The ICO exists to empower you through information.

We support members of the public who wish to exercise their information rights and help organisations understand their responsibilities.

Our work

Our work is varied and fast paced and we strive to provide a trusted advice and complaints handling service at all times.  

We provide advice to members of the public about how they can exercise their information rights. We do this by answering helpline calls, responding to live chats, replying to written enquiries and providing responses to social media posts.  

We deal with complaints raised by the public in relation to how their personal data has been handled.  

Where we identify poor data protection practices, we work with organisations to ensure they understand their responsibilities, improve their practices and comply with the law. Where we identify serious harm, we will consider more formal regulatory action as outlined in the ICO Regulatory Action Policy.