× Search rightsnet
Search options

Where

Benefit

Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction

From

to

Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Universal credit administration  →  Thread

Consent form to store clients UC username and password

S Taylor
forum member

Welfare benefits adviser - Macmillan Caring Locally, Christchurch

Send message

Total Posts: 61

Joined: 11 June 2013

Morning all

Does anyone have a template consent form for a client to sign to give consent to the adviser to store their UC username and password to add journal entries on their behalf and monitor their claim to ensure a correct award? I had one some months ago, I think perhaps it came via Nawra but I can’t remember, and now I can’t find it. It had all the stuff on about storing it securely for the minimum amount of time and destroying it when casework completed etc.

Many thanks

Va1der
forum member

Welfare Rights Officer with SWAMP Glasgow

Send message

Total Posts: 706

Joined: 7 May 2019

Is this to do with a GDPR (or later UK equivalent) concern? If so, I don’t think it is something you explicitly have to worry about.
If you are already storing special category data (disability etc) and your procedures and IT system meets the security criteria for that data - your normal data protection agreement should be sufficient.

The important part is the mandate to act on their behalf.
Frankly, you could do this with a generic mandate, and many advice organisations do, although I think this is bad practice - in line with the intention of GDPR and ICO guidance, it is better for mandates to be specific in their scope (so the client has keen awareness of what control they are ‘signing away’).

However, unless you are an appointee, you might encounter issues amending any details of their claim or making notes in the journal - even if the claimant has given explicit consent for you to do so in their journal - I wonder to what extent DWP would allow it (they seem to be reluctant to allow claimants to sign away wide authority). 
You could of course be acting ‘as if you were the claimant’ but that would definitely be bad practice, IMHO.

 

S Taylor
forum member

Welfare benefits adviser - Macmillan Caring Locally, Christchurch

Send message

Total Posts: 61

Joined: 11 June 2013

Thank you Va1der. The form is really to keep my manager and the charity that employ me happy as they are cautious about me having this information. Normally I visit my patient at home, they add explicit consent with my details and then I add a journal entry in my name on their behalf. I now need to limit my visits to essential only so once I have visited to help them make the initial claim I plan to keep their user name and password to check how the claim is progressing and that the award is correct. Once the claim is up and running I would destroy the username and password and note this is their casenotes. With some of my patients, language barriers and poor phone signals make this impossible over the phone.