Derby City Council Data Breach Compensation Claims

In this guide, we will look at what steps you can take after a Derby city council data breach. In this guide, we’ll examine how laws like the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) control how your private data can be used. Furthermore, we will look at the role played by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

My Private Data Was Shared By The Local Council, Can I Claim?

Personal data is any data that can be used to identify you, either on its own or in conjunction with other information. We often share our personal data with organisations, whether physically or digitally. The GDPR and DPA restrict the ways that organisations can use your data. It also means that they usually have to ask before sharing your data with anyone; however, there are some exceptions to this.

But sometimes, your data is used in a way that you would not reasonably expect. A data breach occurs when a security breach leads to your data being destroyed, lost, changed or disclosed to an unauthorised person. If a data breach has caused you financial or psychological harm, you may be able to claim compensation for your suffering.

Our team of advisers work around the clock to offer free legal advice to people who’ve suffered a privacy breach. If you have a valid claim, they can connect you with our expert solicitors to discuss No Win No Fee agreements with you.

You can contact our team of advisers by:

Calling them on 0800 073 8804 to receive 24/7 free legal advice.
Chatting with an adviser via our live chat pop-up box for an instant response.
Filling in our online claims form to receive a response at your earliest convenience.

Select A Section

A Guide To Derby City Council Data Breach Compensation Claims
Statistics On Cyber Security
What Is A Derby City Council Data Breach Claim?
Is The Council Exempt From Following The GDPR?
Ways Your Data Privacy Could Be Breached
Does The GDPR Cover Rent Statement Data Protection?
Notifying The ICO
How Does The Claims Process Work?
How Are Data Breach Damages Quantified?
Calculating Compensation Payouts For Derby City Council Data Breaches
No Win No Fee Derby City Council Data Breach Compensation Claims
Find An Expert In Data Breaches To Handle Your Case
Speak To Us
Related Guides
Data Protection Breach Claim FAQs

A Guide To Derby City Council Data Breach Compensation Claims

To begin, this article will provide cybersecurity statistics to investigate how common data breaches are. Next, we will explore what steps you can take if you’ve been caused harm by a Derby City Council data breach.

Derby City Council Data Breach

We will also look at the ways that an organisation could breach your data privacy. In addition, we will look at whether rent statement data protection is covered by the GDPR. We’ll also examine the process of notifying the ICO of a suspected breach.

Additionally, the guide will discuss how the claims process works and how compensation is calculated. There will also be a compensation table to show how much compensation some psychological injuries may be worth.

Next, there’ll be a section providing our contact details so you can get in touch with our team of advisers if you wish to find out more about making a claim. Finally, there’ll be some further related guides, and a data breach claims FAQ section to give you as much information as possible.

The Capita Data Breach

In March 2023, Capita, which administers the pension funds for lots of organisations, including Derby City Council, suffered a cyber attack in which personal information was exposed. If you’d like to enquire as to whether you could claim compensation for this breach, get in touch.

You can learn more about the Capita data breach here.

Statistics On Cyber Security

The below graph offers statistics taken from Gov.uk showing the percentage of cyber-attacks in 2020 compared to 2021. As you can see, 2020 saw 46% of businesses in the UK experiencing a cyber breach or attack compared to 39% in 2021. This shows a decrease in the number of cyber breaches or attacks from 2020 to 2021.

What Is A Derby City Council Data Breach Claim?

According to the GDPR, a data breach is when a lack of security causes personal information to become destroyed, altered, lost or accessed or disclosed to an unauthorised person without your consent. For example, a data breach may involve your information being made publicly accessible online in error. A loss of medical records could also be considered a data breach, even if these medical records aren’t accessible to anyone.

Data breaches can occur because someone is purposely misusing data, or it could be an accident. Even if the breach does not cause financial or psychological harm, it still could result in the ICO fining the company or organisation responsible. Data breaches can happen physically as well as digitally.

An example of a physical data breach could be an employee accidentally leaving a bag on public transport with important documents inside. This risks someone opening the bag and having access to other people’s data without their consent. Another example could be a local authority sending a letter containing personal information to the wrong address, despite being given the person’s new address.

Is The Council Exempt From Following The GDPR?

The GDPR says that any authority or organisation must gain consent from someone if they want to share their data. This is unless they have another lawful basis for processing the personal data.

The lawful bases for processing data are:

Consent- where the data subject has given clear content for their data to be processed for a specific purpose.
Contract- where the process is necessary for a contract between the organisation and the data subject.
Legal obligation- where an organisation must process the data in order to comply with the law.
Vital interests- where processing the information would protect someone’s life. For example, your medical records might be shared if doing so enables you to get life-saving treatment.
Public task- where processing the data is necessary in order for the organisation to perform a task in the public interest or for their official functions. The task or function should have a clear basis in law.
Legitimate interests- where the legitimate interests of the organisation or a third party mean that processing information is necessary. This can be overridden if there is a reason to protect the data that overrides the legitimate interest of the organisation. Legitimate interest cannot be used as a lawful basis for a public authority that is performing official tasks.

Councils are not exempt from the GDPR. However, they may be able to share or process data without consent if one of the above bases apply to the situation.

In order for these bases to apply, the organisation needs to show that the processing of data is necessary for the purpose. If an organisation could have achieved the same outcome without processing the data, a lawful basis will not apply.

Ways Your Data Privacy Could Be Breached

This section will look at some possible ways that you could have suffered a Derby City council data breach. Data breaches can occur accidentally but can also happen if an unauthorised person intentionally accesses data.

Here are some examples of what could constitute a data breach by your local council:

If a local council shares your personal information with another local council (for example, as part of a study) but you haven’t consented to this.
Computers containing employee data are left unlocked, meaning that they can be easily accessed by anyone. If you’re an employee who has been harmed because of a personal data breach on the part of your employer, you could claim.
Social services data breaches could mean that sensitive information is disclosed to unauthorised individuals. This could put children or vulnerable adults at risk.
An organisation disposing of your private data incorrectly and unsafely, resulting in a privacy violation. For instance, they may fail to shred confidential documents.
If a GP data breach has resulted in someone else having access to your medical records, this could cause you anxiety. You may be able to make a data breach claim against the NHS for the harm caused.

If your local council notices a breach of your data, they must inform you of this according to the ICO. You can read the Derby City Council data protection policy, which outlines your rights as a data subject.

It can be difficult to know whether you’re eligible to make a data breach claim for the harm caused to you by a breach. If you’re unsure, you can contact our expert team of advisers today. They can discuss your situation and assess whether you may be entitled to data breach compensation.

Does The GDPR Cover Rent Statement Data Protection?

Local councils hold a range of information on data subjects. Here are a list of some personal information that a local authority usually has about public housing tenants:

Tenancy documents. This might contain things like your name, address and date of birth.
Scans of tenancy audit documents. This usually includes passport data.
Rent statements. A rent statement could include information on how much someone was paying or bank details if it is paid through a direct debit or standing order.

Here’s a few examples of a rent statement data breach:

Failure to redact information when sending a pack with information to local landowners. The local council must receive consent to include your personal data in an information pack. If they failed to do this and you have been caused financial or psychological harm as a result, you may be able to make a Derby City Council data breach claim.
Failure to protect information. If a member of the local council leaves your rent statements in a public place, someone could gain unlawful access to your data.
Sending information to someone other than the data subject. Someone might be sent another individual’s rent statement, meaning that they have access to their name and payment information.

If you’re unsure whether you’ve suffered a Derby City Council data breach due to a mistake the local council made, our team of advisers can help. They’d be happy to chat with you and learn more about what happened.

Notifying The ICO

When a data breach is reported, the ICO has a responsibility to investigate. However, it’s recommended that you submit a formal complaint to the authority responsible for your data breach before you report it to the ICO.

If you’re unsatisfied and you’ve taken all the necessary steps in the complaints procedure, you may make the decision to report the data breach to the ICO. To do so, it must have been 3 months after your last meaningful communication with the local authority.

It’s important to know that the ICO is unable to award you compensation. However, the ICO’s findings can act as evidence of the local authorities’ mistakes that resulted in your data breach. You can use this evidence to support your data breach claim.

Whether you’ve reported the breach of data to the ICO or not, our team of advisers are available to offer free legal advice whenever you’re ready. Get in touch with our team for more information on the steps to take following a Derby city council data breach.

How Does The Claims Process Work?

In order to make a Derby City Council data breach claim, the court will ask you to show that you have made an attempt to settle the issue yourself. This means that you should make a complaint to the council initially and escalate this if you’re able to. You can claim to the ICO when it has been 3 months since your last meaningful exchange with the company.

It’s not always necessary for the ICO to be involved in order for a claim to be made. If you have enough evidence to show that you were harmed as the result of a breach, then your solicitor may advise you to claim even without the ICO making a decision.

If you would like to know more about making a claim against Derby City Council for a data breach, then please get in touch with our team. One of our advisors may be able to connect you with a No Win No Fee solicitor to represent you.

How Are Data Breach Damages Quantified?

When you make a Derby City Council data breach claim, you can claim for material and non-material damages. Material damages is compensation for the financial impact the data breach has had on your life. For example, you may have money stolen from your bank account if a criminal gets hold of your credit card data. If this happens to you, you may be entitled to make a credit card data breach compensation claim.

Additionally, you may also suffer a long-term financial loss. An example of this is if you struggle to receive credit for a few years because a criminal had access to your credit card information and personal data and lowered your credit score. If your credit card details were stolen or breached, you might be able to make a credit card data breach claim.

On the other hand, non-material damages take into account the psychological effects the data breach has had on you. For example, you may suffer stress due to a data breach because you’re concerned that money may be stolen from your credit card account if a criminal has access to it.

Furthermore, you may suffer long-term psychological issues too. For example, you could develop paranoia after your bank details have been recovered that your money will be stolen again by a criminal.

Non-material and material damages must be calculated in one claim. This is because you can’t ask the local council for any more compensation after the claim has been finalised.

Working on your claim with a data breach solicitor can help make sure you include all your damages in one claim without leaving anything important out. Our team of advisers would be happy to have a chat with you to see whether you may be entitled to compensation.

Calculating Compensation Payouts For Derby City Council Data Breaches

You may find a compensation calculator on some guides. These can be useful tools but often don’t collect the scope of information needed to accurately value your claim.

Instead, we’ve included a compensation table with the latest figures from the Judicial College Guidelines. This table shows the amount of compensation some psychological injuries may be worth. The amount you actually receive may vary depending on your circumstances.

Edit
Injury:	Severity:	Notes:	Compensation:
Psychiatric Damage Generally	Moderately Severe	This kind of injury will have an affect on a person’s relationship with friends, family, and social life. They will be unable to work.	£17,900 to £51,460
Psychiatric Damage Generally	Moderate	Issues with social life, relationships, and ability to work, but their prognosis will be good.	£17,900 to £51,460
Psychiatric Damage Generally	Less Severe	Damage within this bracket may affect the injured person’s ability to sleep and carry out daily activities.	Up to £5,500
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder	Severe	Unable to live the way they did at pre-trauma level, for example unable to work.	£56,180 to £94,470
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder	Moderate	Symptoms similar to above but some people may be able to progress with recovery with professional help. However, symptoms still cause significant disability for a long time.	£7,680 to £21,730

Vida-Hall and others v Google Inc [2015] brought about a landmark decision regarding compensation in data breach claims. In it, the Court of Appeal held that those affected by data breaches could claim for both material and non-material damage.

Before this case, claimants could still receive compensation for the psychological impact of a data breach; however, to do so, they must have also suffered financial harm. Because of this case, claimants can pursue compensation for the psychological impact of a data breach even if they haven’t experienced material losses.

No Win No Fee Derby City Council Data Breach Compensation Claims

Our solicitors can handle data breach compensation claims on a No Win No Fee basis. A No Win No Fee agreement is a contract between you and your lawyer. It sets out the conditions that they need to meet before they’re paid for their work.

If your case loses, you won’t have to pay any of your solicitors fees. You also won’t have to pay them in order for them to start work on your claim or as it’s ongoing.

If your case succeeds, your lawyer will deduct a small percentage of the compensation you’re awarded. This is legally capped and will ensure you always get the majority of your settlement amount.

You can contact our team of advisers to have a chat about your situation. If they feel your claim has a good chance of success, they may be able to connect you with our No Win No Fee solicitors.

Find An Expert In Data Breaches To Handle Your Case

You don’t have to stick to local solicitors when looking for an expert lawyer to handle your case. It’s important that you find a solicitor who best suits your needs, rather than choosing the first one you see in your local area.

It may be a good idea to read some reviews of solicitors to see which ones claimants have reported the best experiences with. You can find some reviews from clients who we’ve helped in the past on our website. Here are some snippets:

‘They were so helpful and followed every aspect of my case.’ – Kate, 2021
‘Highly responsive, clear process & associated time frames.’ – Tom, 2020

Speak To Us

If you can provide evidence that a Derby City Council data breach has caused damage to your finances or mental health, you may be able to make a claim. Our friendly team of advisers are available 24 hours a day to offer you free legal advice and assess the strength of your claim.

If you have a legitimate claim, an adviser can connect you with one of our solicitors. They may be able to offer representation on a No Win No Fee basis.

You can contact our team of advisers by:

Giving them a ring on 0800 073 8804 to have a chat about your case.
Filling out our claims form online to receive a reply at whatever time best suits your needs.
Talking with one of our advisers through our instant chat pop-up box for a reply straight away.

Related Guides

Solicitors Data Breach Compensation Claims Guide – Has your solicitor breached your data? Our guide explores how you may be able to make a data breach claim.

Stalker Data Breach Compensation Claims Guide – If you’ve experienced cyberstalking, our article explores how you may be able to claim data breach compensation.

Nursery Data Breach Compensation Claims Guide – Have you suffered financial or psychological harm because of a nursery data breach? Our guide discusses how you could make a data breach compensation claim.

Report a Breach – This link takes you to the ICO, where you can report a data breach incident.

Your Data Matters – This ICO web page explains your rights after your personal data has been lost in a breach.

Individual Rights– This page outlines the rights that you have as an individual in relation to your personal data.

Other Useful Compensation Guides

Data Protection Breach Claim FAQs

Could I sue if my data privacy was breached?

If your privacy data was breached due to a mistake or failing an authority or organisation made, you might be able to make a data breach claim. You can speak to our team of advisers to speak more in-depth about this.

What could be the impact of a data breach?

A data breach could have a financial impact on the victim. On the other hand, it could have a psychological impact on someone. For example, an HR data breach may result in disciplinary information being accessible by your colleagues. This could cause you distress and anxiety in the workplace.

What could cause a data breach?

A data breach, whether physical or digital, could happen as a result of human error. It could also happen if someone acts with malicious intent and sets out to steal your data.

How do I find out if my data has been stolen?

The local council should inform you if a data breach risks adversely affecting your rights and freedoms. They should do this without undue delay.

Thank you for reading this guide on the Derby City Council data breach.

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Meet The Team

Patrick Mallon

Patrick is a Grade A solicitor having qualified in 2005. He's an an expert in accident at work and public liability claims and is currently our head of the EL/PL department. Get in touch today for free to see how we can help you.

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