Former customers of an exclusive seafront hotel could be contacted to inform them their personal details were left in a skip outside the building.

Storage boxes containing the details of thousands of guests of Brighton's famous Grand Hotel were discovered by a passer-by.

The boxes contained cards which had been filled in by guests arriving at the hotel.

The information included credit card details, addresses, telephone numbers and signatures.

It is believed the documents, from the years 1998 to 2000, may include names of famous guests, including politicians.

Now the hotel is considering contacting each individual to explain what happened.

All the documents were recovered after the mistake was discovered by web designer Charles Crammond, from Brighton, who spotted the cards blowing around in Russell Road behind The Grand.

The embarrassed hotel has since apologised and launched an investigation into why the cards were not disposed of in the usual way.

Confidential files are normally bagged by the hotel and picked up by a security company, which destroys them.

The hotel has made an inventory of all the guests affected by the indiscretion and has had the documents destroyed.

It is now deciding what to do next and whether each individual needs to be informed.

After stumbling across the documents, Mr Crammond tried to inform hotel staff immediately but found they were uninterested.

He removed some of the boxes and has now handed them to the hotel's management.

A spokeswoman for the hotel said all staff had since been spoken to about security policies.

She said: "We don't want these getting into the wrong hands."

The incident has raised fears about the growing crimes of fraud and identity theft, which affect 120,000 people every year in the UK.

The Information Commissioner's Office said the hotel may have breached the Data Protection Act by wrongly disposing of the cards.