Derbyshire council sent confidential data to wrong person’s home
A man found someone else's Universal Credit claim form had been sent to him by accident. The man, who wishes to remain anonymous but lives in Long Eaton,[1] was delivered a letter regarding a social services assessment from Derbyshire County Council[2] by the postman on Wednesday, June 7.
But when he opened it, a completely unrelated piece of paper was attached, which the man said was "page one" of a Universal Credit claim form. It contained personal data, such as their full name, phone number, date of birth, address and national insurance number.
The man, who didn't report the incident himself, said: "It's sensitive information. It doesn’t seem like they are treating people's data all that seriously."
A spokesman for Derbyshire County Council said: “On 9 June we were made aware of an incident involving the unintended disclosure of personal data. We take our information-handling responsibilities very seriously and are committed to handling data with the utmost care. All employees are required to undertake annual information governance training to ensure that they are fully aware of the importance of treating personal data appropriately and in accordance with our data protection obligations.
“Having been made aware of the incident we have logged it in accordance with our internal data breach reporting procedure and are currently working to establish exactly what happened in this case.
“The matter has been referred to our data protection officer who will consider the appropriate next steps such as reporting the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office, updating the affected individuals and taking steps to ensure that data is appropriately protected in the future.”
The man said he later received a call from Derbyshire County Council's social care department to arrange to collect the wrongly-sent letter.
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References
- ^ Long Eaton, (www.derbytelegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Derbyshire County Council (www.derbytelegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Get the latest news on Derbyshire County Council here (www.derbytelegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Sign up to our newsletter here. (data.reachplc.com)