South Staffordshire Council has been informed of a security issue in which some South Staffordshire customer data, along with data from other local authorities, was found on an unsecured data storage area provided and controlled by Capita - a third party supplier used to host data.
Following the conclusion of the company's investigation into the potential data breach, it has confirmed the information did not contain bank details.
The South Staffordshire data files include details of people’s council tax and benefits account references, name, addresses and the name of any benefits received. This is historic data and relates to the 2019/20 and 2020/21 financial years.
This data has now been made secure.
Capita has completed its investigations but has been unable to determine if any unauthorised access to the data has occurred.
Having monitored internet activity, Capita has informed South Staffordshire Council that there is currently no evidence of any malicious use of this data.
South Staffordshire Council has reported this incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office (the UK regulator for data protection) and the district council will implement any recommendations subsequently made by the regulator.
A spokesperson for South Staffordshire Council said: "We are extremely disappointed that Capita failed to maintain the security standards that we expect of our suppliers.
"We will continue to work with them to ensure that in future data entrusted to them is held securely."