London councils losing data

Half of London councils have had data management problems in the past year, according to a report by a BBC radio show.

The report follows massive data losses by central government as well as by corporations, such as the HM Revenue and Customs debacle last year and the missing disks from HSBC bank last week.

"Significant personal details are being lost at local government level too," Donal MacIntyre said on his BBC Radio 5 Live show.

Reporter Nicola Bedford sent Freedom of Information Act requests to all 33 London councils, finding that half of the 23 which replied had data issues of some sort since January 2007. "That ranged from laptops being stolen to a member of the public's personal data being published in a council report," said Bedford.

Not surprisingly, there were also thefts from the pub. A social worker from Kensington and Chelsea council took home papers to prepare for a court hearing, but stopped off at a pub to meet friends, where a bag containing the documents was stolen. "The thief got away with papers that included court reports and a review of the young person's statement of special education needs," explained Bedford.

Following the incident in September of last year, the social worker was given a written warning, and the council's other staff were warned on data protection.

But that'd didn't stop it from happening again. In January of this year, a council youth worker lost a laptop in a bar, and another council laptop was stolen from a coffee shop. "That's three data loss incidents at the same council in the space of five months," said Bedford.

They weren't the only council with missing data, however. Bedford also described another data loss case at Havering Council, involving the files of 375 students who had applied for higher education grants. The files, all from 1997 to 2000, were left in a secured skip to be incinerated, but the skip went missing. The 30-foot, specialised container was locked, behind locked gates, and required a special vehicle to move it, leading the council to suggest the skip itself was the target of the theft, not the data, Bedford reported.

A spokesman for Havering council said: "At the time of the theft, the container and the gates to the Broxhill Centre were both locked. Given that a specialist vehicle was required to move the container, it seems most likely that the container itself was the target of the theft. Any loss of data is always extremely regrettable."

Kensington and Chelsea did not respond to request for comment at the time of publishing, but a spokesman told the BBC the council took personal data extremely seriously. "Where it is clear our policies have not been correctly followed we always undertake a management investigation and disciplinary action is taken when appropriate," he said.

A podcast of the report is available on the BBC site here.

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