Avon and Somerset Police Data Breach – Can I Claim?
In this guide, we explore what you could do following an Avon and Somerset Police data breach.
Perhaps you’ve been the victim of a hate crime, or appeared in video footage that’s part of a police investigation. Or, maybe you’ve helped the police with their enquiries? You may even have been employed by the police in some form or applied to join. If so, they may have some of your personal data.
A police breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 can lead to personal information being exposed. If your personal data was involved in a data breach, and it has harmed you financially or psychologically (or both), you could claim compensation.
Though they collect and use our personal data sometimes, public authorities are not always responsible for data breaches that occur regarding the information they hold. However, if they were supposed to protect your personal data but failed to due to positive wrongful conduct, and you suffered, you could receive data breach compensation that could help you move on after such an incident.
How This Guide Could Help
This guide offers insight into making a data breach compensation claim. It explains the role of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in enforcing data protection law in the UK. In addition to this, it shows you what types of compensation for a data breach under the GDPR could be claimed. It also discusses what could happen after an Avon and Somerset Police data breach.
Furthermore, we describe what could happen if a police officer breaches the Data Protection Act, and give examples of cases of police data protection breaches. We also answer questions such as ‘what is considered a data breach?’, ‘How can the police breach GDPR?’, and ‘How does a No Win No Fee agreement work?’
If you have evidence of a valid GDPR data breach compensation claim, a data breach solicitor could assist you.
You can reach our advisors on 0800 073 8804. Alternatively, you may wish to read this GDPR compliance guide to find out how a police breach of data protection law could happen.
Select a Section
- What Is An Avon And Somerset Police Data Breach?
- How Could A Police Force Breach Data Protection Law?
- Avon And Somerset Police Data Breach Statistics
- What Steps Could I Take If Affected By A Data Breach?
- What Compensation Could You Be Awarded For A Data Breach Under GDPR?
- Work With A No Win No Fee Data Breach Solicitor
- How To Get Advice If You’ve Suffered An Avon And Somerset Police Data Breach
What Is An Avon And Somerset Police Data Breach?
Before we go ahead and explain how data breach claims could occur, we should first define a data breach. It could be accidental or deliberate, according to the ICO.
The ICO, or Information Commissioner’s Office, is an independent body that enforces data protection law in the UK, the UK General Data Protection Regulation, and the Data Protection Act 2018.
The ICO can take action against organisations that breach GDPR or other data protection laws and has the power to issue fines that could amount to a significant sum of money.
The Definition Of A Breach
The ICO defines a personal data breach as the unlawful or unauthorised loss, destruction, alteration, disclosure or access of personal data.
Personal data or personal information is any information that can identify you, whether directly or in combination with other data. It could include details such as your:
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
It could also include more sensitive information relating to your ethnic origin, financial details or religion, for example.
Data subjects are those whose personal information is collected, held or processed. A data controller decides why and how they need to process this information. The data controller may allow a separate organisation to process the data on their behalf. This organisation would be a data processor.
Should a data breach occur, it could be a breach of data protection that could risk the rights and freedoms of data subjects. If any data breach risks these rights, the organisation or public authority should report the breach to the ICO. They would have 72 hours to do this and they should inform data subjects about it without undue delay.
There are many ways in which public authorities could have data protection breaches, and while we may assume that most of them would relate to cybercrime, human error could also cause a breach. There are many ways a police force could breach data protection law, as we explain in the next section.
This guide aims to help you understand what could happen after a potential Avon and Somerset Police data breach. However, if you have any questions and have evidence of a valid claim, why not reach out?
How Could A Police Force Breach Data Protection Law?
There are a significant number of ways a police officer or somebody else within a public authority could breach data protection rules. This includes the below.
- You are under a safeguarding programme and a police officer emails your personal information to someone without a lawful basis to.
- An officer from the professional standards department loses paperwork relating to your personnel file, and it includes personal information about you.
- An officer fails to use BCC in a mass email to personal email addresses. Therefore, recipients can see each other’s email addresses without a lawful reason.
- You were the victim of a hate crime, and somebody verbally disclosed your personal information to a person who is not authorised to hear it.
- A police officer breaches the Data Protection Act by failing to properly dispose of paperwork containing personal data.
These are just a few examples of potential police officer breaches of the Data Protection Act.
If you have been the victim of a data breach, you should report it. We discuss reporting such a data breach to the police in a further section of this guide.
Avon And Somerset Police Data Breach Statistics
An example of a case of a police data protection breach relates to video footage included within a training video of a person who suffered an autism hate crime. The victim was not aware that the footage was used, and successfully received compensation for a GDPR data breach.
Reports said that the victim of the police data breach received £7,000 in compensation. In addition to this breach, she was also upset by the police’s disclosure of her personal involvement in the hate crime to her manager.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-56367959
ICO statistics
You might be interested to see the statistics collected by the ICO relating to data security incidents for the justice sector.
- In Q2, 2021/22, there were 40 data breaches relating to the Justice sector
- 38 of these incidents were non-cyber related
- 2 incidents were cyber-related
If you have been affected by unlawful or unauthorised police data loss, alteration, disclosure, access or destruction and you can prove the public authority had acted wrongly, which led to the data breach, you could make a claim for compensation.
A data breach solicitor could help you. However, you would need to prove that you have suffered financial loss or psychological harm (such as stress) due to such an incident. If you would like to learn more about what could constitute a police breach of data protection law, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
What Steps Could I Take If Affected By A Data Breach?
In this section of our guide, we explore potential steps you could take after an Avon and Somerset Police data breach.
While you might assume that reporting a data breach to the police would bring you data breach compensation, you may not get the answers you are looking for right away. If you discover a police data breach yourself or they inform you of one, you could complain.
Should the police not respond satisfactorily to a complaint made against them for a breach of GDPR compliance, you could escalate it. Within three months of their final response, you could raise concerns with the ICO.
Whether you have reported a data breach to the ICO or not, you could claim. You could find a data breach lawyer who could help you claim compensation for a data breach under the GDPR.
What Compensation Could You Be Awarded For A Data Breach Under GDPR?
Are you claiming compensation for a data breach? If so, you could receive compensation for both non-material and material damages, or one or the other. But what does this involve?
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- Material damages compensate you for financial losses that the data breach causes. Such damages could recoup any money that someone steals from you and you weren’t able to recover (if they were able to access your bank details due to the data breach, for example). Or it could compensate you for the costs of repairing damage to your credit file, for example.
- Non-material damages could include the non-pecuniary costs relating to your data breach. This could include the likes of psychological or psychiatric injury compensation. This could be similar to awards in personal injury claims.
To get an idea of how much compensation someone could receive for mental harm caused by a data breach, we have put together a compensation table below. The figures come from the Judicial College Guidelines. Legal professionals use these guidelines when valuing claims.
| Damage | Guideline Brackets | Severity of damage |
|---|---|---|
| PTSD/Post-traumatic stress conditions | £56,180 to £94,470 | Severe |
| Psychological/psychiatric damage(General) | £51,460 to £108,620 | Severe |
| PTSD/Post-traumatic stress conditions | £21,730 to £56,180 | Moderately severe |
| Psychological/psychiatric damage(General) | £17,900 to £51,460 | Moderately severe |
| PTSD/Post-traumatic stress conditions | £7,680 to £21,730 | Moderate |
| Psychological/psychiatric damage(General) | £5,500 to £17,900 | Moderate |
| PTSD/Post-traumatic stress conditions | Up to £7,680 | Less severe |
| Psychological/psychiatric damage(General) | Up to £5,500 | Less severe |
If you can’t see your injuries in the compensation table above, why not use our compensation calculator? Alternatively, reach out to our advisors who can give free estimates of what you could claim for injuries.
Work With A No Win No Fee Data Breach Solicitor
Have you heard of how you could make a data breach claim using the services of a solicitor, but without having to pay legal fees upfront? Using the services of a data breach solicitor could be a wise decision.
Claiming under a No Win No Fee agreement means you don’t have to pay any legal fees until the end of your claim. And even then, you would only pay if the claim wins.
Under a Conditional Fee Agreement (the formal term for a No Win No Fee agreement), you would pay a success fee only if your claim is successful. This fee is capped by law.
Assessing your suitability
In order for a solicitor to take on your claim under a Conditional Fee Agreement, they would have to assess your case. They would need to determine whether it has a good prospect of succeeding.
They will assess whether a breach has happened. In addition to this, they would consider whether you could be within the relevant time limits to claim. This could be 6 years or just 1 year if the data breach involves a public authority.
They will also look at whether a data controller or processor’s positive wrongful conduct led to the breach. Finally, they will check whether the resulting financial or mental damage is a result of the breach.
If you have evidence of a valid No Win No Fee claim, why not get in touch?
How To Get Advice If You’ve Suffered An Avon And Somerset Police Data Breach
If you have evidence of a valid claim following a police data breach, we could help you. Whether you have questions about a data protection breach by the police, or you would like to get more insight into what is considered a data breach, our advisors (who’re available 24/7) are ready to assist.
They could connect you with our solicitors, whose reviews speak for themselves. What’s more, all of our solicitors offer their services on a No Win No Fee basis.
To contact us, please:
- Call our advisors on 0800 073 8804
- E-mail info@legalexpert.co.uk with details about your situation.
- Complete the contact form so we can get back to you
- Use our Live Chat feature for instant answers
Data Breaches: More Guidance
The following sources could help you further.
Stalker Data Breach Compensation Claims – Our guide explores what you could do after a data breach that involved information being accessed by a stalker.
How To Report A Data Breach – If you’re considering reporting a data breach, this could be useful.
Employer Data Breach – Has a police breach of data protection law affected you as an employee? This could prove a useful resource.
A Guide To The UK GDPR – The ICO explains the UK GDPR.
Get Copies Of Your Data – Making a subject access request is explained here.
Data Awareness – Should you be more aware of how your personal data is used?
Thank you for reading our guidance on Avon and Somerset Police data breach claims.
Written by Jeffries
Edited by Victorine
