Police force reprimanded after incorrectly merging records of people with same name and date of birth
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued a reprimand to West Midlands Police (WMP) after the force “repeatedly” mixed up two people’s personal information.
The mistake led to inaccurate personal information being processed and resulted in a “catalogue of errors”, including officers attending the wrong address when attempting to find a person regarding serious safeguarding concerns, said the watchdog.
The ICO found that on numerous occasions throughout 2020, 2021 and 2022, WMP incorrectly linked and merged the records of two people with the same name and date of birth.
“Both people had been victims of crime, and one was a suspect, meaning WMP didn’t make a clear distinction between the personal information of victims and suspects of crime, a breach of the Data Protection Act 2018”, the ICO concluded.
The investigation found that the police force didn’t take steps to rectify the error quickly enough and there was a failure to stop the inaccurate linking of records reoccurring.
Lastly, the ICO established that WMP did not do enough to make employees aware of their responsibility to report inaccurate personal data to the Information Management team.
David Doodson, Civil Investigations Group Manager at the ICO said: “It is essential that police forces handle personal information with the utmost respect to maintain people’s trust and confidence in the police. Sharing the same name and birthday as someone else should not mean your personal information is jeopardised, especially given the sensitive nature of the information held.
“This case highlights the importance of training to ensure officers understand data protection law to avoid mistakes like this occurring again.”
A spokesperson for West Midlands Police said: “We acknowledge and accept the reprimand and thank the ICO for their recommendations.
“We have already fully completed the three recommendations with the fourth being an ongoing responsibility that we take seriously and are investing in.
“We have already apologised to the individuals affected and taken action to minimise the likelihood of this or anything similar happening again."
The spokesperson added: “WMP is a data rich organisation that handles millions of records each day as we provide a policing service to the communities of the West Midlands. We take our responsibilities around data very seriously and thankfully these data errors are incredibly infrequent.”
Lottie Winson
