GRIEVING MOTHER TO SUE COUNCIL
FURY OVER SCHOOL-PLACE LETTERS SENT AFTER CHILDREN DIED
A GRIEVING mother is set to sue a council after it wrote asking her to register her son for primary school three years after his death.
She was still receiving bereavement counselling from her local hospital when she received the letter from Manchester council.
The woman claimed that the letter – which is believed to have been sent to almost 100 other families who had also lost their children – left her very upset and amounted to a breach of her legal rights.
The blunder was first reported by the M.E.N. in 2018 when another mother, Sarah Stephens, revealed how she had been sent a school application reminder for her daughter, Violet, two years after she died. Families affected later said the council had ‘rubbed salt into the wound’ after they received an ‘impersonal and rushed’ apology letter from the director of children’s services, Paul Marshall.
The apology, which was addressed to the ‘parent,’ did not use the child’s name. The council has since admitted that the letters had been sent in error but insisted that it did not infringe data protection and privacy law.
Nick McAleenan, a partner at JMW Solicitors who is representing the woman taking legal action, said: “The council’s error had serious emotional consequences for my client and probably for many of the other parents who received these registration letters.
“It is deeply traumatic to lose a child. The parents concerned have watched as other families’ children have grown up. Sadly, that’s something that their own children will never be able to do. The authority’s action was careless and insensitive but – importantly – also breached the parents’ data rights.
“The council has already conceded that it did not perform relatively basic checks on the information before sending the letters out.
“The upset caused by that initial mistake has been compounded by officials arguing that they acted within the rules because they were using the data of the deceased children.
“In fact, they clearly wrote to the children’s parents asking them to act. My client has given Manchester city council a number of opportunities to amicably resolve what seems to be a fairly clear-cut issue, something which it says it is unwilling to do.”
Mr McAleenan said the woman’s child had died only days after its birth at St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester in 2015.
In August 2018, she received a letter from the council’s children, families and education services directorate instructing her that she had until the following January to register her son for a place at primary school.
It was later reported by the M.E.N. that hers was one of 95 such letters sent to parents in similar circumstances.
Within days, the council began receiving complaints, prompting it to issue an apology addressing those affected not by their names but simply ‘Dear Parent.’
Mr McAleenan said the council maintained that it had guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office that it had not breached data law.
He said: “We believe that the authority’s conduct fell well short of legal data processing under data legislation.”
He added: “My client recognises that she may have to go to court in order to hold the council responsible.”