Worrying blunder shows lack of data security

IN November 2013 late one afternoon, I received a telephone call from a contractor of Yorkshire Housing Association of Leeds advising me that they wished to make an appointment to carry out a repair that I had presumably reported.

I advised the contractor Keepmoat that I had not lived at the property in Pontefract since September 2009 and that he was also using my ex-directory telephone number of where I live now.

I telephoned Yorkshire Housing and having spoken to three “customer service personnel” – one of them advised me that it was “a computer hiccup”.

My details are held on Yorkshire Housing’s waiting list, but it deeply concerns me how easily they have supplied my personnel current details to one of their contractors and it makes me wonder what other information have they given to other organisations without my knowledge. I had just come out of hospital and to have this very upsetting and quite unnecessary incident happen to me I find it unacceptable and most unprofessional.

Being concerned about the lack of data protection this company had, I wrote to Mervyn Jones, 
the chief executive, but he 
passed it to a customer services manager who was on leave at the time and the person who dealt with my complaint blamed it onto the contractor whose fault it was not.

I was offered £30 in compensation but that does 
not cover the cost of telephone calls and letters and the fact that I am having to change my telephone number and go 
to the expense of writing to people and advise them of this all because of this mistake by Yorkshire Housing Association who do not understand how serious this is, or how many other tenants and previous tenants have had their details passed to organisations without them knowing.