While Jane and Paul will be correct in many cases you do have to consider who the duty of confidentiality is owed to and what their reasonable expectations would be, particularly in the absence of a statutory gateway such as Ombudsmen may have.
For example in NHS, if a patient complains, we cannot have our own independent investigator look at their records without consent - albeit that if withheld the complaint goes approximately nowhere. NB this is NOT consent as the GDPR legal basis.
On the other hand if PHSO asks us for the records we can usually disclose without consent ... as the statutory power and duty to comply overrides
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