MORE than 600 Pendle residents have been apologised to by the council after they were emailed about its new ‘secure’ digital council tax system with every other recipients’ web address still visible.

People borough boss Philip Mousdale has apologised to the 661 residents and reported the error to information commissioner Elizabeth Denham but said ‘no personal data had been disclosed’.

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Pendle MP Andrew Stephenson has condemned sending out personal email addresses to so many people as ‘appalling’.

He said: “This schoolboy error makes a mockery of the council’s claim that the new system is ‘reliable and secure’.”

The email was sent out yesterday morning by a web manager without ‘blind copying’ the full list so all addresses were fully visible to very recipient, They included several councillors email addresses, including that of borough leader Cllr Mohammed Iqbal.

Several people raised the issue to Mr Stephenson and six made official complaints to the council.

Corporate director Mr Mousdale said: “Pendle Council takes its responsibilities under the Data Protection Act very seriously.

“Unfortunately, an error was made sending out an email and we apologise for any upset we may have caused.

“The email addresses were put into the ‘To’ field, rather than the ‘BCC’ (blind copy) field which means email addresses were visible to the other recipients on the list.

“I must stress that at no time has any personal data been disclosed.

“The email was sent at 10.20am and by 10.56am on Friday “Pendle council has already self-reported this matter to the Information Commission and acted on its advice immediately.

“I just want to stress that the email did not go out to all of Pendle’s 40,008 council tax payers.

“ It went to 661 people, 1.65 per cent, who had registered with us to receive more information about our council tax online service.”

The new service was described in the email as ‘free, fast, reliable and secure’.

Mr Stephenson said: “I have been approached by several outraged constituents.

“Email addresses are very clearly ‘personal data’.

“This may be a simple human error but it is an appalling breach of privacy.”

The e-mail was sent to all those who had registered for ‘council tax online’ but not used it, for example to request paperless billing, check bill, or make payments.

The messages were recalled and deleted from the inboxes of those who had not yet read them.