Birmingham City Council has suffered a serious data breach incident in which information relating to “vulnerable” children. Their data was mistakenly uploaded to a Brum account, a website that allows taxpayers to access services offered by the local authority. The authority has said that the breach happened as a result of human error – with a staff member mistakenly uploading the private information. By email of 19 March, the authority confirmed that data relating to youngsters entitled to free bus [...]

Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, has been granted summary judgment in her legal battle with Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. Ms Markle began legal action against ANL in 2019 in response to a publication by the Mail on Sunday of a letter the Duchess sent to her father, Thomas Markle, in 2018. This was shortly after her marriage to Prince Harry. The claim against ANL was for misuse of private information, [...]

Personal data is the life blood of social services. Whether providing the care needs of the elderly and disabled, assessing the suitability of foster carers or protecting the welfare of abused children, they need to know sensitive and confidential information to carry out their tasks. All the more reason therefore, for social services to be at the top of their game in respecting data protection rights.  When it comes to sensitive personal information, sharing it with the wrong people or [...]

In January of this year the BBC reported that Hackney Council had been subjected to a “serious cyber-attack”. This resulted in the publication on the dark web of the personal details of the council staff and residents. In addition, the attack affected the various services Hackney residents relied on, including the council’s ability to process land search requests for those buying property. This, in turn, meant that some of the property purchases of residents fell through because buyers were unable [...]

Data breaches by local authorities have unfortunately become very common. Where a council or a body under the council’s authority, such as social services, has breached your data, you may be eligible to make a claim for compensation for any financial loss or distress suffered as result of the breach. Given the sensitive nature of some of the information local authorities hold about us, an unauthorised disclosure of that information can have an extremely detrimental impact on the lives of [...]