CHESHIRE East Council has have been branded ‘pathetic’ after a data protection blunder while trying to drum up support for a recently-announced energy scheme.

Council staff sent an email to 300 people who registered an interest in the FairerPower initiative, which is set to launch this year, through the council’s website.

However, the names of the recipients were not kept hidden from the other recipients, breaching Data Protection.

Independent Cheshire East councillor for Shavington, David Brickhill, has blasted the council leader, Cllr Michael Jones, for the error and for failing to generate more interest in the scheme.

Cllr Brickhill, who was one of the recipients whose Data Protection was breached, said: “It would appear that Cheshire East have again made a total hash of a bright idea both by publishing all the names and also not convincing enough residents to make the scheme worthwhile. 

“Can one now expect entrepreneurial competitors to use the published list to tempt people to switch to their schemes, thus weakening still further the council’s pathetic efforts?”     

Cllr Brickhill also took a swipe at the council’s public relation department, who have recently come under scrutiny for posting political messages through Cllr Jones’ personal Twitter account.

He said: “If they can only get 300 names out of the 350,000 people, who live in Cheshire East, and have failed to convince their own senior officers and most councillors, then does it show that they are not very good at their jobs? 

“Either that or were they spending all their time writing Cllr Jones Twitter messages?”

Cheshire East Council apologised for the blunder, calling it an ‘innocent mistake’.

“Cheshire East Council immediately published an apology to those affected after a member of staff realised they had made the mistake of placing email addresses in the ‘To’ field rather than the ‘BCC’ field,” a spokesman said.

“This was an innocent mistake and was not intended to upset recipients.

“While it is a breach of the Data Protection Act, it is not serious enough to warrant self-reporting to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

“We will, however, be ensuring that staff are fully up-to-date with all data protection policy and legislation in light of this incident.”