ICO publishes its annual report for 2014/15

There was an 11% increase in concerns relating to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation (PECR) over the past year. The majority of complaints relating to automated telesales calls, closely followed live telesales and then spam texts. By topic the main concerns were nuisance calls and spam texts relating to boilers, accident claims and solar panels.

The increase in complaints is not good news for the telemarketing industry as the behaviour of rogue companies tarnishes the reputation of legitimate firms. However, the removal in April of the obligation to prove substantial harm or distress by the government is helping the ICO prosecute offenders. Christopher Graham, head of the ICO, recognises this in his executive summary.

Christopher Graham said;

“We were anyway tackling a record number of complaints under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation, but the change in the law will help us nail more of these merchants of menace”

The DMA fully supports the ICO approach with its emphasis of education to change behaviour and dealing out monetary penalties to the worst offenders. For example, the ICO conducted 58 advisory visits for SMEs giving data protection advice, helping businesses to be compliant. The ICO also setup regional workshops where over 1,000 practitioners attended. The workshops focussed on practical exercises equipping people with necessary knowledge to improve their business practices.

To summarise, in 2014/15 the ICO received 14,268 data protection concerns; issued £1,078,500 worth of civil monetary penalties, including £386,000 to companies behind nuisance calls or texts; answered 195,431 helpline calls; received 4.9m visits to our website; handled over 180,000 concerns about nuisance calls and texts; conducted 41 audits of data controllers; and responded to 1,177 freedom of information requests.

The ICO have maintained their pragmatic approach to data protection and continue to be an effective voice in Europe arguing against turning national data protection authorities into a tick box policeman. The report illustrates just how effective the ICO has been and with the changes to the PECR the ICO has the necessary tools to be even more effective in the coming year.

You can read the full report here.