Council data protection breaches: a common problem

Council data protection breaches are a common problem, so if you have been the victim of a breach or leak caused by your local council, you’re one of many.

You have rights to be able to claim for data breach compensation, whether the council has directly breached data laws, or where a local authority outsourced company has breached the law instead.

We advise and represent a lot of people for council data leaks and data breaches because the root problems as to why they are so common have yet to be resolved.

Data protection laws apply to local councils and local authority agencies in the same way they do for private organisations. Council data breaches are amongst the most common types of data breach claims, and there are a number of reasons as to why that is the case.

Firstly, they hold a lot of private and sensitive data about people. From financial data held for council tax purposes, to personal information for electoral rolls, the data is rich and voluminous. Whenever such data is leaked, the impact and harm for the victim can be huge because of the nature of the data they hold.

But it isn’t just the nature of the data that can make claims more common; it’s also how the data is protected.

Studies have shown that some three-quarters of councils do not provide mandatory cyber-security training, and attacks have been occurring at a rate of almost two every hour. On the whole, staff are not data protection savvy enough to avoid leaks and breaches, and the funding just isn’t there to properly protect the data they hold.

A government watchdog recently concluded that one-in-ten councils face running out of money in the next three years as a result of the rising cost of social care. If the costs of social care are rising beyond the funds they have, with councils dipping into reserve, how are they going to be able to allocate the funds necessary for data protection compliance and cybersecurity defence?

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