DOCUMENTS containing personal information about dozens of people have been found dumped outside an old council building in Bournemouth town centre.

Bournemouth council has been accused of negligence after the papers - which relate to more than 70 people who married in the town in 2002 and 2003 - were discovered outside the old Register Office on Old Christchurch Road.

They include names, addresses, telephone numbers, fathers' names, occupations, ethnic origin and, in some cases, divorce papers and photocopied pages of passports with photographs on them.

Passers-by found them strewn on the floor in the back porch of the boarded-up building, surrounded by dead leaves and beer cans.

The building has been lying empty for 20 months.

Jonathan Bamford, assistant commissioner for the Information Commissioner's Office - appointed by the Crown to oversee the Data Protection Act and protect personal information - said: "It would appear that Bournemouth Borough Council has been negligent in safely disposing of documents which contain important personal information about individuals.

"Where personal information isn't disposed of securely, there's a risk it can fall into the hands of criminals."

He added that if the records were also held electronically, it is likely the council has breached the Data Protection Act 1998 - the act does not generally cover information on paper.

"The Information Commissioner's Office takes breaches of people's privacy very seriously and we'll be contacting the council about this," he said.

Mike Edwards, head of public protection, said: "We're extremely concerned to learn that documents of this nature have been found at the former Register Office.

"This building was closed in April 2004 and it is no longer used or owned by the council.

"We are investigating this situation as a matter of urgency to establish how these documents came to be there. Officers have been sent to recover any of the remaining documents."