Data protection fee

[Suff]

My limited company received a hassling letter from the ICO which I received yesterday. It told me that I had to "pay a fee" to the ICO. After having TOLD me I had to pay a fee, it then stated, "unless you are exempt". Nice.

First thing I did was look for a scam. Nope, it's not a scam. Yes, if you run a business and process personal information, or, get this, run a cctv camera for security purposes, you have to register with the ICO and pay a fee.

I went onto the site to check whether I was exempt or not. Of course I'm exempt, I hold a virtual office, for which I pay a reasonable sum each year, I don't run a business premise and I process nobodies data, not even the Director. I know his data, unsurprisingly, as it is my own.

Thus armed I went to the ICO site and clicked on their No Pay link. where I was invited to check a box to tell them I "knew" I was not liable. Then they asked me to click a radio button to say I'd taken their test. Which I did. I filled out all the other stuff, company number, my business contact details, etc, then clicked to submit.

But no!

I have to tell them the nature of the business and why I "believed" I was exempt.

At this point Suff got on his high horse. Went to his companies house page for his company, copied the specific text which denotes the "purpose" for the business and told them that if they wanted to know the purpose of my business they could damned well look it up in the publicly available information on the CH website. Given that they had already contacted me using my CH number, I reiterated that they had all the requisite information to know what my business purpose was.

As for "why" I believed myself to be exempt? Erm, because I filled out their test form and the ICO, Themselves, told me I was exempt. I suggested that they urgently revise this form, because if they didn't know which syllable in no actually meant NO, it was their problem, not mine.

Of course I know why I received this request. I changed my company from pure 62020 - Information technology consultancy activities to

47910 - Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet
62020 - Information technology consultancy activities
6090 - Other service activities not elsewhere classified

Which would lead them to assume I collect and process data from people. In fact I did this in case covid trashed my job prospects and I needed to use the company to do other kinds of business. I have not, so far, used the other categories. However they are there in case I need them.

It appears that the ICO is now self funding from the business in this country. Just one more bit of legislative BS that we have to deal with.

[Workingman]

What do you expect? You live in a bureaucratic democracy and upon you tabs have to be kept and maintained. You cannot register a company as a benign entity and then suddenly change it without all the whys and wherefores being known.... and that costs money, so you pay.

Look, you are the one making the changes, not us. If only you had left things be you would not have these problems. We do trust you and we do sympathise, but there others out there who do not play the game so everyone gets punished - it's the new way.

Did we mention that by going that way we make more money.

Yours, ICO.

[Suff]

Did we mention that by going that way we make more money.

Yours, ICO.

Indeed. And I intend to make them work for it....

[Workingman]

Suff, the bureaucracy is everywhere.

My flat is a 1920s - mid 30s affair, designed and built for those times. My landlord, a property solicitor, wanted to repurpose it from a two bed flat of the 1930s to a one bed more contemporary accommodation fit for the 21st century, but the hoops, oh the hoops!

The wonks from the council did not like it as they would lose some council tax with the change so they turned up with the original plans, standing orders, clipboards and laser measuring kits and so on. Unfortunately for them she had todays rules and regs and a long list of changes already in place that did not conform to the original specs - central heating, double glazing, power shower, low flush cistern, electric cooker, telephones, TVs, broadband - you get the drift; these they had allowed. And boy did they not like it when she pointed out all the cars parked on the roads because nobody has any off-road parking. It wasn't necessary when the flats were built as nobody in the lower classes owned a car! Sorting that is doable but would have cost them a bomb!

She did win, after threatening court action, so there is hope.