Akinika and DWP breach of data protection

[altcr]

Can anyone help me? A year or so ago I received a letter from DWP dating back to a time when I was on income support saying there had been an overpayment, I had no idea what it was and wrote a letter asking for details. I had no reply but an identical letter last month followed by a phone call from Akinika, I refused to confirm details, said I would write to them. The girl said she would tell DWP that I was refusing to cooperate and put the phone down.

I wrote to akina telling the history and asking then to contact client(DWP ) as I had no response.

 

To my horror I arrived home today to find a letter from akinika and enclosed was sensitive personal information from DWP. my national insurance number the dates that I had claimed, my child's name and the benefits that I had received, they aslo enclosed a copy of a letter that they apparently sent to me in 2005! akinika have therefore had information to all my private business.

Surely this is a breach of data protection from DWP? I would have thought that the dca have no right to allow then such personal information. I rang DWP and she said that as dca were dealing with the 'debt' they had a right to access my personal information. My view is that they should have n't disclosed such private information.

[antone]

As a first step, you need to establish if the overpayment is genuine. So as a matter of priority, I would contact the DWP and ask them to explain how this situation has arisen.

 

They have probably not breached DPA by passing this information to a debt collector, but even if they have, I'd strongly suggest that you figure out what's going on and deal with it before you worry about data protection issues.