Croydon and Norfolk County councils fined for child security failures

Publiceservice.co.uk reports:

Croydon Council and Norfolk County Council have both been slammed with significant monetary penalties after failing to secure sensitive information on children's welfare, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said.

The regulator handed a £100,000 fine to Croydon Council after a social worker's unlocked bag containing papers on the care of a child sex abuse victim was stolen from pub in London.

The bag and its contents were never recovered and the council was found to have failed to monitor employees' understanding of data protection guidance.

Stephen Eckersley, the ICO's head of enforcement said: "This highly personal information needn't have been compromised at all if Croydon Council had appropriate security measures in place."

Norfolk County Council faced an £80,000 penalty for its breach, which saw a social worker hand deliver confidential and highly sensitive information on a child's emotional and physical wellbeing to a next-door neighbour after writing the wrong address on a report.

Information related to allegations against a parent and the welfare of their child. In this case, the ICO said the social worker had not completed mandatory data protection training and found that council processes were lacking.

"One of the most basic rules when disclosing highly sensitive information is to check and then double check that it is going to the right recipient," said Eckersley. "Norfolk County Council failed to have a system for this and also did not monitor whether staff had completed data protection training."

He added that both authorities had acted "swiftly" to inform people involved, and that remedial action had since been taken to ensure effective data protection measures were put in place.

But Eckersley said this did not "excuse the fact that vulnerable children and their families should never have been put in this situation."...