The 2020 ICO Practitioner Award for Excellence in Data Protection was awarded to Barry Moult, Information Governance and Privacy Consultant, and former Head of Information Governance and Health Records at the Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust. Recently retired from his role at Colchester, which he held from 2014 to 2018, Barry is now utilising his decades-long experience in the NHS as a private consultant, delivering data protection training, audit, gap analysis, breach investigations, and mentorship for Information Governance (IG) professionals for the health sector.

Barry’s career path is an interesting one. He says that he became involved in data protection by accident: “Back in the early 1970 I joined the Royal Air Force and trained as a nurse and kept my nurse registration for most of the time until 2016. In 1997 I was working part time for a local council and part-time in nursing. The role in the council was in the training department, where I was asked to deliver some training on data protection. I knew nothing about it, but I read up and delivered the training, and there started my career journey in data protection. In 2000 a part-time post of Data Protection Officer came up in the hospital where I was working. In 2003 the post became full time, which I took but continued nursing in the evenings and weekends.”