Chair of Northern Ireland Policing Board says that Chief Constable Simon Byrne 'retains the confidence of the board' following PSNI data breaches

It comes after personal data on all serving members of the PSNI was mistakenly published earlier this month in response to a Freedom of Information request.

Details of the 9,483 people released included the surname and first initial of every employee, their rank or grade, where they are based and the unit they work in.

A number of other data breaches have since come to light, including the loss of a police officer’s laptop and notebook which contained details of 42 officers and members of staff after the items fell from a moving vehicle last week.

Northern Ireland Policing Board chair Deirdre Toner said: “This breach and the subsequent breaches have damaged the reputation of the service and impacted the confidence of officers, staff and others in the service’s ability to protect personal information.”

Ms Toner said the end-to-end review will be led by Assistant Commissioner Pete O’Doherty, the National Police Chiefs Council lead officer for information assurance, and supported by a specialist team.

It will look at the process and actions leading to the breach and if there were any organisational, governance or management issues that allowed the breach to happen.

Ms Toner said it will identify any action required to prevent further data breaches and build more robust risk mitigation systems.

She said: “The review team have been tasked to have an initial report back to the board within one month. A final report is expected by the end of November and will be made available for public release.”

She said these measures were essential to “help rebuild trust and confidence” in the PSNI.

The board will put in place monitoring measures to ensure “effective implementation of the recommendations” which stem from the review.

Ms Toner added: “While much remains to be done, the board acknowledges the comprehensive response that has been mobilised and delivered by the PSNI.”

The chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board has said Chief Constable Simon Byrne “retains the confidence of the board”.

Ms Toner said: “These data breaches will be a standing agenda item on the monthly public and private accountability sessions with the Chief Constable for as long as as is necessary so that progress on dealing with all the consequences from the breaches – including support mechanisms and risk assessments for police officers and staff – can be tracked and assessed.

“The Chief Constable retains the confidence of the board to lead the service and the senior team in the wide-ranging programme of work which has been initiated to address all aspects of the data breaches to ensure appropriate support mechanisms are in place for police officers and staff.

“On effective implementation, the board wants to reach a point where we can assure all PSNI officers and staff and the wider public that every step necessary has been taken to deal with the threats, risks and harms arising from this breach, and that everything possible has been done to prevent a reoccurrence.”

Ms Toner has described exchanges with PSNI Chief Constable Mr Byrne as “crunchy”.

“It’s been a long day,” Ms Toner told reporters after the meeting, adding that a “wide range of issues” were discussed.

“It was constructive, proactive. Yes, it was certainly crunchy. There’s no doubt about that.”

Ms Toner added: “The chief constable’s continued leadership has not been called into question by the board at this time.

“That’s the position of the board at this point in time.

“It’s not that confidence can change, and as I said it’s not an open cheque book, as we say.

“But we need to focus on systems now, not on individuals.”

Edgar Jardine, vice chair of the Policing Board of Northern Ireland, said the board was “unanimous” in its support for the Chief Constable and that nine of the representative organisations present on Tuesday did not challenge that position.

He said: “Confidence can never be unconditional, or a blank cheque.

“We have commissioned with the PSNI an end-to-end review, that’s a very thorough review which will go into a lot of detail, and clearly the board will have to deal with the consequences of that whenever we get the findings.”

He said it was also his understanding the review will look at how the PSNI investigated the data breaches.

When asked about the independence of the review if it had been co-commissioned, vice chair of the policing board of Northern Ireland Edgar Jardine said the review team has “no relationship with the PSNI”.

Mr Jardine said: “The board will be alongside this and, as that work progresses, we will be looking at it independently.

“We have, I think, really a fairly strong team working on it and (there) will be very frequent feedback into the board so we will have an opportunity to challenge where we have concerns.”

He said he expects the lead on the review to report simultaneously to the policing board and the PSNI.

Ms Toner said “it is a crisis time” for public confidence in the PSNI.

Asked if the board was out of step with rank-and-file officers and the public over its confidence in Chief Constable Simon Byrne, board vice-chair Edgar Jardine said: “We may be, or we may present that way, but we’ve in the last couple of weeks spent time with the (Police Federation For Northern Ireland) and NIPSA (Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance), and we have spent time with other representative organisations.

“While there’s obviously concerns, there’s no sense from any of these representative organisations that the leadership of the organisation is in question. That’s really where the board is as well.”

Ms Toner added: “If you’re talking about, you know, a poll in terms of confidence in policing , it is a crisis time.

“It is a critical public confidence issue held at this time and there have been reviews in the past where confidence has been high and it’s not about losing that in terms of where we’re going to go.

“So, the PSNI has a job of work to do in terms of building confidence internally, externally. The backing of the board is we need to hold people to account at the stage.

“We need to look at, again as I said, the process – it’s not necessarily individuals – and there’s a job or work to do. That can’t be done in isolation.”

Mr Jardine said there are multiple sources of assurance on data protection and information management in the PSNI which have been “satisfactory” in recent years.

He said: “We’re talking here about human input. We’re talking about systems and we’re talking about technology.

“Within the independent end-to-end review, all of those things will be examined.”

Asked what message was being sent to affected staff and their families, Ms Toner said: “The respect for officers and staff is that we do this job properly in this way, and get the information as quickly as possible so that we can look at remedial action.”

Asked if Chief Constable Mr Byrne should have spoken to media after meeting with the Northern Ireland Policing Board, Ms Toner said: “Today was about getting the board together at a critical time to get the board to agree where we were going to go next and what that would look like and the scrutiny around that.

“The chief has been in touch and has done media, and has done from an operational perspective and a safety perspective, and a community safety perspective and a security perspective.

“Our job is to look at the oversight and look at how that’s going to roll out.

“It’s defined roles in terms of what we do.”