TEN Southampton families have complained to the Conservative Party about their personal information being shared with a UKIP candidate before the General Election.

As revealed by the Daily Echo in May, police are looking into claims recently-elected Tory Itchen MP Royston Smith gave information to Kim Rose to help him beat his Labour rival.

And now some of the people whose names and addresses are contained in a 'dossier' Mr Rose claims he was given by Mr Smith have lodged official complaints with the Conservative Party.

Mr Smith has denied handing over the information for hundreds of residents to Mr Rose but has admitted giving him certain other information that is publicly accessible.

He also denied creating an election leaflet for Mr Rose, which he rejected over fears it would “incite racial tension”, but the Conservative Party has not denied that someone involved in Mr Smith’s campaign created it.

Mr Rose, who has Jewish ancestry and is a jeweller, also criticised the use of a picture of Oliver Twist character Fagin with a box of jewels on the leaflet as a “joke in bad taste”.

He claims Mr Smith physically gave him the leaflet and 'dossier' of information which also features maps of certain areas with large numbers of Labour voters believed to be thinking of switching to UKIP.

It is claimed that Mr Smith put together the information to help Mr Rose target up to 6,000 Labour voters in the constituency who were thinking about voting for UKIP.

Mr Smith won the Itchen election with a majority of 2,316 votes over Labour’s Rowenna Davis, while Mr Rose won 6,010 votes.

Mr Smith confirmed through the Conservative Party that he did give Mr Rose certain information on the number of votes registered by parties in various city wards in previous elections, that is publicly accessible.

The Daily Echo can now report that ten families whose names appear on a list of names and addresses that Mr Rose says he was handed by Mr Smith have written letters of complaint to Tory party chairman Andrew Feldman.

They say that data protection laws were breached when their names and addresses was handed over It is understood 18 more families are considering complaints to the party.

In the letter sent to the party headquarters the residents say they are “extremely upset” that their “personal information and voting intention has been used in this way for political gain”.

The party has 28 days to respond and if that is not deemed as “satisfactory” then the complainants will raise the issue with the Information Commission, which may then decide to take action.

A Conservative Party spokesman confirmed that the party had received the letters of complaint, and said an investigation into the release of the information was still “ongoing”.

A spokesman for Hampshire Constabulary said the complaints against Mr Smith were still being looked into.