Sensitive personal information about children and families

Archived press release

Date Published: 17/07/08

Basildon District Council published personal and sensitive information about traveller families and their children in a Committee report and on its website. The information included medical details, the names and ages of all the children living on the site, and the children’s educational needs.

Basildon District Council published personal and sensitive information about traveller families and their children in a Committee report and on its website, finds Local Government Ombudsman, Tony Redmond. In his report, issued today (17 July 2008) he says the information included medical details, the names and ages of all the children living on the site, and the children’s educational needs.  The Council has already agreed to apologise to the families, and he recommends that it also pays £300 compensation to three families who have complained to him.

‘Mrs Oak’, ‘Mrs Birch’ and ‘Mrs Ash’ (not their real names for legal reasons) are travellers who live with their families on an unauthorised site on green belt land in the Council’s area. They complain that the Council breached provisions in the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998 by publishing personal and sensitive information about them and members of their families in a report to the Development Control and Traffic Management Committee. The report was considered in the open part of the Council’s committee meeting, and copies were available to members of the public and the press who attended. The report was also published on the Council’s website and remained there for 10 days. 

Mrs Oak, Mrs Birch and Mrs Ash were shocked and outraged when they learned that such sensitive information had been put into the public domain and they worried for some time about the possible repercussions for themselves and their children. 

The Ombudsman finds that the Council’s decision to publish the personal details in the report was maladministration, commenting “My view is that the Council could have chosen to report the information to Councillors in anonymised and summarised form, or it could have treated it as exempt information and placed it in Part 2 of the meeting [from which the press and the public are excluded], in order to prevent the widespread circulation and disclosure of detailed sensitive medical and educational information.” 

The Ombudsman reports “Fortunately, neither the complainants nor their children suffered any serious repercussions. Although the complainants worried that this information might fall into the wrong hands and their children could be put at risk, no incidents occurred following publication of the children’s details.” 

He finds maladministration causing injustice and recommends that the Council should pay each complainant £300 compensation and send them a letter apologising for the distress caused by publication of the information. 

The Council has already changed its procedures to ensure that sensitive and personal information about individuals is considered in Part 2 of committee meetings from which the press and public are excluded.

Report refs 06A16993, 06A16997 and 06A17360