Data Protection

Brenda Long and Emma Baillie Solicitors Blandy and Blandy Reading. Eight solicitors have been prosecuted in the last 12 months for failing to notify under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). Magistrates handed down a record fine in March 2005 following the successful prosecution of a Rochdale solicitor by the Information Commissioner. This is one of the high profile areas of data protection regulation of which many solicitors and certainly partners will be aware. However family practitioners would be well advised to consider the offence of breach of s 55 of the DPA which has received far less publicity but which carries similar penalties. Under s 55 an offence is committed when a person knowingly or recklessly obtains or discloses personal data or the information contained within such data or procures the disclosure of such information to another person without the consent of the data controller. There is some evidence that the Information Commissioner is taking a harder line in such cases and there have been a number of prosecutions in the last year.

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