Center Parcs unlawfully discloses employees’ personal information

The discovery

After a data breach at Center Parc’s Woburn Forest resort, Irvings Law Data Breach department represented a number of the leisure company’s employees.

Matthew McConville, Head of Irvings Law’s Data Breach department was instructed by several employees of Center Parcs following a member of their staff emailing a spreadsheet entitled “Housekeeping Brief” but it was in fact a spreadsheet containing personal information relating to 1670 other Center Parcs employees at their Woburn Forest complex. A subsequent email from Center Parcs confirmed that the said error occurred ‘through human error’. As a result, all 1670 employees had suffered a breach of their personal information.

The said personal information included employees’:

1. Name
2. Home address
3. National Insurance number
4. Personal email address
5. Date of Birth
6. Contact Telephone number
7. Hourly rates of pay

Following their admission of their data breach and before Mr McConville was instructed, Centre Parcs attempted to brush their significant breach under the carpet by inviting all affected employees to a meeting whereby it was confirmed that £50.00 would be paid into their next wage packet as a goodwill gesture following the said data breach. Thankfully, some of the affected employees rejected this and wanted further specialist data breach advice and that is why they came to Mr McConville.

Representation

Upon receipt of instructions and without hesitation, Mr McConville agreed that the affected employees’ personal information and privacy had been infringed and so offered ‘no win, no fee’ terms to assist all in obtaining a suitable level of compensation following Center Parcs’ said data breach. Mr McConville also informed his affected clients that he would not take any deduction from any compensation that was to be subsequently awarded to them.

Resolution

Once the affected clients were signed up with Mr McConville, he sent a detailed letter of claim to Centre Parcs. Subsequently to this, Center Parcs instructed their insurance company to deal with the same. Upon receipt of Center Parcs’ response, they admitted liability in respect of breaching data protection legislation and particularly GDPR. Center Parcs then made each of the affected clients an offer of £750.00 to settle their claims. As the said clients instructed Mr McConville that they had suffered no distress or loss following the above incident, they were happy to accept the offer made. As instructed, Mr McConville did as asked and all of his clients kept the full £750.00 following a very quick resolution.

Next Steps

If you have been affected by the above and wish to bring your own claim for at least £750.00 without any risk whatsoever, you can so please contact us via our website contact form.