ICO Fee under GDPR – check whether you need to pay

All businesses (including Ltd companies, self-employed sole traders, contractors and partnerships) that process personal data are required to pay an annual data protection fee to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) unless a relevant exemption applies.

As a Salon or Barbershop owner, you should see whether a fee is payable, or whether you are exempt. To do this, you can use the self-assessment tool on the ICO website.

We tried it (as if we were a salon owner) and it pretty much came down to whether CCTV was being used (in which case a fee was payable) and the answer to their question about whether data was only being used for staff admin, accounts records and advertising – if yes, then no fee – but if used for anything else then a fee became payable.

The self assessment tool can be found here and you should try it (only takes 3 minutes):

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-fee/self-assessment/

Further Info

Page 8 of the ICO guide may also help you think about how you handle your data:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/register/2722/other.pdf

If you do not pay the charge, or you pay the incorrect charge, then you risk action by the ICO and possible fines, so it’s worth doing and keeping a copy of your results from the self-assessment.