Council chiefs have apologised after hundreds of email addresses of parents were shared in error.

Dorset County Council accidentally shared a total of 866 email addresses of parents of children from 10 Dorset schools.

The council had sent a separate email to 10 groups of school parents from the schools, each of which contained the email addresses of all the other parents the message had been sent to.

In the case of one of the schools affected, Purbeck School, the relevant email was sent to 95 parents, so each parent could see the email addresses of the other 94 parents.

The other nine schools from which parents were affected were Dorchester Middle, Beaminster, Gillingham, Lytchett Minster, Blandford, Ferndown Upper, Gryphon, Queen Elizabeth’s and Allenbourn, Wimborne.

According to a spokesman for Dorset County Council, the cause of the error was that, in each of the 10 messages sent, the parents’ email addresses in the email were included in the “To:” field of the email rather than the “BCC:” field.

This meant that each parent’s email address could be seen by the other recipients.

However, no other personal information of the parents was shared in the incidents.

A Dorset County Council spokesman said: “We sincerely apologise to parents whose email addresses were shared in error.

“We immediately attempted to recall the email and apologised to the recipients. We have reported the incident to our data protection officer who will investigate it as soon as possible.”

Keith Hales, headteacher of Beaminster School, said: “I think the important thing is they have been honest. They have put their hand up and said they made a mistake.”

He said that he had asked the council to make sure to look into why it happened.

Mr Hales added: “In the past they have always been very good with data protection and they have made a genuine error. They have apologised and I am happy they will put everything in place ready for next time.”

Parents at Beaminster were apparently very understanding when they heard about the error which occurred.

Mr Hales said: “It was not a great situation but they understand why this has happened.”

He added: “We have only had one parent who has been in contact with the school and they were passed onto the county council and they responded very quickly.”