UK ICO Enforcement Actions

Search the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Enforcement Register for monetary penalties, reprimands, enforcement notices and prosecutions under GDPR, UK GDPR, PECR and Data Protection Act 2018.

Returns structured data on fines, enforcement actions, breach types, affected organisations and sectors. All data is public from the ICO and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

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What this actor does

• Searches the official ICO enforcement register at ico.org.uk
• Filters by enforcement type (fines, reprimands, notices, prosecutions)
• Filters by sector (health, finance, tech, government, etc.)
• Filters by date range
• Keyword search for organisations or breach types
• Automatic pagination through result pages
• Clean structured JSON/CSV output

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Example use cases

Privacy & GDPR consultancies — Build trend reports showing enforcement patterns by sector, breach type and fine amounts. Demonstrate risks to clients using real-world examples.

Cybersecurity firms & MSPs — Use enforcement actions as sales tools ("Capita lost £14m for lacking MFA - we can prevent this"). Track technical failures identified by ICO to improve service offerings.

Law firms — Identify companies fined for data breaches = potential group action targets. Build databases of enforcement precedent for client defense strategies.

Cyber insurance underwriters — Analyze sector risk exposure, track common failure patterns (no MFA, poor incident response), benchmark client security against enforcement data.

Compliance software vendors — Create training modules with real ICO enforcement examples. Track regulatory trends to update product features. Build "what not to do" case studies.

Researchers & journalists — Analyze UK vs EU enforcement divergence, track ICO enforcement philosophy shifts, investigate sector-specific compliance failures.

Competitors of fined companies — Monitor competitor enforcement actions for reputational intelligence and competitive positioning.

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Output fields

Each result contains:

Field	Description
01_organisation	Company or entity name
02_title	Enforcement action title/description
03_enforcementType	Monetary penalty, Reprimand, Enforcement notice, or Prosecution
04_fineAmount	Fine amount (e.g. "£14,000,000") if applicable
05_sector	Industry sector (Health, Finance, Tech, etc.)
06_date	Date of enforcement action
07_summary	Details of the breach and ICO's reasoning
08_detailsUrl	Link to full enforcement notice PDF

Note: Column names include numeric prefixes to ensure correct display order in exports and previews.

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Enforcement types explained

Monetary Penalty — Financial fines up to £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover for serious GDPR breaches. Typically reserved for major data breaches, systemic failures, or reckless behaviour.

Reprimand — Formal written warning for GDPR violations. Often used for public sector organisations instead of fines, or for first-time offenders who cooperate.

Enforcement Notice — Legal order requiring organisation to take (or stop) specific actions to comply with data protection law. Non-compliance can lead to prosecution.

Prosecution — Criminal proceedings for serious offences like unlawfully obtaining/disclosing personal data, obstructing ICO investigations, or failing to pay data protection fees.

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Sector coverage

The ICO enforces across all UK sectors:

• Central & local government
• Health & social care
• Finance, insurance & credit
• Education & childcare
• Online technology & telecoms
• Marketing
• Retail & manufacturing
• Legal services
• Charitable & voluntary
• Criminal justice
• Media
• Transport & leisure
• Utilities
• Regulators

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Data source & licence

All data sourced from the ICO Enforcement Register maintained by the Information Commissioner's Office.

Published under the Open Government Licence v3.0 — commercial use permitted with attribution.

Attribution: Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Full licence: nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3

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Performance

• Typical run for 100 results: 60-120 seconds (depends on filters)
• Pagination supported for larger datasets
• Rate-limited to respect ICO servers

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Notes

• ICO enforcement data dates back several years
• Large fines are often negotiated down from initial amounts (check details URL for settlement info)
• Public sector organisations typically receive reprimands instead of fines
• PECR (spam/marketing) violations are more common but smaller fines than GDPR breaches
• Data is continuously updated as new enforcement actions are published