Information Commissioners Letters - have you received yours yet?

We have received several enquiries from clients who have received a data protection fee warning letter, asking if these letters are genuine. The letters ARE real and are part of a campaign, launched recently by the Information Commissioners Office, where they are writing to every company throughout 2020.

What’s the fee?

Under the DPA 2018, all businesses that process personal data e.g. run a payroll and/or use CCTV for crime prevention purposes must pay the data protection fee on an annual basis, unless they are exempt. There is no small business exemption and the fee ranges from ￡40, ￡60 and ￡2,900, depending on size and turnover. Note the fee is reduced by ￡5 if you arrange to pay by direct debit.

What do I need to do?

If you have already registered with the ICO and are paying a fee, you don’t need to do anything. However, if you have not registered and should have been paying an annual fee, then the advice would be to register ASAP, otherwise, you could be open to a ￡4,000 fine!

I think I am exempt…

You can go online and complete the ICO’s simple self-assessment checker to see if you are exempt. Unfortunately, there is no option to register as such online, so an option would be to use their chatbot app to register a conversation where you confirm the exemption. Do keep a copy of the “chat” for your records.

Do be aware that there are companies charging ￡100 plus the registration fee to deal with your registration, but as the registration itself only takes 10 minutes, you would be well worth doing yourself.

Clare Elsby