giving out private information

[danchip]

in 2003 i received a number of court fines which i paid, then last year i got found guilty of ABH and received another fine which i am still paying.

I received a letter today stating that they had no record of payment for some of the fine from 2003 so they have added it to my recent fine.

my partner opened this letter and as we werent together in 2003 i had not told her about them so she thought it was a mistake and rang the fines office and asked them what they were for to which the fines officer told her all the details of every fine i have had and also emailed her a copy of them with dates and amounts etc

i dont mind her knowing about these but it could of been a lot different if they had of been more serious than silly parking fines etc

IS the court officer allowed to do this or is it a breach of the data protection act

[redcrx]

crikey!
given the hoops i had to jump through just to find out if my local council had written to the freeholder of a flat i own, id say that the people who spoke to your partner were definately in the wrong.

[afcjan]

crikey, we had something similar, someone left a message on the answerphone for someone in my family, quoting account number and telling them how to access their account through the internet.

i thought that was very bad, and a breach of the data protection act, so yours definitely is. not sure what u would do next though. good luck

[Buenchico]

I think that lawyers could possibly occupy an entire conference with discussing the issues here.

Your 'criminal record' (i.e. the data held by the Criminal Records Bureau and on the Police National Computer) is, indeed, 'private' information and subject to the controls of the Data Protection Act.

However, court records are public documents. Anyone can normally sit in a court and take notes about convictions and sentences. Further, anyone can visit a court and consult the court register, which lists all convictions and sentences relating to cases heard before that court. Similarly, the press (with very few exceptions) are free to publish that information.

I suspect that the court official has not contravened the Data Protection Act, simply because he has only conveyed 'public' information to your partner. However he may have breached rules laid down by his employer.

Chris

[Barmaid]

Difficult this one and Chris is right, this would take some of the country's best lawyers several days to slog it out. My view is that the imposition of the fines is a matter of public record. Your alleged non payment is not, until it becomes the subject of criminal proceedings. So I think that technically there may be a breach. You could contact the DP Registrar to find out.

[Buenchico]

Barmaid is a barrister and I was hoping that she'd post her opinion here. However I wonder if she's aware that court fine defaults are now in the the public domain?
http://www.trustonline.org.uk/understand-judgm ents-fines/fines-defaults-and-the-register/

Chris