Data Protection Issue with Landlord

[sp4_couple]

Hi, this is our first new posting. I am trying to find out if an ex landlord of ours is in breach of the Data Protection Act in passing on a next of kin address to a utility company after we had left. The address in question was my Fathers and he is none to happy about receiving bills from this company. I can hand on heart say, that only the previous Landlord would have been privy to this address and no one else had it, certainly NOT the utility company.

 

I am wondering how we stand legally in taking the landlord to court for breach. Can anyone predict how we are likely to fair. In honesty, we left the landlord no forwarding address as I am about to petition for bankruptcy, although all the other details of leaving the house were dealt with correctly. I can see no where in law that states we HAVE to leave a forwarding address.

[Steve__M]

You have to complain to the Information Commissioner. Unfortunately, the ICO may believe the following is applicable to your situation:

 

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/housing/landlords.aspx

The ICO also says this:

 

If necessary, we will look into your complaint. If we think the law has been broken, we can give the organisation advice and ask it to solve the problem. In the most serious cases we can order it to do so.

We cannot award you compensation. Our main aim is to get the organisation to change the way it works so that it does things properly in the future.

[Lea_HTH]

Hi, this is our first new posting. I am trying to find out if an ex landlord of ours is in breach of the Data Protection Act in passing on a next of kin address to a utility company after we had left. The address in question was my Fathers and he is none to happy about receiving bills from this company. I can hand on heart say, that only the previous Landlord would have been privy to this address and no one else had it, certainly NOT the utility company.

 

I am wondering how we stand legally in taking the landlord to court for breach. Can anyone predict how we are likely to fair. In honesty, we left the landlord no forwarding address as I am about to petition for bankruptcy, although all the other details of leaving the house were dealt with correctly. I can see no where in law that states we HAVE to leave a forwarding address.

 

There is such a thing as 'equity' in the law. If you come in to court, expecting the court to right a wrong you believe was done to you, you have to come to court with 'clean hands'. In other words, you cannot have done anything wrong yourself.

 

You obviously left outstanding bills at the property, hence the LL forwarding your NOK details to them as they were clearly unable to contact you or send your details since you failed to leave a forwarding address - presumably so that you could avoid the outstanding bills. Ergo, your hands are not clean.

 

If you are going for bankruptcy, you could have included the debts to the utility company/companies (with the obvious proviso that you are not currently using those utility companies still).

 

So, even if you had been able to do more than just complain about the issue to the ICO, the bottom line is that in a court of law, you'd get rapped on the knuckles for not having clean hands yourself.