Data Breaches, Newcastle City Council and Contradictory Control Measures.

Data Breaches, Newcastle City Council and Contradictory Control Measures.

Regular readers of the Surmount blog will recall our entry back in November 2017 in relation to the conduct of Newcastle City Council and the poor and concerning manner in which they handle confidential data.

The matter stemmed from a now infamous data breach at the hands of Newcastle City Council which was the result of a bulk email sent in June of 2017 to 77 recipients that led to the disclosure of various personal details such as home addresses, dates of birth and so on of adopting parents and adopted children. Read more about Data Breaches, Newcastle City Council and Contradictory Control Measures.

Newcastle City Council: Newcastle’s Biggest Threat

Newcastle City Council: Newcastle’s Biggest Threat

A recent article in The Guardian by Helen Pidd exposed that Newcastle City Council had once again committed an extremely serious and worrying breach of confidential data. This was only months after their shameful leaking of highly confidential adoption data that they are currently under investigation by the ICO for.

We’re using this week’s blog post to speak specifically about our own experiences with Newcastle City Council and the concerns we’ve repeatedly raised about their data protection processes and their cavalier attitude towards confidentiality.

We’ve hoped for a long time that a sea-change would come with regards to Newcastle City Council. Now we are simply demanding that they are stripped of their right to handle confidential data in line with ICO requirements and must rebuild from the ground up as a local authority with extreme and robust external parties in place to govern them in the meantime. Read more about Newcastle City Council: Newcastle’s Biggest Threat