My point is that the Data Protection Act contains a
specific provision in Section 35 which removes some of the provisions that
might normally prevent a disclosure. If a person needs data for legal
proceedings, the DPA specifically allows disclosures for legal
proceedings. It doesn't oblige the organisation to provide the data, but it
doesn't prevent it. We sometimes provide information to utility
companies and others who are seeking to recover debts, just as we ask other
organisations to provide us with data when we are chasing
ours.
I am certain that we're not breaching the DPA by doing
so.
There is an article on IC's website relating to disclosures
by landlords and mentions about tracing agents but not an individual landlord
chasing up.
I don't think there's a breach when disclosing a person's
whereabouts to someone who is legitimately seeking to recover debts through a
legal process. Otherwise, why would Parliament have included the Section 35
exemption from the non-disclosure provisions?
Also what springs to mind is that companies are not debt
tracing agencies and therefore would be contravening the DP Act. We have
had several letters from Solicitors trying to trace people for those very
reasons and have always refused. We have even had the utlities companies
doing so and have also refused them.
Section 35 DPA? Mind you, it's still their discretion to
disclose!
Regards
Iain Harrison
Information Governance Officer
Contracts
& Governance Team,
Customer & Workforce Services,
Coventry City Council
Council House,
Earl Street
Coventry,
CV1 5RR
Telephone No: 024 7683 3305
Fax
No: 024 7683
3395
I could do with an opinion, please.
I own a small house that I
rent out to a tenant who is in arrears with her rent. She has a rent
guarantor who has signed a contract with me to guarantee the rent and given his
then current employer's name and then current address in the contract.
I
have obtained a county court judgment against both the tenant and the guarantor
for the full sum plus court costs
The tenant has vaporised and the
guarantor is no longer with that employer and no longer at his original
address. Both are untraceable. Neither has responded to the judgment
and bailiffs are having, unsurprisingly, no success.
So what has this to
do with the DPA?
Yesterday I approached the guarantor's ex employer,
explained the situation, produced the CCJ and the contract with me as evidence
that I am not some "casual enquirer" and that I have a reasonably justifiable
need to have details of the man's current whereabouts.
They refused,
stating that to supply me with these details would break the DPA.
The
question, and one which is hard for me to answer because I am personally
involved, is, "Do I have any right to press for data regarding the guarantor,
and, if so, what do I need to quote in order to get the data released?"
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