Right, let's talk about what happens to a driver's medical data once they've moved on. We keep things tidy and compliant, naturally.
Once you mark a driver with a leaving date, their medical records don't vanish into thin air immediately. The system holds onto their medical data for a retention period you've set. You'll find this in Company Settings, under Medical Assessment. By default, it's set to 6 years post-leaving. This isn't a random number; it's in line with ICO guidance for employment records, especially useful when considering limitation periods.
The Automated Tidy-Up
Every Monday at 03:00 UTC, like clockwork, a sweep runs through the system. If any leaver's medical data has passed its retention window, it's permanently deleted. Nothing to it.
This deletion covers: * All their submitted medical assessments. * Every raw clinical answer they provided during those assessments. * Any audit-trail entries directly linked to those specific assessments. * Their entire medical profile.
Heads up: A single "retention_purge" entry is appended to the audit log. This entry confirms the deletion happened and, crucially, it survives the sweep. So, you've always got evidence of compliant data handling if an auditor comes knocking.
Need to Extend Retention?
Quick one: If you've got an ongoing legal claim or similar and need to keep a driver's medical data for longer, you can absolutely extend the retention. Just set a longer 'retention years' value in Medical Settings before that leaver's data crosses the deletion threshold. Fire prevention beats fire fighting, right?
See? Keeping on top of data retention is a breeze when DDIR does the heavy lifting for you.