THE COUNCIL has fallen foul of data breaches 29 times in the last six years to July 2021, amongst the information leaked were contact details and personal identifiers.

The information was revealed by a Freedom of Information request submitted to Allerdale Borough Council by a member of the public, Jonathan Bull.

Mr Bull has submitted the FOI to a number of councils and organisations across the country as he conducts an investigation into cyber crime and data breaches.

A number of questions were posed in the FOI, including how many residents in Allerdale were affected.

In their response sent in July 2021, the council was unable to say precisely how many people have been affected by the 29 breaches in total. 

This was due to document retention but for those they have on record, 11 residents were affected by the breaches.

Mr Bull said: “Please send me a copy of the correspondence that you sent to the people affected by the data breach to notify them their data had been breached.”

The spokesperson for the council responded: “There is no information held for these purposes as the breaches that were realised did not meet the threshold of official communication to individuals.”

Allerdale Council said in their response that they did not receive any complaints from victims of the breaches.

The council was asked in the FOI if they report all of these cases to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

They said: “As we only maintain records of these breaches for three years following close out, it is difficult to determine those older than three years from the current date. In recent times there has been one reported to the ICO. The breach that was reported to the ICO was found to be sufficiently mitigated and required no further action, as per instruction.”

The Information Commissioner’s Office is the UK’s independent authority tasked with upholding information rights in the public interest.

The ICO promotes openness by public bodies as well as data privacy.