Information on Loughborough

Loughborough Data

Posted on 29/08/2008
P. Klein

Railway

Charnwood Borough Council has released a press statement regarding the discovery of personal data of residents of Loughborough and the rest of Charnwood, in the statement they say:"Charnwood Borough Council has acted swiftly to contain this situation.  We have traced the hard drive and are currently retrieving it.  The purchaser is co-operating with Charnwood and has stated that the data has not been distributed to any other parties.

Richard Shepherd (Conservative), the Leader of Charnwood Borough Council, said:  "I regret the concern caused to Charnwood residents by this serious matter. We have worked vigorously to investigate the case.  I am pleased that we have quickly been able to identify and track down the hard drive and deal with the situation appropriately. We will give every assistance to the Police in their further investigations and I will personally ensure a thorough review is also completed by the Council to find out how this happened.

The case has been referred to Leicestershire Constabulary as a criminal investigation and we can confirm that an individual has been arrested and is assisting the police with their enquiries. As this is now a criminal investigation the Council is unable to make any further comments at this stage. We have also notified the Information Commissioner of this incident.

However as yet there has been no explanation as to why the personal details of Loughborough residents were kept on a hard drive in an unencrypted form. The Data Protection Act which came into effect on 1 March 2000 concerns how data should be treated. One of the principles of this act is that "Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data. The council have stated previously that they have a policy whereby hard disks are either destroyed or certified clear. This presumably has been circumvented by a person who is now under arrest. However what is clear is that the appropriate technical measures were not in place. Had they been so the whole situation would have not arrisen despite the failure of the organisational measures.

Cllr Max Hunt speaking about the situation said: ""As Chairman of the Borough Scrutiny Commission I have asked for an urgent report from officers to be examined in public when we meet on Tuesday 23rd September 2008.