Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust Fails Appeal on ICO Fine for Data Breach

On 16^th January 2013 the Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (CLCH) failed in its appeal to overturn a £90,000 ICO fine for breaching data protection laws, issued in April 2012. This was in relation to highly sensitive inpatient data being faxed from the Healthcare Trust to St John’s Hospice’s Palliative Care Unit. These were used to assist doctors with out of hours care.

The breach occurred when the member of staff responsible for faxing these lists from the Health Trust to the Hospice was asked to fax the list to an additional fax number, but did not receive sufficient training on the specific processes required or in obtaining approval from management if this process needed to be varied.  Therefore approval was not sought from the appropriate Line Manager and the protocol was not updated.  Subsequently safe receipt of the faxes to this second number was never checked. 

Following a thorough investigation by the ICO after a member of the public reported that she had instead been receiving the faxes, the Health Care Trust was fined £90,000 on 27^th April 2007 under s.55A of the Data Protection Act. 

The CLCH lost an appeal in December 2012 whereby it argued that the penalty given was not in accordance with current laws and that the discretion given by the ICO should have been exercised differently. 

The decision was welcomed by the David Smith Deputy Commissioner and Director of Data Protection at ICO who said "Monetary penalty notices are an important and effective tool for ensuring compliance. We do not take the decision to issue an organisation with a financial penalty lightly and will only consider this in response to serious data breaches that could cause substantial damage or distress to the individuals affected." 

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