A charity which was the subject of a serious complaint to the ICO has said it traced the issue to a single staff member who left the charity "by mutual consent."
The Trewan Sands Children's Trust was one of four not-for-profit organisations which the ICO last week said were being monitored over compliance issues. The other three are the RNIB, Greenpeace and Christian Aid.
Andrew Dawson, founder and trustee of the Trust, told Civil Society News that the Trust was subject to just four complaints, one of which was of a serious nature, and he was able to trace it back to “one rogue employee not following procedure.”
Dawson said once the ICO had contacted the charity he had traced it back to an employee “who is no longer with” the Trewan Sands Children’s Trust. He said the employee had left "by mutual consent" before the issue came to light.
“It was a low number of complaints but we had one major one. One person felt hounded, and that was down to one employee who is no longer with the Trust,” said Dawson.
“It just shows that one person can do a lot of damage.”
He said that he met with representatives from the ICO in person late last year and that his charity has been co-operating fully with the ICO during the three-month monitoring process which finished at the end of February. Dawson confirmed that, as a result of the ICO monitoring, it has made some internal changes to its policy.
A spokeswoman for the ICO said: “These charities had a low number of complaints. We suggested a number of improvements they could make to improve their processes and policies around marketing calls. The charities have committed to making those changes, and we don't expect any enforcement action will be required.”
Other charities respond
A spokeswoman from the RNIB said: "The ICO confirmed to us in December that our policies and procedures fall within the ICO's green rating and we’re not aware of any reason why this will not be reflected on the website imminently."
Karen Rothwell, director of fundraising for Greenpeace UK, said: "In the past three months, the Information Commissioner has raised eight complaints with us. The number is small because of the strict rules we hold ourselves to when we’re raising funds for our campaigns.
"Of course eight is still eight too many, but we investigated every one of them, and in every case we found that we complied with both our strict protocols and the law."
A Christian Aid spokeswoman said: "The ICO approached us in May 2015, following complaints received from 22 people about our approach to telephone fundraising between May 2014 and March 2015.
"We have co-operated fully with the ICO’s sector-wide investigation and in December the ICO told us that our policies and procedures fell within their green rating. We look forward to seeing that reflected on their website soon."
