All callers to the Intake Team who are making new enquiries may have an ECHO record created to log their call. In addition to enquiries recorded on ECHO there are:

2.1 Voice recordings

We record all casework staff telephone calls by default. All incoming calls made to, and outgoing calls made by, staff in the Intake, Assessment and Investigation teams are recorded and kept on our telephony system for 30 days.

Non-casework staff can selectively record telephone calls and these too are kept on our telephony system for 30 days.

Call recordings can only be accessed if they satisfy a clearly defined business need, as set out in our call recording protocol on the intranet. Casework calls retrieved from the telephony system should only be stored on the case record on ECHO. Call files saved on ECHO will then become part of the file and will be subject to the usual 12-month retention period. Some call recordings must be stored in the ECHO DO NOT DISCLOSE folder as set out in our call recording protocol on the intranet.

In very exceptional cases a call file may be too large to store on ECHO. In such cases it may be kept in K:\casework with a note saying why made in Notes and Analysis. Any file on K: must be destroyed after 12 months. It is the caseworker’s responsibility to ensure this happens; they can delegate this to a Team Coordinator.

2.2 Online complaint form and attachments

When a complaint form is completed on our online complaint service (OCS) on our website, this comes through to Intake with any supporting documents uploaded by the complainant. Intake accept the complaint and documents into ECHO.

All forms and attachments are retained by our online complaint service provider for a period of 4 weeks to allow for queries about forms that have not got through to Intake. After 4 weeks, these files are deleted. Incomplete complaint forms will be retained by our provider, for 12 months.

To submit a complaint form online, or use the online complaint service for any other purpose, users must create an account with an email and password. Account details are stored by our provider. Account details will be deleted 5 years from last log in.

2.3 Signposted enquiries

Where an enquiry is about a body outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction, the enquirer’s personal details should be retained for three months and then anonymised. The remainder of the record should be retained for 10 years for statistical purposes.

For written enquiries of this nature, if any papers are retained and not scanned, these should be returned to the enquirer once the enquiry has been dealt with. Scanned papers and any correspondence should be deleted when the complaint is anonymised (i.e. after three months).