Croydon Tories clearly do not understand the meaning of the word “Protection” in the title of the Data Protection Act.

Ian Parker: Croydon Tories’ full-time agent

Last week Inside Croydon published a report on how the local Conservative Party, and its Town Hall group leader, Tim Pollard, had committed what appears to be a prima facie breach of the Data Protection Act by sending out a political campaign email to residents who have never signed off their permission for their personal information to be used by the Tories in such a manner.

Some time after our report appeared, the local Tories agent, Ian Parker, the former Coulsdon West councillor and go-to fall guy for the local Tories when they end up before a judge, finally responded to our enquiry which had been addressed to Pollard.

We have never had the courtesy of an acknowledgement from Councillor Pollard (council allowances, paid for out of Council Tax, paid to Tim and his partner, fellow Tory Helen Pollard, over the course of the current four-year term: more than £200,000).

We had asked the senior Croydon Conservative politician: “Can you answer the residents’ question – ‘how did you get our data?’ – or care to justify your actions in relation to the Data Protection Act?”

Parker’s response? He wrote to us asking us to name our sources and provide him with their email addresses so that he and Croydon Tories could contact them again.

Which is something, of course, we would never do.

However, if those Inside Croydon readers who have already contacted us, and others who have received the Tory email about the petition against a gypsy and travellers’ site in Purley Oaks, and who think that their personal data has been abused by Croydon Conservatives, then you should write to them immediately and, if you do not receive “a satisfactory explanation” (and Parker’s email response to us on the matter was far from  “satisfactory”), then you should contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (click here).

It’ll make Ian Parker’s day…

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