Voters' details lost after blunder

Personal information belonging to up to 1,650 Walsall voters has been lost and either buried in landfill or scattered around Cannock in a blunder.

Storage bags containing residents' postal vote statements - including names, addresses, dates of birth and signatures - ended up in skips after the company contracted to look after them for Walsall Council moved premises.

Staff at Clockwork Removals and Storage in Hawks Green mistakenly dumped the bags, some of which were then rifled through and their contents scattered around the area and a nearby brook. The rest was buried under tons of rubbish at a local landfill site.

The council has now sent out letters to residents apologising for the data loss, which happened over the weekend of March 12 and 13.

Council workers were immediately dispatched to search the area and find any of the scattered documents. They also had to pay a visit to the tip to see if any of the storage bags were retrievable - they were not.

Council spokesman Richard Bolton said: "We can confirm that a small amount of data relating to historic postal voting applications has been lost by a third party supplier who had been contracted to store this information.

"The information relates only to people who returned postal votes in the 2008 local elections from two wards - Aldridge Central and South, and Aldridge North and Walsall Wood - and not people who voted by post in other wards or who voted on the day at the polling stations."

Clockwork Removals and Storage spokesman Robert Horrobin said they had not been told the documents were confidential.

He said: "Our staff checked one of the sacks in question and it contained blank paper and refuse. In good faith, the items were disposed of as normal waste, which vandals then accessed.

"On discovery of the issue, all documents were immediately returned to Walsall Council, except a proportion which had gone to landfill."