The Data Protection Act 1998 gives you, as an individual, the right of access to your own personal data but also allows various exemptions to this right.
Where the personal data are only used for research purposes (such as the production of statistics), section 33 of the Act allows an exemption to this right of access.
Information we have collected about you is not used to make any decisions that would affect you as an individual, it is only used to produce statistics and in practice a lot of the data we collect is anonymised soon after we collect it.
This all means that once ONS has collected your data we are not obliged to tell you what data we hold about you.
Unless we are obliged to do so by a court, we will normally refuse any request for personal information using this exemption.
If you wish to contact us about how we apply the Data Protection Act or if you believe you may still have a justification for finding out what information we hold about you, you can email us at: [email protected]
