Data Protection Act Subject Access Request - Excessive Photocopy charges?

jonnyd281

What about the costs of someone going to the records store, finding your file, removing your file, taking it to the copier and copying it, then returning the file to the record store and replacing the file in the correct place?

damienuk

Yep. £10 access request + £10 admin fee. But I'd really like to move away from the details of the case I outlined as it doesn't really ask me to put the question across which I actually have/had. Posts 9 and 11 are what I'd most appreciate people's comments about

Valli

You want to see what solicitors charge for photocopying Form E ...

damienuk

Yes, of course. But a solicitors is a commercial enterprise aiming to make a profit from their services, including photocopying

LinasPilibaitisisbatman

a few points.

Commercial rates are not appropiate here. I doubt the secretary dumped your records in her car and drove about until she found a printer.

Secondly I doubt a GP would have a state of the art photocopier etc so the prices you quote are irrelevent. I know of many companies who pay 17p a copy to companies on machines they own for maintainance etc.

Your request put them to great inconvenience and I think an aspect of profit is allowed in this sort of request as it is a private service.

In all honesty 35p a page is not unreasonable at all

Quoting Data protection prices is irrelevent as this isnt what you requested.

olly300

Do you know the office of the information commissioner has a helpline. Google it. You can phone it and ask them.

funguy

The cost covers photocopying time, admin time (which involves GP, practice manager and admin staff due to legalities), also the notes are likely to be stored in a dark corner/attic/basement due to the use of computers so need to be retrieved.
I dont believe in a maximum charge for these things as some people may have 100s of pages of double sided notes and hospital letters. This leads to a big financial cost for some requests which is unfair on any business!. If people dont like the charges or disagree with them (i appreciate this is NOT the OPs position) then dont request them.

vikingaero

Do you really believe that a GPs surgery has a super advanced photocopier which can handle all the various and differing sizes of medical notes? I doubt that they were able to photocopy all the records using a machine and had to do so manually. 165 odd sheets of photocopy will take the medical secretary quite a long time to do and then collate and reassemble the medical file.

I would argue that the £50 max fee is more than reasonable and you got away lightly.

debsy42

I used to do the photocopying of records and believe me what a horrible tedious job it was, if it was a really big set of notes it could take most of the morning. You have to untag all the notes, photocopy, refold and retag them all again. I feel the £50 fee is reasonable....

vikingaero

damienuk wrote: »

You don't seem to recognise that I've already stated contrary to this, and also commercial photocopying services (i.e. which make a profit from the photocopying) charge 5-10p/sheet, therefore toner + paper + other costs such as purchase/maintenance of the copier MUST be less than this so that their is a profit at those prices!

As I tried to explain in my last post, I'm not really interested that interested in whether 35p/sheet is or is not excessive at this stage.

I just want to understand if there's anything preventing abuse of this legislation such as charging £50 purely because it's the max. possible charge: even if the full total, complete, and absolute costs incurred were 1p for instance...

Is there legislation protecting against this? Anyone know?

I would argue that the legislation IS protecting you. The £2 request for a file from Credit Reference Agencies used to be £1 and even at £2 for computerised records is a bargain. If anything the law is penalising CRAs by not allowing them to charge a fair rate - staff, computers, location, rates, insurance etc. - the cost of the stamp and A4 envelope must eat up £1 of that £2.

With regard to the medical records, again the £50 max fee is unlikely to be revised for many years and this will penalise medical practices. Imagine the mayhem if everyone demanded their medical records all the time.

Your argument that if the actual cost was 1p but you were charged £50 would mean that you could submit a complaint to the Data Protection Registrar.