A CORNWALL councillor has accused the local authority she represents of a “cock-up” after all the personal details of ten people who complained against her were emailed to her, including the names and contact details of four people who expressly asked to remain anonymous.

Cllr Dulcie Tudor – an Independent councillor who represents Chacewater and Threemilestone, near Truro – has been accused of breaching Cornwall Council’s code of conduct by ten complainants over gender-critical comments she made in a meeting and online.

The complaints stem from a council meeting in November when she asked the council’s Liberal Democrat leader Cllr Leigh Frost if a trans woman is a woman. Cllr Frost would not be pushed on the matter, saying it was not down to him to decide, but that the council would obey the law.

In April 2025 the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, a decision that could have implications for who can access single-sex services and spaces.

Now Cllr Tudor has taken to social media to call out what appears to be a data breach, which she labelled a “council cock-up”.

She said: “When complaints are made against you as a councillor and the council has decided to investigate and process them, which they have in this case, all the complaints are sent to the councillor.

“I got sent all the complaints. I can know the names of the complainants unless they’ve asked for some reason that their names are redacted and kept confidential – as four of these complainants did – because they believe they might come to some sort of harm if their names were made public.

“But, of course, I don’t get to know their addresses, emails, telephone numbers – all that’s redacted.

“But in this case, in their rush to process the complaints, the governance team at Cornwall Council forgot to redact the information properly. So I know all the names, all the addresses, all the telephone numbers, all the emails of all the complainants, even the ones who asked for their names to remain anonymous.”

She added: “I know now, for instance, which complainants might be actual council officers and I know which complainants might be elected councillors – it’s crazy. I shouldn’t know that.”

Cllr Tudor said she passed the information on to the Free Speech Union, which is representing her. “In a really bizarre turn of events I’ve decided to report the breach of confidentiality of people who complained against me to the Information Commissioner on their behalf,” she added.

The independent Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) investigates data breaches.

She said: “If those people who made the complaints want to complain themselves that this has happened – this thing that should not have happened – and they’re feeling uncomfortable that I’ve got this information about them, then I suggest they make their own complaints again about that,” Cllr Tudor added.

In a strange twist, it appears the local authority sent the information to Cllr Tudor in redacted form but the simple act of opening the email revealed all the hidden personal information.

In an update, Cllr Tudor said: “They have investigated themselves and found that they’ve done nothing wrong. Because when the complaints were sent to me as attachments the complainants’ personal information was redacted.

“Want to know how it became unredacted? I opened the files!”

We have contacted the council for a response to the breach, but have yet to receive a reply. However, we understand from Cllr Tudor that the incident has caused the council to consider its methods of redaction and that it is referring the matter to the ICO and will tell the ten complainants about the referral.

The complaints, which are still being investigated, were made against Cllr Tudor between November 27 and December 3. A council agenda showed that the complaints include:

· “It is stated that by calling trans men ‘men pretending to be women’ and drawing an equivalent with violent criminals the subject member has breached the code;”

· “By posting online the subject member has been transphobic, bigoted and hurtful towards trans people;”

· “By calling trans women ‘men’, she is herself bullying and insulting a protected, vulnerable group of people which is appalling behaviour and incredibly disrespectful.”

Cllr Tudor spoke about the ‘investigation’ into her at a standards committee meeting earlier this month. She believed there had been a “co-ordinated campaign” of complaints against her and that they are “discriminatory and potentially harassing”.