Data Protection Act failures by DWP

[Caro in dispute with DWP]

I took DWP to Tribunal to appeal a Carer's Allowance overpayment.

 

To find out what information they held on me and my husband we put in Subject Access Requests. We received back 2 sets of documents (thick in my husband's case and very thin in mine). I assumed that they had the right to withhold quite a lot of information because my case was still active.

 

My Tribunal was heard (and I'm pleased to say I won). Less than a week after the Tribunal the Data Protection Team in Glasgow wrote to both of us saying in essence, "whoops we made a mistake and didn't send all the information we should have done. Do you still want it?" We didn't - our reason for asking for it had past and we felt like having a rest from DWP and all their machinations.

 

Now I am going through the DWP complaints procedure and this failure to disclose is one of the complaints I am making.

 

Out of the blue we've just received some bizarre letters from the Data Protection Team in Cardiff thanking us for our original SARs (now over a year ago) and saying they'll issue the records ASAP.

 

I think we should probably let them do this but take this to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) once they've sent everything to check that this time they really have sent everything they should have.

 

Is there anything else we should ask them for like compensation or something? and how do you judge what compensation they should make?

 

Should we think about taking them to Court? (we won't get Legal Aid and can't afford a solicitor so we'd have to represent ourselves but it seems fairly straightforward - but are there any bear-traps we can't see as amateurs?)

 

All advice very welcome on this.

[BRIGADIER2JCS]

Hi Caro, You have one the Tribunal so have not been disadvantaged

by the DWPs failure to comply with the SAR, so it may be difficult to

make a case for compensation, but certainly there is reason to report

the non compliance to the ICO.

[worried33]

when I did my complaint to the ICE earlier this year it was regarding multiple issues. The one thing they simply made no comment on even when pressed on the phone was the DPA breaches.

[BRIGADIER2JCS]

The ICO will normally deal with one matter at a time, so report this

non compliance now.

[Caro in dispute with DWP]

Many thanks for the advice. Much appreciated.

 

Being thick here, but should I get ICO involved now or when I get the new SAR information (worried they'll tell me to go away and wait)?

[Caro in dispute with DWP]

Thank you for this.

 

Interesting. Looks like my experience re DPA breaches is going to be slightly different to you, "Worried33". Does it make a difference that in my case DWP were the ones who noticed the breaches in the first place?!

 

Hope your ICE went better in other respects.

 

I am at stage of escalating complaint to Terry Moran COO of DWP. When in due course no doubt I get a "non-answer" from his office too, ICE is the next stage....

[worried33]

the ICE seemed to not actually directly deal with my complaint, it was simply forwarded onto a local DWP manager.

 

The net result was a double figure compensation, some personal attention from the manager on some ongoing issues but that was it. No policies were changed eg. on handing out receipts when handing in documents to a job centre.

[BRIGADIER2JCS]

The breaches already taken place ie ''we forgot to send'' and taking 12 months

to supply I think are seperate from what shows up now.

 

It is routine to forward a copy of a complaint to the party complained against

to allow them to explain and respond.