Friday 6 July: Office closed for move to new premises

The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner will be closed for one day on Friday 6 July whilst we move to our new premises at St Martin’s House, Le Bordage.

Our phoneline will be forwarded to a voicemail facility for the day, but we will continue to monitor our enquiries@odpc.gg inbox for any urgent matters.

The office move is necessary to accommodate the ODPC’s team which has grown from 3 people in full-time positions, to 7 people in a mix of full-time and part-time contract positions. Their previous premises were a trio of small interconnected offices on the ground floor of the Guernsey Information Centre.

Emma Martins, Data Protection Commissioner commented on how the new premises will also help the ODPC fulfil its role of supportive public engagement.

‘My team and I are genuinely thrilled to be moving to our new premises in St Martin’s House. We are very mindful of our status as a publicly-funded body, and as such we have searched for a long time to make sure that we secured the right premises that represent the best value for money.’ ‘There is some internal building work that will go on around us over the summer, and once that’s completed we will be using the new space to host regular public events to help us raise awareness of good data protection practices for the benefit of everyone. On a practical note, we will have sufficient desks to accommodate our team, which was a luxury we did not have at our previous premises. We will also be creating an on-site confidential meeting space, this is essential for when we’re meeting with members of the public who may have to share deeply personal information with us.’

The internal building work that will take place over the summer months will include creating a flexible area to accommodate both the Data Protection Authority’s regular board meetings, as well as public events. This flexible area will give the ODPC the space to proactively engage with more local organisations and individuals to encourage innovation and excellence in data protection via regular events such as one-to-one ‘surgeries’, industry forums, themed workshops, talks from invited speakers etc. An open evening for invited guests is planned for September 2018, and the first in a series of public events will be announced in autumn 2018 once the internal building work is completed.

As of Monday 9 July our new address will be: St Martin’s House Le Bordage St Peter Port GY1 1BR Our telephone number and main email address remains: +44 1481 742074 and enquiries@odpc.gg.