Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Anglesey Council Fails to Get its House in Order.

Like many folk on Anglesey, I've been on the receiving end of some very strange happenings relating to the people dealing with information requests at Anglesey Council.


Back again...

Dubbed a "basket case council" by Private Eye during its darker times some years ago, Anglesey has struggled to keep up with the times relating to data protection.  So much so that, sixteen years after its introduction, the Data Protection Act still isn't being properly respected at the Council.

The current ramp-up to an ICO Enforcement Notice began in 2011, but the problems go back much, much further than that.  One of the biggest problems was said to be councillors waltzing-in to departmental offices and demanding to see data about people they had no right to see.  This is to be set against a background where, according to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2011, the majority of councillors hadn't even thought about registering as Data Controllers, even though they were obliged to.  A letter to all councillors from the Authority seemed not to have stirred too many into correcting this unacceptable state of affairs.

By now, the Council has attracted the ire of the Commissioner, leading to an Enforcement Notice and three months to get its house in order.

The Council's press office say they were "surprised" to receive the Notice, even though a simple search online shows they were given a Preliminary Notice as recently as August 2015.  Nothing like a bit of feigned indignation, eh boys?