The council has apologised to a Wokingham family after it sent confidential information about a sexual assault survivor to her attacker in September last year, despite a lifetime ban on contact between them being in place.

Last month a News investigation exposed the council’s failings after the mother of the family said the effects of the authority’s actions had been “life-changing”.

In a statement, executive member for children’s services at WBC, Cllr Pauline Helliar-Symons, said: “I apologise unreservedly on behalf of the council to this family for the distress we have caused them.

“We have fully accepted the Ombudsman’s report and are implementing its recommendations. We have put additional measures in place in our record keeping and internal reporting as well as introducing mandatory training for staff handling sensitive and personal information.

“In addition, we have commissioned an independent review to see if there are any other actions that required.”

WBC had refused to be drawn on the matter last year because a report from the Local government ombudsman (LGO) investigating the matter was still on-going.

The report has now been finalised and it outlines how a council worker sent confidential information about a sexual assault survivor to her attacker despite there being a lifetime ban on contact with her.

It was found that the officer then re-sent the information in a redacted format after being alerted to their mistake, which the watchdog found as being another instance of error.

The breach came after a string of failings from Wokingham Borough Council (WBC), in which the authority was found to have failed to offer “sufficient help and support” to the survivor before and after the offender was convicted in 2014.

The mother of the family told the News: “Three years ago the council promised me in person, in writing and following a police partnership review they would carry out more training and improve their record keeping and that ‘learnings’ were taken from their mistakes.

“However they failed to implement any of that and my family had to endure more failings which caused huge distress and I had to incur legal costs to put right. The council went on to commit a serious data breach and the LGO has now finally given a much clearer directive on remedial action that must be done and timeline limit for implementation.

“The last two directors of Wokingham Children’s Services were not members of the HCPC (The Health and Care Professions Council) who have a lot of accountability powers, however I understand Ms Cammiss (the council’s new director of children’s services) is a member which is positive.”

The survivor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, first reported “behaviour that suggested potential physical and emotional abuse” by the offender in June 2011.

In 2014, the offender was convicted of sexual assault and was jailed for two years.

WBC were directed to pay the mother £11,825 in legal fees after an independent investigator followed up on complaints made by the mother regarding the council’s handling of the allegations.

Upon his conviction, it was ordered that the offender should have a lifetime ban on contact with the survivor and that he could not have any unsupervised contact with any female under the age of 16 for at least five years.