David Pegg reports:

Local councils have lost data relating to personal details of more than 160,000 people in the last five years, a Bureau investigation can reveal. More than 26,000 individuals have had their personal details lost in the first half of 2011 alone.

The losses include personal details of more than 5,000 children.

CVs, housing benefit information, passport numbers, information on vulnerable people and an encrypted version of a local electoral register were amongst the various losses that councils admitted.

One council, Worcestershire, even admitted losing people’s bank details, in an incident that involved the loss of a contractor’s laptop that contained information relating to 16,200 staff in 2007.

In many cases councils have also failed to inform people affected by the loss.

Read more on Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Some of the breaches mentioned were only uncovered by a freedom of information request.