A while ago I wrote a piece on the Mishcon de Reya website pointing out that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had silently changed its guidance on how to calculate the “one month” timescale for responding to a subject access request under the General Data Protection Regulation (or “GDPR” – which is now domestic law in the form of the amended retained version of the GDPR, aka “UK GDPR”).
The nub of that piece was that the ICO (following the legal precedents) was now saying that “You should calculate the time limit from the day you receive the request“. Which was a change from the previous position that “You should calculate the time limit from the day after you receive the request “.
I have noticed, however, that, although the ICO website, in its UK GDPR guidance, maintains that the clock starts from the date of receipt, the guidance on “Law Enforcement Processing” (which relates to processing of personal data by competent authorities for law enforcement purposes under part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA), which implemented the Law Enforcement Directive) states that the time should be calculated
from the first day after the request was received
It’s not inconceivable (in fact I am given to understand it is relatively common) that a some controllers might receive a subject access request (or other data subject request) which must be dealt with under both the UK GDPR and the Law Enforcement Processing provisions (police forces are a good example of this). The ICO’s position means that the controller must calculate the response time as starting, on the one hand, on the date of receipt, and, on the other hand, on the day after the date of receipt.
And if all of this sounds a bit silly, and inconsequential, I would argue that it is certainly the former, but not necessarily the latter: failure to comply within a statutory timescale is a breach of a statutory duty, and therefore actionable, at least in principle. If the ICO really does believe that the timescale works differently under different legal schemes, then how, for instance can it properly determine (as it must, when required to) under Articles 57(1)(f) and 77(1) of the UK GDPR, or section 51(2) of the DPA, whether there has been a statutory infringement?
Statutory infringements are, after all, potentially actionable (in this instance either with regulatory action or private action by data subjects) – the ICO maintains a database of complaint cases and publishes some of this (albeit almost two years in arrears), and also uses (or may use) it to identify trends. If ICO finds that a controller has made a statutory infringement, that is a finding of potential significance: if that same finding is based on an unclear, and internally contradictory, interpretation of a key aspect of the law, then it is unlikely to be fair, and unlikely to be lawful.
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
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