The Police Ombuds­man for North­ern Ire­land (PONI) has apol­o­gised for a data leak inci­dent involv­ing 160 cur­rent and for­mer staff.

A doc­u­ment con­tain­ing some of their per­son­al details was “inad­ver­tent­ly released” to 22 peo­ple who had been invit­ed to a job inter­view.

The infor­ma­tion includ­ed the sur­names and first ini­tial of all staff employed at PONI in May 2022.

PONI has con­tact­ed the Infor­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er’s Office about the leak.

It will also arrange for an inde­pen­dent review of the inci­dent.

In cor­re­spon­dence sent to those affect­ed, seen by BBC News NI, PONI’s chief exec­u­tive, Hugh Hume, acknowl­edged the inci­dent would be “dis­tress­ing”.

He added: “I apol­o­gise unre­served­ly. It should not have hap­pened.”

The per­son­al data was con­tained in a three-page Word doc­u­ment attached to an email.

As well as names, it also list­ed what areas indi­vid­u­als worked in.

In some instances work­ing pat­terns were not­ed.

One page of the doc­u­ment also had a list of staff who had resigned, were due to retire, or were on career breaks.

The “major­i­ty” of those in this part of the doc­u­ment are list­ed using their first name and sur­name.

“No oth­er per­son­al infor­ma­tion was con­tained in the doc­u­ment,” PONI said in a state­ment.

It added: “The Office has tak­en imme­di­ate action to mit­i­gate the breach, includ­ing con­tact­ing those who received the doc­u­ment in error.

“To date, 12 of the 22 indi­vid­u­als have con­firmed that they have delet­ed the email and asso­ci­at­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion.”