Hospital trust hit with a £185k fine after posting the sexual orientation of thousands of its staff on their website

A SHAMED hospital trust has been slammed with an £185k fine after posting the sexual ortientation of thousands of its staff on their website.

According to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Turst workers’ confidential data and failed to notice the mistake for ten months.

They published workers’ confidential data which also included their National Insurance numbers, date of birth and religious beliefs.

Stephen Eckersley, head of enforcement at the ICO, said the trust had "played fast and loose with the highly sensitive and private information".

He added: "It seems they ignored their duty to put rules in place to protect staff who deliver hospital services to others."

"Any measures taken to protect this information from reaching the public domain were woefully inadequate or non-existent.

"The fact that the error went unnoticed for so long beggars belief.";

Spreadsheets were published including sensitive data relating to 6564 employees, both past and present.

This included pay scale, disabled status, ethnicity, religious belief and sexual orientation.

This “hidden” data became visible by double-clicking the table.

These were accessed at least 59 times by 20 visitors while they were publicly available online and associated data was also downloaded by “persons unknown” on several occasions, according to a penalty notice published by the ICO.

Mr Eckersley said: “There was a need for robust measures to safeguard against this kind of disclosure. I can see no good reason for that not happening and that is why we have taken action.”