Role of the Designated Liaison Officer

The legal requirement is to have a named person within each responsible authority who can facilitate information sharing with other agencies. For this to be a meaningful role, each partnership should agree a clear role for the designated liaison officers. This might include:

• Acting as the single point of contact for information requests between the partnership and relevant organisations.
• Understanding the relevant legislation and being able to champion information sharing within their own organisations.
• Working with other designated liaison officers to establish the best ways to share information.
• Acting as the first point of call for any technical problems with sharing the information that may arise.

Partnerships should decide locally whether the existing Data Protection Officers are appropriate for this role. In two-tier areas in particular, one person may fulfil the role of designated liaison officer across multiple community safety partnerships. In small partnerships, it may be that the key representative on the partnership also acts as the designated liaison officer.