To ask Her Majesty’s Government how the amount which the Information Commissioner’s Office can spend on data protection activities in the current financial year has been calculated.
Answered on
16 July 2015
The Information Commissioner’s Office’s (ICO) data protection activities are funded by fees from organisations that process personal data. The amount available to spend each year is dependent on the number of organisations that notify with the ICO but is currently profiled to be £18.5M in 2015/16. The ICO has spent £4.7M on data protection activities in the first quarter of 2015/16.
Any money collected but not spent by the ICO is remitted to the Consolidated Fund. The ICO did not remit any data protection income to the Consolidated Fund in 2014/15 and there is a similar expectation for 2015/16.