County Hall, home to Norfolk County Council.
Norfolk County Council fined £80,000 for sending sensitive information to the wrong address
Richard Wheeler
Monday, February 13, 2012
3:06 PM
Norfolk’s largest council has been fined £80,000 after a staff blunder led to highly sensitive child welfare information being hand-delivered to the wrong address.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) revealed today Norfolk County Council failed to follow “one of the most basic rules” by having a system in place to check if sensitive information was being given to the right person.
The watchdog said the error occurred when a social worker inadvertently wrote the wrong address on a report and hand-delivered the information to the intended recipient’s next-door neighbour in April last year.
An investigation into the breach also found the county council did not monitor whether staff had completed data protection training.
Croydon Council, in south London, was also fined £100,000 by the ICO after papers containing details of a child sex abuse victim were stolen from a pub.
Stephen Eckersley, the ICO’s head of enforcement, speaking about the decision to fine both local authorities said: “While both councils acted swiftly to inform the people involved and have since taken remedial action, this does not excuse the fact that vulnerable children and their families should never have been put in this situation.”
An EDP Freedom of Information request previously revealed there had been 46 breaches of the Data Protection Act between December 2008 and 2011 at the county council.
Mike Jackson, director for environment, transport and development, said the authority took its responsibilities to protect personal data “extremely seriously”.
He added the number of breaches were rare compared to the amount of information staff dealt with each day.
Mr Jackson said: “That is why this case was particularly concerning and we felt it necessary to immediately and voluntarily refer the matter to the Information Commissioner.
“As soon as we discovered what had happened we acted to contain the breach and apologised to all of the people concerned.
“We also carried out an investigation into what went wrong and looked at what we could do to further improve practice.
“Although this was a case of human error by a single member of staff, we have since put in place a range of measures to ensure there is even greater clarity for staff on how to handle personal information.”
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11 comments
Someone made a mistake - why charge we taxpayers £80k - this is rubbish - who's the winner here?
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theacepg
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Interesting idea Claire V. but it seems a bit harsh to take the money from the Highwaysplanning or whatever it's called department, when the error was made in the Children's Services one. Perhaps at interview they could only appoint people as social workers if they never have and never will make an honest mistake in their lives, then we'd have none of this bother.
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I ronnie
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Has the member of staff been sacked?
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Hugh
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Mike Jackson obviously has no control over his department which should now be denuded of funding of 80k Why should the Norfolk Council Tax layers have to meet the cost due to inefficiency and lack of basic business acumen Watch this space as he will now no doubt be moved to an even higher post within the council for his ineptness with a portfolio cabinet executive title What a shambles once again by a council officer who works til 3pm each day all weekends off and a fat pension Will he now receive a bonus as well for failure?
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Claire Voyant
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
I think it's always the case that when the occasional inevitable human error occurs it's really the fault of a senior person who'd probably never even heard of the person what done it, until they done it. And given that, I'm not sure why we aren't actually calling for the resignation of the Queen, or the pope, or Paul Lambert.
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I ronnie
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Mike Jackson you should resign.
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Jack
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Mike Jackson you are the one that is pushing a dirty big waste incinerator on people who don't want it. What a sad man you are.
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Jack
Monday, February 13, 2012
Mike Jackson has been so tied up with his friends Tory Wheelabrator. He hasn't even notice the big tory ship is going down.
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Jack
Monday, February 13, 2012
Ah an investigation? Well that makes it all ok then doesnt it? And we foot the bill for the idiot responsible who doubtless got to keep their job and had a bit of 're-training'. What happened to data protection and what was the actual outcome of these cases because confidentiality was breached? Ah yes - they have apologised.................
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Mrs Meldrew
Monday, February 13, 2012
Sack the idiot who let this happen.
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wes1975
Monday, February 13, 2012
What's the point of this fine? Where does the £80,000 go? It just comes straight out of the pockets of local taxpayers - at a time when councils are trying hard to make savings. A fine example of absolute lunacy.
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Dick Turnip
Monday, February 13, 2012