City council faces legal action over leak of adoption information

Newcastle City Council faces legal action after a data leak exposed personal details of people involved in adoptions.

Law firm Ben Hoare Bell said it had been instructed to act over “unlawful disclosure of personal information relating to children and their adoptive parents”

The firm said information about 2,743 individuals was sent to 77 people by mistake and “we have been contacted in relation to compensation claims for the distress caused arising from the data breach”, which included details of names, addresses and birth dates of adopted children.

A Newcastle statement said on 15 June an employee in its adoption team accidentally attached an internal spreadsheet to emails inviting adoptive parents to the council's annual adoption summer party.

“The council was deeply concerned to learn of this breach,” it said. “A thorough investigation was carried out into how this happened. A series of measures have been put in place to contain the breach, minimise potential distress to those affected and ensure that such breaches cannot happen in the future.”

Newcastle has contacted the 77 people concerned requesting they delete the information, and has set up a helpline, informed regulators and started a review of data protection across the council.

Director of people Ewen Weir said: “I am truly sorry for the distress caused to all those affected.

“This breach appears to have been caused by human error and a failure to follow established procedures. We are conducting a thorough review of our processes to identify what changes we can make to ensure that this never happens again."

Mark Smulian