Building society's customer records found on Belfast street

The Leeds Building Society launched an urgent investigation today after documents containing mortgage details of customers were found blowing around on a Belfast city centre street.

The building society insisted it was not possible to identify specific individuals, however, it said it took the security of information extremely seriously and had launched an investigation on why rules on the destruction of confidential waste had been breached.

The documents were found by a group of young people waiting for a taxi in Belfast who informed the BBC.

The Leeds said it had a strict information security framework covering the storage and destruction of all confidential data and all members of staff had been trained and tested on it this year.

In a statement the building society said: “From the information supplied to us by the BBC – and from out own investigations – we have established that it is not possible to identify specific individuals from the papers that were found and, therefore, the security of our customer records has not been compromised.”

It added: “The information is not sufficient in itself to allow an unauthorised person to access any of the small number of accounts involved.

“However, the fact that the papers were not dealt with through our destruction of confidential waste process is being taken very seriously and an investigation has already started to identify how the breach, which is limited to our Belfast office, has occurred.”

One of those who found the papers, Michael Bedwell, told the BBC they were swirling around in the street.

“We noticed a lot of them had details, people’s names, different numbers. I didn’t know what they meant or couldn’t understand them but they seemed to be related to their bank accounts.

“There were internal emails from the Leeds Building Society about people’s accounts.

“I wouldn’t like my personal details being blown around the streets at two o’clock in the morning in Belfast.”