Most Met Police officers yet to complete 'mandatory' training on data protection, boss admits

It comes after the Information Commissioner’s Office found “serious and ongoing shortcomings” in the Met’s data protection training, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter

Up to 70% of officers with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have not yet completed mandatory data training despite the force being condemned following a series of data protection failures.

Kenny Bowie, director of strategy and MPS oversight at the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac), admitted the uptake “wasn’t particularly good” and said the figure needed “to be improved”.

Last month the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found “serious and ongoing shortcomings” in the Met’s data protection training and found that completion rates were “low”.

They issued an enforcement notice against the force, ordering the MPS to take specific steps within three months and others within twelve months “to improve its data protection training compliance, monitoring and governance arrangements”.

It came after two cases, one in which an officer sent unredacted documents to an alleged stalker, revealing the victim’s new address and phone number, and another where an officer sent a bulk email that exposed the names and email addresses of 18 people connected to the ‘Honeytrap’ scandal in Westminster.

In the latter incident, the ICO found that the officer who sent the mail “had not completed data protection training for over four years before the incident, and the officer’s line manager had also not completed relevant training for almost four years prior to the incident”.

During a session of the London Assembly’s police and crime committee last week, senior officers admitted that compliance must be achieved “as quickly as possible” but refused to put a timeframe on the issue.

“You probably want to tackle it from a personal responsibility, a supervisory responsibility, and a sort of technological layer on top of that,” Bowie told London Assembly members in response to questioning from the Green Party’s Benali Hamdache.

“When the latest ICO figures came out, but a few months ago, the Met were at somewhere around 30% to 40% in terms of people internally who had completed their internal data protection training.

“Now, it’s mandatory, it’s not particularly good, so that does need to be improved, and that does need to be the personal responsibility of the officers.

“People really need to understand why this is so central because if you’re a victim who comes forward – and already the Met does need to improve its more general service to victims – this will have a real corrosive impact. ICO is looking at this; there is an enforcement notice, there is an imperative upon the Met Police to do this.”

Hamdache told the LDRS that the revelation was “unacceptable”, and comes just a month after the Met apologised for inadvertently disclosing email addresses of around 140 people who say they were sexually abused by the late Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed.

He added: “The Met have only just apologised for yet another serious data breach involving the personal information of the Al Fayed victims.

“These are survivors who have already shown enormous courage in coming forward and who trusted the police with some of the most painful memories they have. We’re now learning that the force has been failing to meet basic standards in mandatory data protection training.

“This is unacceptable and falls woefully short of the standards the public has every right to expect from its officers. Every officer must complete the mandatory data training as a matter of priority, and I will continue using my voice on the London Assembly to push for this.”

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