A DEMAND for a public apology to families of special needs children whose personal information was shared with a private firm without consent has been knocked back – as the council admits there was a breach of the Data Protection Act.

At Trafford Town Hall last night, Labour put forward a motion for the council to issue a public apology to parents of vulnerable youngsters in the borough.

Following FOI requests, the council admitted that it outsourced the writing of educational plans for children with special needs to a private company for eight years without parents’ knowledge or consent and without formal data protection protocols being in place.

This was revealed after the council came under fire by the Department of Education for its ‘extremely poor’ performance in issuing final educational plans.

The FOIs uncovered that the majority of the plans, which set out the support children with special needs should be provided with, were completed by an external company in Essex up until June last year.

Affected parents branded the news “incomprehensible” and a “scandal”.

“No amount of assurances about the professionalism of the company to whom outsourcing was contracted forgives the fact that essentially the trust of the parents and carers of our Special Needs Children was effectively betrayed by this decision,” said Cllr Freeman, when introducing the motion on Wednesday night.

“We ask all of you to think how you would have felt had this happened to you, your child, your family. At the very least we believe an apology is due.”

Cllr Michael Hyman, responding on behalf of the executive, said he was “confused” by the motion, as it appeared to be more of a “long, convoluted statement.”

He said that on two occasions he took considerable time to acknowledge the council’s shortcomings over EHC plans.

He said that the outsourcing of the writing of the plans was “strictly an administrative function” and that the information was gathered by professionals only.

“It was agreed that it was wrong that parental permission was not obtained to share children’s information with the company,” he said.

But he highlighted that an Ofsted report, published this week, had found that the EHC plan process, which had been deemed “weak” in 2015, had improved significantly in terms of timeliness and increased capacity.

“Rather than an introspective dwelling on what has happened in the past, I believe that it is this twice now endorsed improvement and its impact on the production of EHC plans in the future is what families really want,” he concluded.

Cllr Joanne Bennett said she didn’t think Cllr Hyman appreciated the level of distress caused to the families, who were “horrified” and “hurt” that sensitive data was being shared with strangers.

Cllr Michael Young said that the scrutiny committee, which produced a review of EHC plans just last week, found that there were significant problems but that these have substantially been overcome.

“I think this is why people hate politicians,” said an “outraged” Cllr Katrina Carter, in response to Cllr Hyman’s statement.

“We all know there was a massive problem. We met those families, they had issues around their children being doubly incontinent, about mental health issues, about problems in their marriage, and that information was just sent willy-nilly around the country.

“There are parents out there who are angry, who are annoyed – can we just say sorry, we messed up.”

Lib Dems’ Cllr Jane Brophy said the experience the families had will be long lasting and said that without an apology, she is doubtful that the families can move on in their relationship with Trafford.

Labour leader Cllr Andrew Western said: “You have shared their child’s data without permission, stuck it in the post, winged it down to Essex and let somebody who has never seen this kids write their EHCs – that is a disgrace.

“What really worries me about all of this is that Cllr Hyman has the audacity to tell us; “We have covered this before, I’ve given two very detailed answers”. Never once did he tell us this was outsourced. Never once did he tell us that this might have been the cause of the problem.

"Two FOIs were required to drill down on this because the council tried not to tell us. It’s not good enough. Apologise, for heaven’s sake.”

In a last-ditch attempt for an apology, Cllr Freeman said: “I am asking you to use a word that is clearly not in your vocabulary, Cllr Hyman, to get on your feet and say sorry.

"It draws a line and perhaps some of the parents can begin to move forward, to begin to have faith once more in the fine services that we are trying to offer.”

Leader of the council Cllr Sean Anstee concluded by saying that the council has acknowledged there has been a breach of the Data Protection Act, that it is investigating this and that the issue will be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

“This is still a live issue that negates our ability to be able to support the motion this evening,” he added.

The motion was not carried, with 31 voting against as opposed to just 21 in favour, to outbursts of “shame on you” from in the chamber.