Surrey County Council fined for three data loss cases

Surrey County Council has been rapped by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) after a series of data loss incidents.

The local authority was dealt with a £120,000 fine as a result of breaching the Data Protection Act on a number of occasions.

Firstly, in May 2010, the council made an error when it sent out emails showing the mental and physical health information of 241 people to the wrong recipients.

The following month, Surrey County Council was once again caught up in a data security row, after sending an email with personal information of a number of people to 100 individuals who were on the list to receive the institute's newsletter.

January 2011 saw the third major breach conducted by the council, this time when its Children Services department sent confidential data to the incorrect internal group email list.

Recently, the ICO detailed that Somerset County Council had breached the Data Protection Act when it delivered a teenager's social service assessment to the wrong family.