Council rapped after social worker leaves court with sensitive data on car roof

The London Borough of Ealing has signed an undertaking with the Information Commissioner’s Officer after one of its social workers left court documents on the roof of her car and drove off.

The social worker had just attended court regarding care proceedings in February this year. When she got home she realised that she did not have the documents.

Despite a search of the car park and the social worker’s route home, and the making of enquiries locally, the documents are yet to be recovered.

The documents contained personal data, some of it sensitive, relating to 27 people and including 14 children, the ICO said. The watchdog was called in by the council after the incident.

The ICO was told by Ealing that only 68% of permanent staff within its social care department had completed refresher data protection training.

This figure did not include the 27% of staff within children’s services made up of locums. “The council are therefore unable to determine if those locums have completed refresher training from records held.”

During the ICO’s investigation, it discovered that no records were available relating to the requirements of the council’s ‘Paper Records Secure Handling and Transit’ policy.

The Commissioner was also made aware that secure lockable cases had previously been made available but were no longer so.

Ealing has now made a number of commitments to improve its data protection practices. These include the council continuing to work toward achieving its stated target for 100% completion of mandatory, online data protection refresher training for all permanent, locum and temporary Social Care staff who handle personal data by 3 April 2017.

The council’s undertaking can be viewed here.

Sally-Anne Poole, enforcement manager at the ICO, said: “This council failed to follow our previous advice that it needed to improve training to make sure staff know how to look after personal information.

“Many of us have no choice but to take work out of the office. But when that work includes personal data, there is an obligation to ensure it’s kept safe. People have a right to expect that will happen.

“Losing personal data – especially sensitive data – can cause damage and distress to the people involved.”

Poole added: “It’s vital that if councils are using temporary staff they make sure they, as well as permanent staff, are up to speed with how to look after people’s personal information.”