Previous administration 'let people of Ealing down'

Labour say complacent data protection procedures of the previous Conservative administration cost Ealing council £80,000.

The Council received a judgement from the information Commissioner’s office this week about a data loss that occurred in May. A council officer’s laptop was stolen and it emerged that council laptops had not been encrypted, as they should have been. The Information Commissioner found that the council had breached its obligations under the data protection act and fined the council £80,000.

Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell said:

“As leader of the opposition in 2009 I asked for an assurance from the Conservative cabinet that procedures were in place to ensure against any such losses and that they were being followed. I was assured the council was doing everything it should and that a data loss should not occur. I was shocked to find out in my first week in charge that council laptops had not been encrypted and a serious data loss had in fact occurred. This incident shows that when it came to data protection the Conservatives were asleep at the wheel.

''The previous administration did not take data protection or investment in IT seriously and it has cost the council £80,000 at a time when the Conservative led government has cut £66m from our budget. The previous administration have badly let the people of Ealing down at a time when the Labour administration is doing its best to protect local services from the Government’s axe.”

10 February 2011