The Court of Appeal Sets Parameters for Subject Access

By Bridget Treacy and Prini Patel

The Court of Appeal has provided potentially far reaching and much awaited clarification of the nature and scope of the obligation to respond to subject access requests under the Data Protection Act 1998 (the "Act"). In practical terms, the judgment is likely to reduce the burden, for data controllers, of the obligation to comply with subject access requests, particularly where the personal data sought is held in a manual filing system. More significantly, the decision could also restrict the ambit of the Act itself since the Court favoured a narrow interpretation of what amounts to "personal data".