Lloyd Park and Higham Hill improvement scheme

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GP Partners Response

We wrote to you last week on 22 February 2023 bringing to your attention the proposals around the Lloyd Park and Higham Hill improvement scheme run by the London Borough of Waltham Forest.

In this letter, we raised several aspects of the scheme that the practice team are concerned about, relating predominately to access to the surgery for those patients with limited mobility. There have since been some concerns around our decision to contact you on this matter, in particular around data/confidentially breach.

The practice has consulted with our Information Governance Lead and our Data Protection Officer on guidance on the above concern and we can confirm that

• as a health organisation with responsibility for patient care, we are within our rights to make representations/recommendations on planning matters to the Local Authority on issues which will directly impact our patients.
• there has been no data or confidentiality breach relating to you receiving the letter via our text messaging platform as no patient personal data has been lost or inappropriately shared with any other party.

However, we acknowledge that using the letter to request patients to take part in a petition to stop the scheme can be viewed by some as a political issue and a breach of the UKs GDPR rules. We apologise for our actions and as a result, the practice will work with relevant organisations to record and learn from our actions from this particular incident.

We would like to stress that the actions from the practice was carried out with the patient’s best interest and we strongly believe that although the scheme will tackle factors contributing to poor health such as air pollution, it will negatively impact our patient population who have mobility issues accessing the service. We will continue to work with the local council to ensure that our views are factored into the proposed scheme

Published: Mar 2, 2023