R v SAI Property Investments Ltd t/a IPS Property Services
Reading Magistrates Court, 30 March 2012
This case is believed to be the first prosecution of a letting agency under the Data Protection Act.
It involves Ounkar Singh Nainu, a Council worker, who supplied information to Punjab Sandh and Sundeep Jaswal of SAI Property Investments Limited, trading as IPS Property Services.
To quote the report on the ICO website:
The first offence took place in September 2009 when Jaswal made contact with Nainu and asked him to obtain personal data about some of their tenants from housing benefit records. This information was provided without the Council’s knowledge and used by the company to chase up their tenant’s outstanding debts. An unsuccessful attempt was then made to obtain further information from the Council’s records in March 2010.
The Council received an anonymous tip-off that Nainu had been illegally accessing the data, and launched an immediate investigation before reporting the matter to the ICO.
Despite the fact that the ICO seems to think that this was a pretty serious matter, and the fact that offenders can be fined up to £5000 at Magistrates Court or an unlimited amount at Crown Court, the fines in this case appear to be pretty low.
- IPS Property Services was fined £260 for two offences and ordered to pay a £15 victim surcharge plus £702.08 costs
- Nainu (the Council worker) was fined £690.00 for three offences and ordered to pay a £15 victim surcharge and £351.03 prosecution costs.
Still, the parties will now have a criminal record which won’t do them any good. You have been warned!
Cait says
May 31, 2012 at 9:36 AMPresume the council officer lost their job too. (Surely absolutely bang to rights case of gross misconduct)
So they had a fairly big loss – unlike the agency.
ian says
June 1, 2012 at 5:05 PMThis can be looked at another way. If an agent/landlord is trying to use the legal process to recover a dept, way are all parts of the public sector not required to assist in tracking down the former tenant?
Personally I would like the system changed so the court was responsible for tracking down the person and serving the paper work.
Tessa Shepperson says
June 1, 2012 at 5:18 PMI am sure a lot of people would like the court to take a more pro active stance on court proceedings. However there are two arguments against this:
1. Why should public money be spent on helping people who have allowed debts to accrue? It is expensive to trace debtors and personally I would not be happy with my tax money being used in this way
2. The courts are more or less at crisis point due to severe underfunding, and are finding it difficult just to do the work they are supposed to. Any additional work is entirely out of the question.
thue xe may da nang says
June 1, 2012 at 10:42 PMThis is too strict but necessary. In other countries, so many people are selling list of people’s contacts to others without permission of them.