These days, privacy is more important than ever. Many of us know someone who has fallen victim to identity theft. It is frightening how thieves can assemble the means, with just a few key personal details, to fraudulently apply for credit, buy goods or plunder bank accounts.

So it is especially disturbing to hear that records of patients at a former care home have not only been lying around in the disused building for several years, but have been scattered around the local neighbourhood by vandals.

These written records – and even photographs – are not just grist to the mill of identity thieves, they are also of an extremely personal nature and could easily contain information that the families of those former residents would not want to be released in this manner.

It’s frightening to think what use an unscrupulous individual or gang could have put this information to. But it also raises more pertinent questions about why these records were left to the mercy of burglars in the first place.

Surely it is in the remit of the Care Quality Commission, which regulates care for older people, to impose a stricter regime on the companies which operate care homes when it comes to keeping – and disposing of – records.

When a care home closes down, there must be some mechanism in which sensitive information can be forwarded to the CQC or other body or, indeed, under the Data Protection Act, returned to the families of the individuals it relates to.

For such records to be left abandoned for three years in a disused building smacks of a huge failing in the system for ensuring confidentiality is maintained for care home clients.