Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who posted the private details of 6,574 members of staff on its website, has been fined £185,000 by the ICO. The Trust inadvertently published workers’ confidential data including their National Insurance number, date of birth, religious belief and sexual orientation in March 2014. The Trust failed to notice the mistake for 10 months and then took a further five months to alert affected staff. The information was volunteered by staff as part of the Trust’s commitment to publish annual equality and diversity metrics on its website. But the Trust failed to notice that the published spreadsheets also contained hidden data that became visible by simply double-clicking the table. This is how the personal details of individual members of staff were revealed.

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