Exempt reports published on Ceredigion County Council’s website were publicly available for around five years, the authority has admitted.

But while accepting that information, including personal details such as medical records and details on land sales and potential developments, was available, the council has said the “majority of the information contained in the exempt documents was of low risk” and that the data breach did not affect the authority’s risk register as it was down to “human error”.

However, one critic has accused the council of failing to take action from previous errors and claimed the council has a “culture that plays down data security failures”.

The Cambrian News alerted the council to the fact that almost 100 reports containing exempt information was publicly available on the council’s website in August last year.

A report into the incident has now been produced for the council’s audit committee with Arwyn Morris, the corporate lead officer for customer contact, saying that the council believes the reports were mistakenly put on the council’s website in October 2013 after a redesign of the website.

Mr Morris said: “From the above timeline, the 98 exempt documents were publicly available from October 2013, but the council was first notified of the breach in August 2018.

“The majority of the information contained in the exempt documents was of low risk: names and addresses of individuals; company name and address; financial transactions for the sale/procurement of land.

“A number of records contained lists of individuals on housing allocation lists and grants lists and the possible impact on the data subjects is assessed as low risk and with low impact.

“There are eight individuals records that contain detailed health information, of which four individuals are now deceased and the risk on the remaining four individuals is assessed at a higher risk and could have an impact on the individual data subjects.”

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