Yorkshire Water(Data protection)

[Irishairman]

I was in a road accident earlier this year and while I was in the hospital, I received a letter from Yorkshire Water explaining that I was in arrears and needed to contact them immediately. My sister picked up my mail and I asked her to contact them explaining my circumstances and that I could not work because of my accident and that I would contact them when I was able to, to work out a repayment plan. Apparently I was in debt to them, which I was not aware.
I heard nothing from them until last week when I received a letter from Rockford debt collections saying that I owe £400 and that I needed to pay now.
I went to the Yorkshire Water website and contacted them via that and explained that I had been in a road accident and that I will make some sort of minimal payment which I will discuss with Yorkshire water.
Today i received a letter from Rockford expressing their sympathies on my illness and that they had arranged a payment plan of £11 per fortnight consisting on £9.20 of ongoing use and £1.80 of arrears. I also received a payment card from Yorkshire Water. Rockford said I would be getting this.
I have just emailed Yorkshire water again on their online form as I did last time telling them that I could not afford the £11 a fortnight as my rent benefit has been cut and I am not well enough to return to employment. I did offer £5 a fortnight and that would be a stretch.
I also pointed out that Rockford has written to me with their sympathies at my illness and accident, but that I had not informed Rockford only Yorkshire Water and that I never gave Yorkshire Water Written or Verbal permission to pass this information to anybody else. On their online form it states that the information supplied in this form will be used for internal purposes only, which i pointed out to them.
can anybody tell me if they breached the Data Protection Act by doing this and abused my personal Data rights?
Rockford did say that the account had been with them for a year now, but I was not aware of this. My sister said that she was speaking to Yorkshire water when she contacted them on my behalf.

Apologies if I am not in the correct section for this, but it is a water company.

[ceylon]

when i A4V my water first time with 7trent they passed it on to DEBEO debt collector but at the bottom of the letter in small print it said debeo trading name of 7trent you will probably find its there inhouse debt collector

[Irishairman]

Thanks for the heads up Ceylon your comments spurned me to do some digging. It turns out that "Yorkshire Water" is not actually "Yorkshire Water". It has not been for years, "Yorkshire Water plc" was sold to the Kelda Group, who then sold it on to Saltaire Water, a private consortium made up of Citibank and HSBC. So it turns out that the banks own our natural resources too.
Here is a wiki link of the info. ( I only found this link after I learned of saltaire water).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelda_Group

As for Rockford debt, it seems they work for a company called Loop. Loop are a call centre formed from the Kelda group who work for Yorkshire Water (saltaire water). These are the people that you speak to everytime that you call the number on the YW webpage. There is some interesting reading on how many people they chase down for collection purposes and they seem very proud to do this too.
http://www.loop.co.uk/?OBH=717

There is still no reference to Rockford although their address is in the grounds of the YW estate in Bradford.

[ceylon]

debt letters to them

[Irishairman]

Well it goes on.
Rockford called my sister up on her phone as she was the one who contacted them on my behalf when I was in hospital. They asked for me but she said it was not my phone. They said who they were and asked her to pass on a message to me that they will not accept £5 fortnight as it is not enough to cover ongoing usage. They told her to tell me they will accept £9.70 a fortnight instead.
Now I know my sister was the initial contact on my behalf when I was ill, but the fact they called her after I had contacted them and then discussed a payment plan with her without my knowledge or consent must deem a breach of confidentiality and data protection. (can anybody shed a light on this)?
Also I received a letter from them today explaining the same payment plan and broke it down to £9.70 a fortnight, which is £9.20 for ongoing use and 50p for arrears. They will then review this in 3 months (very kind of them I hear you say).
I had instructed that I can only pay £5 a fortnight on the email I sent and that this would be a stretch in itself, but the want me to nearly double it.
As I have offered a payment that I can afford, are they legally obliged to accept this?

Any help, much appreciated.

At the bottom of the letter they agree that their website is misleading and it should be pointed out that Yorks Water is part of the Kelda Group which Rockford is a part of.

[Buffy1973]

Well it goes on.
Rockford called my sister up on her phone as she was the one who contacted them on my behalf when I was in hospital. They asked for me but she said it was not my phone. They said who they were and asked her to pass on a message to me that they will not accept £5 fortnight as it is not enough to cover ongoing usage. They told her to tell me they will accept £9.70 a fortnight instead.
Now I know my sister was the initial contact on my behalf when I was ill, but the fact they called her after I had contacted them and then discussed a payment plan with her without my knowledge or consent must deem a breach of confidentiality and data protection. (can anybody shed a light on this)?
Also I received a letter from them today explaining the same payment plan and broke it down to £9.70 a fortnight, which is £9.20 for ongoing use and 50p for arrears. They will then review this in 3 months (very kind of them I hear you say).
I had instructed that I can only pay £5 a fortnight on the email I sent and that this would be a stretch in itself, but the want me to nearly double it.
As I have offered a payment that I can afford, are they legally obliged to accept this?

Any help, much appreciated.

At the bottom of the letter they agree that their website is misleading and it should be pointed out that Yorks Water is part of the Kelda Group which Rockford is a part of.

Go to the Information Commisioners Website - http://www.ico.gov.uk/ for info on the issues re Data Protection.

[Irishairman]

Thanks Buffy.

[Buffy1973]

Thanks Buffy.

No probs

[smilingalltheway]

found it:

http://www.getoutofdebtfree.org/forum/v ... 69&t=36467


read this cos it shows that a water company does banking......

the part on being bankers is 10.