Local Council Data Breach Compensation

Can You Claim Compensation For A Local Council Data Breach?

If you are a resident of England or Wales and you have been the victim of a local council data breach, we may be able to represent you for a claim for compensation.

The first three things we look at are:

• 1) What information, and how much of it, has been exposed?
• 2) Who has it been exposed to?
• 3) Who is responsible for the exposure?

The loss of control of your personal information can be distressing, and that is what your claim is for. You can claim General Damages for the distress, suffering and loss of amenity caused. If you have also suffered financially, we may be able to include that in a case as well.

Common examples of local council data breach cases we take forward include:

• Data being leaked or sent to the wrong recipient(s) by email;
• Postal leaks, whether that is information sent to the wrong address, or to an old address;
• Local councils passing and disclosing your information to third-parties without your consent;
• Information that is accidentally made publicly available, such as being uploaded online in error;
• Information found abandoned and / or not disposed of properly;
• Information being mixed up between people and sent to the wrong person(s);
• Inaccurate data stored and / or passed and processed between parties.

Whether it is the local authority themselves, or an outsourced third-party that has caused the breach (including private companies hired by councils), you can be entitled to claim compensation.

How Much Compensation Can You Claim?

How we value data breach compensation amounts comes down to the individual circumstances of the case. In local council data breach cases, information exposures can be extensive, and can involve hundreds of thousands of people.

Key information we need to know is practically the same as what we need to know when we determine if we can take a case forward or not.

To further break this down for you:

• 1) Nature of the information that has been exposed: the more personal and sensitive the information, the more a case can be valued at;
• 2) How much data has been exposed: the more of your data that is exposed, the more a case can be worth;
• 3) How long information has been exposed for: if the loss of control of your information is permanent, this is taken into account;
• 4) Who the information has been exposed to: the more people, the more a case can be valued at;
• 5) The level of the personal impact for you, which can vary for different people.

One of the important things to remember is that a local council data breach can often lead to the exposure of incredibly personal and sensitive data. Local authorities tend to hold all the types of data you can think of; from personal data, to medical data and mental health information, and financial data for tax purposes.

The data they hold can be incredibly extensive, and local authority data breaches include things like social services and schools; both of which are organisations that process and store incredibly personal and sensitive information. There is data related to safeguarding and abuse, adoptions, and sensitive medical information, as examples.

To properly value a claim, we use a combination of our extensive experience, together with expert reports, to determine how much a case can be valued at.

For more in-depth information, take a look at our data breach compensation amounts page here.

No Win, No Fee For Local Council Data Breach Claims

We are proud to be able to offer No Win, No Fee representation for the many clients that we represent for local council data breach claims.

We can offer you a No Win, No Fee arrangement if we are confident that there is a case to make. We risk assess each claim based on the circumstances, and we decide if it is something that we want to take forward for you.

All you have to do is abide by the terms and conditions of the agreement, and we are happy to write off our legal fees if the case does not succeed. We offer this because we believe in access to justice, and we know that most people would not want to - or be able to - afford to instruct a solicitor on a private-paying basis.

Local council data breach incidents are incredibly common, and a large volume of the clients we represent on a No Win, No Fee basis are for these kinds of incidents.

Start Your Case Now

We have made the process for starting a claim for data breach compensation easy:

• 1) We speak to you on the telephone and we can normally tell you in minutes if we think you have a case. Our initial advice is free and on an entirely no-obligation basis. Once you know we can help you, it is your choice as to what to do next.
• 2) We can speak to you at more convenient times for you. We open our office from 9am until 10pm on most weekdays, and 9am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday. We are not standard 9-5 lawyers like most other firms.
• 3) If we can help you and we have offered you our No Win, No Fee representation, you can choose to instruct us for a case there and then on the phone. You can even instruct us to start the case right away as well. We will send you the paperwork, but if you are happy with the way we work and want to get started immediately, why wait?

If you have been the victim of a local council data breach, you do not have to suffer in silence. Important data protection regulations are in place to make sure there is always a duty to protect your rights to privacy. When your rights are not upheld, local authorities can be responsible for compensating you.