The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has criticized a Scottish public body that was found to have forgotten case files including details of young children in a discarded filing cabinet, which was sent to a second-hand shop.

The Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) left nine case files in the cabinet which was removed from the office of the authority as part of its office refurbishment in September 2010.

The ICO trashed the SCRA for breaching the Data Protection Act twice. In another case in January this year, SCRA was found to have sent the documents showing details of the physical abuse of a child, that of the witnesses and the youngster's mother to a wrong email address.

Both the cases involved negligence involving sensitive data belonging to young children. The breaches occurred due to human errors at SRCA, which could have been easily avoided, according to Ken Macdonald, ICO assistant commissioner for Scotland.