Welcome to the UKGI weekly regulation update service for Aviva ABC brokers

Context

Following its recent announcement that it is consulting on final guidance about amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 (DUAA), the ICO has published details of a further Consultation on draft changes to how it handles data protection complaints.   If people bring complaints to the ICO, it wants to provide the most effective service given the finite resources it has. That means looking at its own approach to handling complaints.

Key points to note and next actions

• People have a statutory right to lodge a data protection complaint with the ICO if they think there has been an infringement of their data protection rights under the UK GDPR.
• The Consultation sets out The ICO’s proposed framework to assess and determine the extent to which it is appropriate to investigate each complaint.
• The ICO is proposing changes to its processes to better support people who have experienced harm, and focus its resources on those cases where it can have the biggest impact. Organisations will also benefit from reduced routine engagement on lower-risk cases, enabling them to focus on the most significant concerns.
• The ICO will use draft framework to determine the extent to which it is appropriate to investigate each complaint. It is also proposing new reporting mechanisms to enable it to monitor complaint volumes across specific organisations and sectors.
• In addition to the Consultation document and the draft framework, the suite of documents also includes a proposed ‘scale of harm’, a draft impact assessment and an equality impact assessment.
• The ICO invites responses to the Consultation to, which can be responded to via the version that appears in its survey on Citizen Space.  The consultation will remain open until Friday 31^st October 2025.