Data Protection Act Subject Access Request - Excessive Photocopy charges?

damienuk

vikingaero wrote: »

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

debsy42 wrote: »

I feel the £50 fee is reasonable....

I agree that in the example I stated in my initial post, £50 is a reasonable fee, and perhaps even bordering on under-charged (I did state in post 5 that I don't necessarily agree with £50 limit, as the fees for a request like this should match the costs of processing it).

My point is more that £50 is probably excessive in some cases (for example, your subject access request could relate to 1 specific year (only) containing just one or two simple doctor's visits - even after time taken to retrieve that particular section, £50 would still seem like a large fee)?

What I'm saying really is that I believe there should be no maximum but instead have prescribed charges for something like photocopying which can be assumed to have a relatively universal cost (even low-end photocopiers have quite low click rates): I don't understand the difference between a request to an educational establishment (which has these rates prescribed by the legislation), and a similar request regarding medical notes?

vikingaero wrote: »

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.

Agreed. £2 is grossly unfair on the credit reference agencies.

Though remember that the subject access request in this case is not so much different than an actual credit check performed by their customers (i.e. you're just asking them to do their everyday task, but send the results to you instead of their usual customer/s); the implications are that they're not holding additional data or having disproportionate additional costs to pull out all of the relevant data from their systems - yet I realise of course they will provide the results in a different format for subject access request purposes than they would to a credit reference customer (e.g. printed/paper rather than electronic/automated).

vikingaero wrote: »

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.

I don't necessarily agree about this: the majority (all?) of new medical records are computer based and therefore the special case with medical notes (remember, every other organisation/business has a £10 max? for handling requests like this) is mainly to take the vast quantity of historical records into consideration. The true impact of this depends on whether you're talking about records for a 10 year old (i.e. mostly computerised) or a 60 year old (mostly boxes of paper).

I would argue that other organisations (non-medical/educational) are more heavily penalised by the current legislation?

vikingaero wrote: »

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.

Ah right, this is basically the crux of what I want to know (purely as a matter of interest: as already established, the fees in the £50 example are appropriate).

They have legal powers regarding this, or would merely empathise with the "injustice" of it all?

Zara33

I got my data protection file from the CSA the other week, wasn't charged a bean for it and there was a fair amount of paperwork.

damienuk

Zara33 wrote: »

I got my data protection file from the CSA the other week, wasn't charged a bean for it and there was a fair amount of paperwork.

Who/what's the CSA?

Zara33

damienuk wrote: »

Who/what's the CSA?

Child Support Agency.

Ivory_Tinkler

debsy42 wrote: »

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....

OP - here is someone telling you exactly what the job involves and feels that the charge is justified. I too have worked in a job that involved searching, retrieving and photocopying records (not for the NHS) and it was a tedious and very time consuming job. Maybe the 35p per copy is not just for a piece of paper and a bit of toner ink?

damienuk

Yep. That's a fair point.

I think I mentioned when someone else raised it earlier that they itemised their charges and admin/access fees were stated separately to photocopying, but in hindsight it's still possible that they covered other parts of processing the request and excluded the photocopying admin: when reading it my assumption was that all "admin work" would be within the "admin" line of the bill, but maybe that's an inaccurate assumption...

Ivory_Tinkler

Perhaps ring them and query the charge - 35p per copy is rather high but maybe it does involve other charges built into the cost.

damienuk

Well as already established, the final figure in the particular example stated is actually quite fair, so not really looking to cause a fuss about it as it doesn't matter so much how they manipulate the various components of the charge: it's the final fee that you pay.

The initial thought about the photocopying was based on me not believing it was a fair charge, and hence likely having to pay £50 myself to obtain what is bound to be comparitively small in comparison to my other half's. So what I was wanting to know was that in the event of them charging a disproportionately high fee (and as per consensus in this thread, maybe it's not actually disproportionately high) for some future request (e.g. mine) is there any legal basis to tell them "no" or do I literally have to decide if it's worth what they will charge and just accept it.

Freddie_Snowbits

My firm has a flat labour rate of £50 per head per hour, that covers ancillaries like office staff and stationary to keep the office running, as well as the labourers work. We charge a minimum of 2 hors per job, regardless. Now is it reasoinable or do you want to do the job yourself?

damienuk

Freddie_Snowbits wrote: »

My firm has a flat labour rate of £50 per head per hour, that covers ancillaries like office staff and stationary to keep the office running, as well as the labourers work. We charge a minimum of 2 hors per job, regardless. Now is it reasoinable or do you want to do the job yourself?

But handling a statutory request should not generate a profit: the figures you're quoting (i.e. minimum of 2 hours per job regardless, @ £50/hr) are most likely profitable? I don't know exactly what you firm does or what likely expenditure is over that time, but assuming it's a commercial enterprise then seems safe to assume that £50/hr generates a profit for you?

So given that, what's the significance? That it's a "fair" rate because it's cheaper than you would charge to do the same work on a commercial basis?

Therefore, by a similar argument, prescription charges are unfair because they don't match the commercial value of the product (e.g. as charged in the US) - hence should be increased approximately 10x?