Police refer mother to ICO for failing to delete review into daughter's death
11/04/2025 | Information Rights & Wrongs
An article by data protection specialist Jon Bains discusses a data protection story about a "Victims' Right to Review" conducted by Gloucestershire Police at the request of the family of a woman found dead in her caravan in February 2021.
The police provided Danielle's mother with a 74-page report, the contents of which were later reported by Channel 4 News. However, the police now claim the report was "inadvertently released" and are demanding its destruction. After the mother refused to comply, the police referred her to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for a potential offence under s170(3) of the Data Protection Act 2018 for knowingly retaining personal data without the controller's consent.
Baines highlights that s170(3)(c) provides a defence for individuals acting for journalistic purposes with a reasonable belief that retention is in the public interest. The ICO, as the prosecutor for data protection offences, will need to consider this defence and whether a prosecution would be in the public interest, alongside evidential factors.
The article also points out that the ICO has civil enforcement powers and may investigate the circumstances under which the police, as the data controller, allegedly wrongly disclosed personal data in such a serious case.
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