HUNDREDS of Bournemouth residents have received an apology from the council after their email details were included on a round robin email.

Bournemouth council blundered by sending an email to 672 residents, on which all their individual email addresses were visible.

They then repeated the breach on two recall notices before service director Richard Saunders sent out a “sincere apology” to all those affected and asked them to delete the offending emails from both their inboxes and deleted items folders.

Tanya Coulter, service director for law and governance, said: “An email was sent on Friday to 672 Bournemouth residents who had expressed an interest in joining our consultative ePanel.

“Unfortunately, the email addresses of these individuals were not hidden, as they would usually be, and therefore were viewable to all recipients.

“No other personal details were disclosed through this error.

“We recognised that this is a breach of email security and immediately emailed all recipients to apologise.

“We also recognise that this represents an information security breach and have made the decision to self-report the incident to the Information Commissioner.

“We are investigating the matter further to ensure that all necessary steps are taken to prevent this happening again.”

One of the residents affected said: “With data protection in the forefront of everyone’s mind, the council has, yet again, shown its total disrespect for the people of this town – shame on them.”