Another database bites the dust

Our Database State report strikes again:

ContactPoint will be switched off on 6 August, ministers announced today.

In a ministerial statement, children’s minister Tim Loughton said from noon that day users would no longer have access to the database that was set up to allow authorised children’s services professionals across England to see who else was working with a child or young person. The data itself will be destroyed within two months of the closure.

ContactPoint was one of eleven systems we judged “almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned. The collection and sharing of sensitive personal data may be disproportionate, or done without our consent, or without a proper legal basis; or there may be other major privacy or operational problems.”