ICO Renewals

If you receive a letter from the ICO regarding renewal, please respond as this is a genuine requirement, not a scam. The ICO are emailing companies six weeks before their fee expires. Every organisation or sole trader who processes personal information needs to pay a data protection fee to the ICO, unless they are exempt.

Personal information is “any detail about a living individual that can be used on its own or with other data to identify them”. Processing this information refers to how the data is obtained, recorded, stored, updated and shared. Personal information also includes CCTV recordings made on business premises.

If you’ve received the renewal letter, you must have registered previously so you need to pay your fee now. The cost of your data protection fee depends on your size and turnover. There are three tiers of fee ranging from £40 and £2,900, but for most organisations it will be £40 or £60. The payment is not subject to VAT.

The fee may be paid online where there is also information for other payment methods:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-fee/renew/

You can contact the ICO on 0303 123 1113, via email or via live chat. Details are here:

https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/