In 2003 I took B&NES Council to Bath County Court claiming breach of statutory duty. A year ago I requested a copy of the Council's legal file FCCPCE1, under a subject access request, which contains the council's official records of the court case together with a substantial amount of my personal data.

The last person to have this file was the Council's Solicitor and Monitoring Officer Vernon Hitchman who wrote to me 12 months after the court case demanding I pay the Council's £800 costs. When I pointed out his demands did not accord with the Council's debt recocery procedures I heard no more about it.

Vernon Hitchman whilst claiming to me and the IC for the last 12 months he did not know what legal file FCCPCE1 contained has now written to me stating "I do recall seeing a file relating to the court case....we cannot find it anywhere...we dont know whats happened to it...the last I saw of it was just shortly after the legal proceedings has ended..."

In reality B&NES Council has lost my confidential personal data in breach of the seventh principle of the DP Act and the legal requirement to retain legal files for a minimum period of 7 years.

Will update you when I hear back from the Information Commission who would you believe are delaying making any decision on the issue ie: I have been waiting 2 months for it to respond.