ICO Service adjustments: customers

The request was refused by Information Commissioner's Office.

Dear Information Commissioner's Office,

The Equality Act 2010 requires the ICO to provide reasonable adjustments for people with a disability, defined by the Act to include those who have a mental impairment (for example, those with autism and/or dyslexia).

The operating procedure entitled “ICO Service adjustments: customers” states that “[a]greeing adjustments to our services requires… judgment… guiding principles and… precedent”.

Request 1:

Please confirm whether there is any precedent for accepting complaints outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline for accepting complaints, where:

a) an individual with a mental impairment receives written information from an organisation (for example, an organisation writes to an individual with a mental impairment to inform that individual that the organisation has unlawfully destroyed their personal data); and

b) some years later, the individual receives support and learns that they have grounds for a complaint to the ICO (for example, an “advocacy worker” reviews the individual’s correspondence and emails, and ascertains that the individual has grounds for a complaint to the ICO).

Request 2:

Please confirm whether there is any precedent for agreeing to accept a complaint which falls 1 year outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline for accepting complaints, as a reasonable adjustment.

Request 3:

Please confirm whether there is any precedent for agreeing to accept a complaint which falls 2 years outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline for accepting complaints, as a reasonable adjustment.

Request 4:

Please confirm whether there is any precedent for agreeing to accept a complaint which falls 3 years outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline for accepting complaints, as a reasonable adjustment.

Yours faithfully,

K McClelland

icoaccessinformation, Information Commissioner's Office

Thank you for contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office. We confirm
that we have received your correspondence.

If you have made a request for information held by the ICO we will contact
you as soon as possible if we need any further information to enable us to
answer your request. If we don't need any further information we will
respond to you within our published, and statutory, service levels. For
more information please visit:

[1]https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-inf...

If you have raised a new information rights concern - we aim to send you
an initial response and case reference number within 30 days.

If you are concerned about the way an organisation is handling your
personal information, we will not usually look into it unless you have
raised it with the organisation first. For more information please see our
webpage ‘raising a concern with an organisation’ (go to our homepage and
follow the link ‘for the public’). You can also call the number below.

If you have requested advice - we aim to respond within 14 days. 

If your correspondence relates to an existing case - we will add it to
your case and consider it on allocation to a case officer.

Copied correspondence - we do not respond to correspondence that has been
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For more information about our services, please see our webpage ‘Service
standards and what to expect' (go to our homepage and follow the links for
‘Report a concern’ and ‘Service standards and what to expect'). You can
also call the number below.

For information about what we do with personal data see our [2]privacy
notice.

If there is anything you would like to discuss with us, please call our
helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Yours sincerely

The Information Commissioner’s Office

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References

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ICO Casework, Information Commissioner's Office

5 May 2022

Case Reference: IC-167517-Q7B0

Dear K McClelland,

Thank you for your email of 25 April 2022.

Within your email you made a request for information. This has been
handled by the ICO’s Information Access Team under the provisions of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the FOIA).

This legislation entitles a requester to recorded information held by a
public authority, unless an appropriate exemption applies. 

Request

In your email you asked for:

“ The operating procedure entitled “ICO Service adjustments: customers”
states that “[a]greeing adjustments to our services requires… judgment…
guiding principles and… precedent”.

Request 1:
Please confirm whether there is any precedent for accepting complaints
outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline for accepting complaints,
where:
a) an individual with a mental impairment receives written information
from an organisation (for example, an organisation writes to an individual
with a mental impairment to inform that individual that the organisation
has unlawfully destroyed their personal data); and
b) some years later, the individual receives support and learns that they
have grounds for a complaint to the ICO (for example, an “advocacy worker”
reviews the individual’s correspondence and emails, and ascertains that
the individual has grounds for a complaint to the ICO).

Request 2:
Please confirm whether there is any precedent for agreeing to accept a
complaint which falls 1 year outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline
for accepting complaints, as a reasonable adjustment.

Request 3:
Please confirm whether there is any precedent for agreeing to accept a
complaint which falls 2 years outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline
for accepting complaints, as a reasonable adjustment.

Request 4:
Please confirm whether there is any precedent for agreeing to accept a
complaint which falls 3 years outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline
for accepting complaints, as a reasonable adjustment.”

Response
It is not possible to confirm the extent to which we hold information
falling within the scope of your request. This is because conducting the
relevant searches would breach the cost limit envisaged by section 12 of
the FOIA. Section 12(2) of the FOIA states that a public authority is not
obliged to confirm or deny if requested information is held if the
estimated cost of establishing this would exceed the appropriate cost
limit.

I have provided some more detail about why this is the case in this
instance below, along with some advice about how a refreshed request, with
a more narrow scope, may elicit information which is of interest to you.
FOIA section 12

Section 12 of the FOIA makes clear that a public authority is not obliged
to comply with an FOIA request if the authority estimates that the cost of
complying with the request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’.

The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and
Fees) Regulations 2004 stipulates that the ‘appropriate limit’ for the ICO
is £450. We have determined that £450 would equate to 18 hours work.

Under data protection legislation, individuals have the right to lodge a
complaint with the ICO as the relevant supervisory authority in the UK.
The details of these complaints, along with the details of thousands of
other enquiries and concerns regarding the other laws we oversee, are
processed within a casework management system.

An electronic record is created for every case, every complainant and
every ‘complained about’ organisation. This is because part of our role is
to improve the information rights practices of organisations by gathering
and dealing with concerns raised by members of the public.

The system allows us to search for the cases we have dealt with in a
number of different ways, such as by the unique reference number the case
was given, the name and address of the person who contacted us and the
name of the body that has been complained about. We can also search for
cases on the basis of the broad nature of the complaint, such as that it
relates to subject access.

However, it is not possible to search for complaint cases which may have
been worked on outside of the ICO’s usual 3-month deadline for accepting
complaints.

This is not information we would require for our business needs. As such,
to establish the information that we hold and which falls within the scope
of request would require a manual search at the correspondence on
thousands of cases.

According to [1]our latest Annual Report we have received 36,607 data
protection complaints just in 2020/21. Assuming that each search would
take approximately a minute to complete – and it is certain that some
searches would take much longer than that – this would equate to over 610
hours’ worth of searching. This is in excess of the 18 hours which would
accrue a charge of £450 or less, triggering the provisions of section 12
of the FOIA.

Advice and assistance
While conducing searches for information in scope of your request, I also
consulted with our Public Advice and Data Protection Complaints Department
who deal with data protection complaints. In response to this
consultation, I was advised that they don’t hold records or internal
guidance related to any precedent regarding the scenarios in your request.

Nevertheless, you may wish to have a look at [2]our Service Charter and
[3]Service Charter Policy as they may provide some valuable information to
you.

In relation to narrowing the scope of your request, you may wish to
consider asking us to look at data protection complaints received at a
specific time period or in relation to a specific organisation.

I should also advise that we could not guarantee the accuracy of the
results provided following a manual search.

Consideration can also be given as to whether the value to the public of
the information derived from such searches is proportionate to the effort
to locate it, particularly given the issues regarding accuracy described
above.
This concludes our response to your request. I hope the information
provided is helpful.

Next steps

If you are dissatisfied with this response and wish to request a review of
our decision or make a complaint about how your request has been handled
you can write to the Information Access Team at the address below or
e-mail [4][ICO request email].

A request for internal review should be submitted to us within 40 working
days of receipt by you of this response. Any such request received after
this time will only be considered at the discretion of the Commissioner.

If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right
of appeal to this office in our capacity as the statutory complaint
handler under the legislation. To make such an application, please write
to our FOI Complaints & Appeals Department at the address below or visit
our website if you wish to make a complaint under the Freedom of
Information Act.

A copy of our review procedure can be accessed from our website [5]here.

Your rights

Our [6]privacy notice explains what we do with the personal data you
provide to us and what your rights are, with a specific entry, for
example, for [7]an information requester. Our retention policy can be
found [8]here.

Yours sincerely,

Stilyana Stoyanova
Lead Information Access Officer
Information Commissioner's Office

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
ico.org.uk twitter.com/iconews
Please consider the environment before printing this email.

For information about what we do with personal data see our privacy notice
at [9]www.ico.org.uk/privacy-notice.

References

Visible links
1. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/d...
2. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/s...
3. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/s...
4. mailto:[ICO request email]
5. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
6. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice/
7. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice...
8. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
9. http://www.ico.org.uk/privacy-notice