From the Information Commissioner’s Office:
A county council which left files that included sensitive information about children in a cabinet sent to a second hand shop has been fined £60,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The breach by Norfolk County Council came to light after social work case files were discovered in a cabinet purchased by a member of the public from a second hand shop. The case files included information relating to seven children.
The incident occurred in April, 2014, when the council was moving offices and a contractor removed furniture that was to be sold at a second-hand shop. The ICO was unable to determine whether it was the Council social work employees’ responsibility to ensure that the file cabinets had been emptied prior to removal or the contractor’s, but in any event, confidential files wound up in the hands of a member of the public who purchased a cabinet from the second-hand shop several days later.