A NEW report has shown that between 2011 and 2014 there were five separate data breaches committed by Bolton Council staff.

The breaches included inappropriate disclosures and resulted in one staff member being sacked and another resigning.

The report, A Breach of Trust, has been compiled by the privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch and aims to shine a light on the scale of data breaches by local authorities.

The figures were compiled by Freedom of Information requests and refer to the period between April 2011 and April 2014.

During that period, there were five different data breaches carried out by four Bolton Council workers.

One staff member was dismissed after being found guilty of inappropriately accessing a council system, while another worker resigned after twice being found to have committed a similar offence of inappropriate access.

A fellow staff member, who was found guilty of the same offence, was handed a written warning and the same punishment was given to an employee who made an “inappropriate disclosure”.

Only five of the 10 Greater Manchester councils responded to the information requests, with Trafford recording no data breaches in the period and Bury Council reporting just one breach.

Manchester City Council came back with figures of six different breaches — including one instance which was passed to police after a council employee e mailed sensitive health records of fellow staff members and customers.

The Greater Manchester council that reported the most breaches was Rochdale, with 24 incidents — although none of them resulted in any disciplinary action being taken.

A spokesman for Bolton Council said the authority takes data breaches by staff members “very seriously”.

He added: “We always investigate any breach thoroughly.

“We will then take an appropriate response, depending on the severity of the breach and impose a variety of sanction on staff, from a written warning to termination of employment.”

“We are also proactive on working to prevent breaches. We review our policies and procedures regularly and also train staff who deal with data on privacy of data and security to prevent and reduce breaches in the future.”