12/09/2022 | Press release | Archived content
What is a priority services register?
From a consumer perspective, many people haven't heard of a PSR and wouldn't think to let their utility company know they are vulnerable. To make matters more complicated they also don't know that each utility keeps its own register, and they should be letting each utility company know they are vulnerable.
During the opening of the workshop, we heard from Holger Kessler on why this is such an important project for the UK, especially in the face of the cost-of-living crisis and posing the question that we have the data so why can't it be shared to better support people? Carolyn Delehanty presented a series of harrowing real-life stories to emphasise the hidden plight and extent of deprivation in our society.
This was followed by lightning talks from Helen Lord, CEO of the Vulnerability Services Register Ltd on the lack of an overarching strategy or process to identify those in vulnerable circumstances. Jon Ross from Southern Water talked about their experiences on how a lack of data sharing between stakeholder groups can hamper efforts to ensure all those that qualify for support, actually receive it and how a more joined-up approach to PSR, at least regionally, would make PSR much more inclusive. Finally, we heard from Andrew Humphreys from SAVVI/RedQuadrant on how more interoperability and local engagement would enable a more effective and efficient way to tackle vulnerability and introduced a Scalable Approach to Vulnerability Via Interoperability (SAVVI) project SAVVI model as an example of how data sharing and data warehousing allows Councils to not only fulfil their responsibilities under the Civil Contingencies Act but also addressing vulnerabilities among their citizens.
The group split into three to workshop three key areas that came from the lightning talks.
1. Assuring data privacy
The group believed the public would be more likely to trust their data being held locally rather than nationally. A culture shift in the sharing of data is needed and a technical solution is required to ensure organisations only see the data they need. The line between usability and privacy is jagged and utilities didn't necessarily even need to know what the vulnerability was, just that property X or property Y had vulnerable people living there, so attend those first.
2. Need for a National PSR
Again, they believed that there wasn't a need for a national register (i.e., geographically national) as services are provided locally or regionally. However, what did transpire was that local/regional service providers need to be joined up and able to share and/or access the data.
Given that PSRs cover a variety of purposes and use cases, the contents of a PSR and hence the data requirements needed to support it will also vary. A few vulnerability reasons were identified:
Within each, there would be a specific use case.
Each use case would require a different set of data access points each via potentially different data custodians and data controllers. To support a joined-up PSR system, it was envisaged that data needed to support a use case is fulfilled via APIs, to avoid data duplication and hence provide more efficient version control (important to support high currency requirements).
The last point discussed was privacy and GDPR.
3. Conceptual Data System
This group felt that there was a need for a government policy to mandate data sharing between the various organisations. While there are some individual agreements between utility companies it doesn't solve the problem.
They also discussed how they identified 99 different types of vulnerabilities in one pilot. The question was are they trying to do too much instead of focusing on the main known life-threatening vulnerability type?
Again, the final points discussed were privacy and GDPR, also having a more focused approach.
Overall, the session was highly informative and educational and given the diverse representatives in the group from utilities, Government bodies and technical providers it was agreed that future workshops, hackathons or thought leadership groups would be beneficial.
If you would like to get involved or contribute and be part of the debate that 'Makes A Difference' please contact us and we will ensure your participation in future events.