The constituency pool

The rationale

The London Boroughs of Bromley and Lewisham have six constituencies between them, and one of them is neatly cut in two by the borough boundary. You can see some relevant maps on the UK pro-European Network (UKPEN.eu) page for South East London here.

Groups fighting the Government's plans for Brexit have grown up in different formats and with different affiliations or none, all over these two boroughs. These groups are also listed on ukpen.eu. Individuals often belong to more than one group, and when the groups work together to recruit more members it can be pretty confusing knowing which list people belong to.

In this important period we need to be able to focus our efforts where they make most impact, and combine our borough and constituency identities. We need to be able to recruit members anywhere in our two Boroughs and classify them, according to their own addresses and preferences, and to the organisations and communication methods which work best for them.

The GDPR imperative

By 22 May 2018, groups will need to reform their data-holding methods to comply with a new data protection regime. The way this is being tackled in Bromley- Lewisham is for all the groups to hold a single list of subscribers on Free Mailchimp. On 23 April Mailchimp produced their latest version of GDPR-compliant form fields and their full guidance spells out how communications to different groups can be managed very simply by setting up segments of the single list, for example constituency segments, defined by postcode. These segment lists update automatically as new subscribers are added. There is a need to give the job of data controller to some single well-defined entity, and Lewisham East for Europe will assume that responsibility in these two boroughs.

The GDPR opportunity

This change of regime creates an opportunity to collect indications of willingness to join our work in different ways - ranging from receiving communications, through keyboard and phone work, to street and door-to-door activities. On the other hand, casting the net too wide risks losing members through impatience with the process. We have decided to try to collect volunteering preferences in a separate subsequent trawl. The other enormous benefit is that we can collect names and email addresses on the street - or even just email addresses - direct into a mobile device and then the detailed consents can take place at a later stage.

Modalities

Groups that already have lists can bring themselves into compliance by inviting members to subscribe to this new pooled list . 48% and constituency Facebook groups can be invited to supply their details for the first time, and bring themselves into a more organised structure.