In November 2018 the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’) issued over 100 monetary penalties to organisations that had not paid the annual data protection fee.
16 of those 100 organisations were issued with a penalty of £4,000. In March this year, Farrow and Ball Limited sought to dismiss their £4,000 fine for non-payment of the fee by making an application to the First Tier Tribunal, General Regulatory Chamber. Farrow and Ball appealed on the basis that the non-payment was “an innocent mistake” and the person responsible for handling data protection related queries was on holiday at the time and requested that the Tribunal waive the penalty. The appeal was dismissed by the Tribunal after concluding that Farrow and Ball had no reasonable excuse for its failure to comply with the Regulations. The message is therefore a clear one: there is no reasonable excuse not to pay your data protection fee.
The ICO is encouraging businesses to use their brief self assessment test to check whether or not they are paying the correct level of fee. For more information, please visit. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-fee/self-assessment/.