North East Lincolnshire Council fined £80,000 after losing data on 286 special needs children

A council has been fined £80,000 for losing the personal data of 286 children with special needs.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) handed North East Lincolnshire Council the penalty after a memory stick containing the information went missing.

The unencrypted device contained sensitive information about the children, including information about their mental and physical health problems and teaching requirements.

It also included the pupils’ dates of birth and details of some of their addresses and information about their home lives.

The information has been missing since 1 July 2011 when the memory stick was left in a laptop at the council’s offices by a special educational needs teacher. When the teacher returned to the laptop, the memory stick was gone, the ICO said. Although the council had introduced a policy of encrypting portable devices in April 2011, it failed to make sure all of the memory sticks being used by its staff were encrypted, the ICO said.

The council was also unable to confirm if the teacher had received data protection training at the time of the loss.

ICO head of enforcement Stephen Eckersley said: “This breach should act as a warning to all organisations that their data protection policies must work in practice.”