Confidential documents giving details of youngsters using, and in the care of Swindon Borough Council’s children’s services were left lying around available for anyone to find.

They were only discovered when the users of Toothill Farm, which used to be offices of the children’s services department, decided to do some tidying up.

Mavis Read is the secretary of the youth club which now uses the building in Bodium Drive. She said: “All the youth group’s documentation is in a downstairs office under lock and key. There’s a room upstairs which is full of all sorts of things, including about four or five artificial Christmas trees. Two of us decided to clear it out and tidy it up, and in the room there were al these documents, They were just scattered about, like the place had suddenly been abandoned.”

Looking through the material Mavis saw that there were documents with children’s names on and some very sensitive information. She said: “There was one folder about LGBT children, one about NEET, one about ‘not easy to reach’ children.”

“It’s quite shocking this sort of stuff should have been left just lying around in a public building.”

Mavis called the local borough councillor Stephanie Exell, who took possession of the documents, which filled a cardboard box, as well as cassettes and USB drives.

Coun Exell said: “I was very concerned to see the document. I did not read them – the worry is that these documents contain very personal information about real people and their lives. The effect on those people if this information had got out could have been very serious, that is my main concern.”

A Swindon Borough Council spokesman said: “Our Children’s Services team have not used Toothill Farm for several years so we are extremely concerned these documents were left in this way. We have a very clear policy on how to manage personal and confidential information and we have engaged and trained staff extensively on this issue.

“We are investigating what happened in this case. We would like to thank the individuals for returning the material to us and for bringing the matter to our attention.”