victim and alleged perpetrator(s) were connected	Criminal Offence Data
If applicable or able to be disclosed who has been charged with a criminal offence associated with the homicide, the date and outcome of the trial (if criminal justice proceedings have been completed)	Criminal Offence Data
Summary of timeline of significant events	Criminal Offence Data
Any protected characteristics of the victim and alleged perpetrator(s)	Special Category Data
Information provided by family, friends or other support networks	Personal Data
Contact/involvement of victim and alleged perpetrator(s) with local services and agencies	Personal Data
Chronology charting relevant key events/contacts/involvement with the victim and alleged perpetrator(s) by local partners, bodies, professionals and others who have contributed to the review process	Personal Data
Contextual information on the wider environment that the homicide occurred in as well as other individuals with a connection to the death which is relevant to the learning from the review	Personal Data
Practice and organisational learning	Non-Personal Data
Any actions identified based the learning to systems and practices and anticipated outcomes	Non-Personal Data
Quality assurance sign-off of the completed review report	Personal Data
List of recipients who will receive a copy of the review report	Personal Data

Pseudonyms would be used within the review report.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews) Regulations 2022 specifies the information about the victim or alleged perpetrator(s) that could be considered. The information in scope is information that there is a risk a person may commit, or be a victim of, antisocial or criminal behaviour and may relate to the person’s education, anti-social or criminal behaviour, housing, medical history, mental health or be about their safeguarding.

Section 29 of the 2022 Act allows a review partner to request a person to provide information specified in the request to the review partner or another review partner. This means that appropriate bodies who may be relevant to contribute to a review would be required to provide information. The appropriate bodies may include, but are not limited to:

• police (from other areas),
• local authorities (from other areas),
• Integrated Care Boards (from other areas),
• Local Health Boards (from other areas),
• Community Safety Partnerships and Wales Safer Communities Network,
• Violence Reduction Units,
• Police and Crime Commissioners,
• Safeguarding Adult Boards in England/National or Regional Safeguarding Boards in Wales,
• Safeguarding Children Partnerships in England/National or Regional Safeguarding Boards in Wales,
• NHSE Regional Leads (mental health homicides),
• national and regional law enforcement agencies with a serious and organised crime remit,
• educational institutions,
• probation service,
• Crown Prosecution Service,
• Fire and Rescue Service,
• specialist voluntary sector providers,
• family, friends, faith sector, affected communities and other social networks (with agreement from the police senior investigating officer)

Requesting access to your personal data

You have the right to request access to the personal information that the Home Office holds about you. For any person under 18 who is included within a review, their representatives (e.g. parent or guardian) are able to support them in the exercise of their rights if desired. In certain circumstances, you also have the right to:

• rectification of any data that you determine is inaccurate or missing
• restrict the use of your personal data
• access copies of your personal data
• object to its use

If you want to exercise any of these rights, then please email us at:

SARUCorrespondence@homeoffice.gov.uk

What are your Data Protection Rights?

Data Protection Rights will be fulfilled in line with legislated timeframes and subject to individual assessment. Where the Home Office is not the controller we will make every effort to direct you to the appropriate party or collaborate to facilitate data access.

The Right of Access	You have the right to request copies of your personal data. The organisation(s) will provide copies unless a valid legal exemption is applied.
The Right of Rectification	You have the right to request amendments or updates to be made to your personal data, where you believe the data are incorrect or incomplete.
The Right to Restrict Processing	You have the right to request that the Home Office restricts the processing of your personal data under certain circumstances, for example while you are awaiting a response to a request to amend or delete your data.
The Right to Object	You have the right to object to the Home Office processing your personal data, under certain conditions. We are processing data for the purposes of the performance of a public task, and under these circumstances we are not required to comply with an objection. We will consider all requests though, and to assist us in our decision-making, it is helpful if you state clearly what harm you believe may be caused by the processing of your data. We would weigh this against the benefits of processing the data.

Your personal information will be held and processed by the Home Office. The Home Office is the controller of this information, along with the relevant review partner that supplied the data.

At no time is the personal information submitted subject to automated decision making or profiling.

Your Data Protection Rights will cease when the relevant review partners provide the anonymised report for publication by the Secretary of State.

Questions or concerns about your personal data

If you have any questions or concerns about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information as part of the Offensive Weapons Homicide Review pilot then please contact the policy team at: OWHR-Team@homeoffice.gov.uk

If you are unhappy with any aspect of this privacy notice, or how your personal information is being processed, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way the Home Office is handling your personal information.

Details on how you do this can be found at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Fax: 01625 524510

Data subjects also have the right to contact the Home Office Data Protection Officer about any concerns: dpo@homeoffice.gov.uk