West and Chester Council apologise after 1,300 private emails shared following error

A council has apologised after more than 1,300 private email addresses were accidentally shared.

The incident occurred when a Cheshire West and Chester Council staff member sent out an email on Friday about taxi legislation but failed to use the blind copy function to mask all recipients' details.

As a result, all email addresses were exposed to all recipients in the distribution group.

The council said no other personal data was involved.

However, in an email seen by the Local Democracy Reporting System (LDRS), the authority warned those affected that at least some of their emails had already been 'misused'.

The email said: "We do not believe the incident posed any significant risks to individuals in that only email addresses were involved, with the email content itself being generic in nature.

"However, we are aware that a proportion of the email addresses have been misused by one of the recipients in that they have been used to contact individuals about an unrelated matter.

"As a result of this, that individual would be considered in breach of their own data protection responsibilities not to use data they should not have had access to, and as a result we have taken additional steps to address the issue."

The council sent out another email apologising to those affected which said: "We are aware that a proportion of the email addresses have been misused by one of the recipients in that they have been used to contact individuals about an unrelated matter.

"As a result of this, that individual would be considered in breach of their own data protection responsibilities not to use data they should not have had access to, and as a result we have taken additional steps to address the issue."

The email went on to apologise for any "concern or inconvenience" caused.

The Information Commissioner's Office was informed of the incident but had decided not to take any further action, the local authority said.