A BLUE badge holder has been left frustrated and concerned after he discovered the council had passed his personal data on to a private company.

The Milford-on-Sea resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said he now faces an uphill battle to get his data removed from the systems after it was shared without his consent.

His issue focused on a range of personal information from blue badge applications, including name, address, date of birth and photograph, being passed on by Hampshire County Council to an outsourced company to maintain a database.

A complaint was submitted to the Information Commission's Office (ICO) after the resident was left unsatisfied by the council's response to his discovery.

The ICO told the resident that the council is "unlikely to have complied" with the Date Protection Act in relation to the blue badge forms after failing to provide adequate notice that sensitive personal data would be passed onto a third party to maintain a database.

An ICO spokesperson confirmed advice was given to Hampshire County Council following an investigation.

Despite this action, the resident told the Daily Echo he still had concerns.

"If a blue badge inspector stops me, all they need to do is legally ask to see my blue badge and then they can see my photo actually on the badge itself," he said.

"Quite why my personal and sensitive data has to be on any database is beyond me.

"I find it odd that a passport has less data about passport holders than this disabled people database has.

"It took my complaint before council decided to respect peoples rights to data protection.

"Now I have an uphill struggle to get excessive data about me removed from the private company systems as they have no consent to even have my data."

A spokesperson for Hampshire County Council said the ICO found the authority had complied with data protection obligations relevant at the time.

"Once the ICO had completed its investigation, they provided the county council with guidance on ‘updating our privacy notice’ in relation to the blue badge forms, to ensure compliance with the new data protection legislation coming into force on May 25," the spokesperson said.

"We confirmed that this was already being undertaken as part of our wider review to ensure the local authority was ‘GDPR ready’. The ICO confirmed that no further action was therefore required.”