POWYS County Council has been fined £130,000 for disclosing child protection case details to the wrong recipient.

The Information Commissioner's Office adjudicated on the incident which occurred in February this year when two reports about child protection cases were sent to the same shared printer.

It appears that two pages from one report were then mistakenly collected with the papers from another case and were sent out without being checked.

The person who mistakenly received the two pages of the report knew the identities of the parent and child whose personal details were included in the papers.

This person then made a complaint to the council and a further complaint was made by the recipient's mother to their local MP.

In an addition to the fine which is the highest that the office has served since it received its powers in April 2010 also served an enforcement notice served on authority to make the council further improvements to its data protection practices.

This incident follows a less serious, but similar incident, which was reported to the office in June last year and now all staff must be trained on how to follow the council's guidance on the handling of personal data by March 31, 2012, with refresher training provided every three years.