No, despite having exited the European Union the UK is not free
of its GDPR obligations. However, businesses holding EU data in the
UK will need to keep a watchful eye on negotiations between the EU
and its breakaway state. If the UK is not deemed
"adequate" for receipt of EU protected data once the the
safe transition period ends, entities in the UK may need to alter
their contracts.
To this end, Google is changing the data controller for its
United Kingdom user data from Dublin to Google LLC, their United
States headquarters. Google's plans to move British user
accounts out of the EU and into the United States was wrongly
attacked as taking those protections outside of the GDPR's
scope. The action, instead, should be seen as a hedge against the
uncertainty of data treatment from the EU to the UK, so that data
arising in the UK will not be seen as protected in the EU (Dublin)
before traveling to the UK, which may trigger "adequacy of
protection" problems
