EIGHT mail mishaps in one Cornwall town that put service users’ personal data at risk were among the data protection issues affecting jobseekers last year, according to government figures.

Figures collected from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) show that close to 400 data breaches affected British job centres last year.

Compensation experts Data Breach Claims UK learned through a Freedom of Information request that 238 British job centres experienced at least one breach between November 2023 and January 2025.

The DWP said that there were 261 ‘postal security incidents’ between November 2023 and January 2025. Such incidents involve letters being sent to the wrong address and their contents–including an individual’s personal data–being seen by the wrong person.

Records indicate that eight mail-based incidents affected people in St Austell last year. Only six locations around the country appeared more often in postal security incident reports.

The DWP defended their record, telling Data Breach Claims that "DWP issues over 80,000,000 mail notifications per annum and the number of recorded Postal Security Incidents recorded equates to 0.00027 per cent."

Aside from mail-based issues, data breaches have been linked back to four job centres in Cornwall in the past 18 months.

A data breach is defined by information security watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as a “breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data”.

Jobseekers are expected to share sensitive information when using the service, including names, addresses, National Insurance numbers, job histories and bank details, plus medical information in some cases.

St Austell Jobcentre appears in the DWP’s list of data breach incidents for 2024, as does the centre in Redruth. Truro Jobcentre was the source of one breach in the final two months of 2023, but none last year.