The UK government recently launched a consultation entitled “Data: a new direction” on 10 September 2021. The consultation presented proposals on the UK’s post-Brexit data protection regime and sought responses to those proposals.

Bates Wells regularly advises charities and not-for-profits on a range of data protection matters and so is uniquely placed to address various issues encountered by the charity and non-profit sectors in relation to data protection law. We hosted a roundtable on 3 November 2021, in order to seek Updatess from our clients and we subsequently responded to the government’s consultation.

Specifically, we outlined our views on:

  1. The legitimate interests lawful basis and the proposal to create a list of legitimate interests that would not require the balancing test to be undertaken;
  2. The ‘soft opt-in’ rule and whether this should be extended to non-commercial organisations such as charities;
  3. The substantial public interests condition for processing special category personal data;
  4. Political campaigning and the rules on direct marketing; and
  5. Addressing the burdens placed on charities in relation to responding to subject access requests.

For our full response, please click here.

You can read “Data: a new direction” here.