A 'deeply alarming' security breach has seen sensitive British army documents left strewn across a residential street. Names, ranks, shift patterns, rotas of soldiers, as well as details of policy and procedure, were left for anyone to see in a pile of papers spilling out of a burst black bin bag on a road in Newcastle.

The BBC reports the documents were discovered on March 16 by a football fan walking in the Scotswood area of the city. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said it was looking into the apparent breach "urgently" and an investigation has been launched. Helen Maguire, a defence spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, told Express.co.uk: "This breach of MoD security is deeply alarming.

"Sensitive personnel and weapons information should be kept safely behind closed doors - not strewn across the streets to potentially fall into the wrong hands. It’s been a worrying week for national security across the globe.

"The Department has serious questions to answer about how these classified papers ended up in a bin bag."

The papers appear to be connected to British Army regiments and barracks at Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire.

Cyber secuity expert Gary Hibberd, co-founder of Consultants Like Us, told Express.co.uk: “When an organisation of any kind is looking to destroy physical media they should take care it is destroyed in an appropriate manner.

“They should have been shredded or incinerated. Shift patterns and rotas were on there, and in some of the documentation it had armoury details in terms of who had been issued with a rifle.

“The papers also named individuals, and we know those individuals could have been put at risk, and the documents also had deployment details on there.

“By quite literally piecing these bits of paper together you can trace movements to and from the barracks themselves, along with learning about policy and procedures, it which would give someone inside knowledge.”

The BBC said the stash of military documents was handed to Northumbria Police by football fan Mike Gibbard, who found the papers on his way to a fanzone showing the Newcastle United versus Liverpool Carabao Cup Final on Sunday March 16.

A spokesperson for Northumbria Police said the force had "received a report that potentially confidential documents had been found on Railway Street in the Scotswood area of Newcastle".

They added: "The documents have now been handed to the Ministry of Defence."

An MoD spokesperson said: "We are looking into this urgently and the matter is the subject of an ongoing internal investigation."