Information block

Consumers are wrongly being denied the right to access information held about them by companies and public bodies, Information Commissioner Christopher Graham has said. More than a third of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) data protection casework in the last year involved complaints about mishandled access requests, he said.

The ICO has launched an awareness-raising campaign, “Access Aware”, which seeks to encourage organisations to re-think the way they handle information requests. Banking, finance and health bodies are the worst offenders, according to ICO records.