TO paraphrase the novelist and poet Oscar Wilde, to lose one laptop may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose 13 laptops, three PCs and a Blackberry looks like carelessness.

In fact, it is nothing short of a scandal that over a period of two and a half years, Devon County Council has lost a raft of sensitive information, possibly relating to you or someone you know.

Incredibly, in the majority of cases, the authority does not even know what information it has lost! The council will argue that the laptops were stolen and not casually lost.

However, that will cut little ice with those whose personal details could be anywhere.

When the Echo challenged the authority about its shocking performance, a spokesman told us: "We have very clear staff guidance that potentially sensitive information should not be stored on portable devices such as laptops..."

Now let's look at the facts again: 13 laptops have gone missing over a two and a half year period and almost half contained sensitive information. Either the guidance is not very clear at all or it is being blatantly ignored. You can't have it both ways.

The council also tells us it is "rolling out a programme to install encryption software on all laptops and other portable devices across the whole organisation, and this will make it impossible for unauthorised people to access the data".

Hang on, should that not have happened after the first incident?

For an authority that has lofty ambitions to provide all council services in Devon, these revelations are not only a major embarrassment, they are also unlikely to inspire confidence among those whose money it hopes to spend.