Unprecedented Year for the ICO Post-GDPR

19/08/2019

The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has released their annual report following a year that saw the General Data Protection Regulation - better known as GDPR - come into full effect.

Elizabeth Denham CBE, the UK Information Commissioner said:

“The ICO has covered an enormous amount of ground over the last year - from the introduction of a new data protection law, to our calls to change the freedom of information law, from record-setting fines to a record number of people raising data protection concerns.

“The biggest moment of the year was the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force. This saw people wake up to the potential of their personal data, leading to greater awareness of the role of the regulator when their data rights aren’t being respected. The doubling of concerns raised with our office reflects that.”

The ICO received over 41,000 complaints in 2018/2019, almost double from the previous year which saw 21,000 complaints made. They also used their new powers of investigation 11 times to issue assessment notices while looking into data analytics used by credit reference agencies, political purposes and data brokers to name a few. The ICO also issued warnings and reprimands across many sectors including education, retail, finance, health care and central government, and the record for the amount of monetary penalties was broken in 2018/19 too.

Adhering to GDPR is crucial and these figures show that the ICO are actively following up on any reports and are acting upon them.