Barclays faces call centre probe

Barclays Bank faces an Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) investigation over allegations of customer privacy breaches.

The ICO move follows a nine-month investigation by the BBC's Whistleblower programme into working practices at the bank's call centre in Sunderland and a branch in Guildford.

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The programme alleged staff were told to ignore customers' wishes about receiving sales information or being contacted by phone. The programme also claimed staff were told to introduce themselves as account consultants when speaking to customers, rather than their normal title of sales adviser. Call centre staff were also shown accessing customers' accounts without a valid reason.

ICO head of the Regulatory Action Division, Mick Gorrill, said in a statement: "The ICO takes breaches of people's privacy extremely seriously. For instance, making sales calls to people who have expressly asked not to be contacted is totally unacceptable."

The ICO has requested an explanation from Barclays, outlining why the bank's policies and procedures on direct marketing and access to customer accounts appears to have been "deliberately flouted by call centre staff."

Barclays said in a statement: "We take the allegations made by the programme very seriously and are conducting our own internal investigation. We are acutely aware that the trust between ourselves and our customers is the bedrock on which we do business. We will do everything necessary to stamp out anything that undermines that trust. We are fully co-operating with the information commissioner's investigation."