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Section 135: Manifestly unfounded or excessive requests by data subjects etc

Data Protection Act 2018 · 2018 c. 12View on legislation.gov.uk

Part 5: The Information Commissioner

This section makes provision about cases in which a request made to the Commissioner, to which the Commissioner is required or authorised to respond under the data protection legislation, is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

... The Commissioner may—

charge a reasonable fee for dealing with the request, or
refuse to act on the request.

In subsection (1)—

the reference in paragraph (a) to charging a reasonable fee is, in a case in which section 134 is relevant, a reference to doing so under that section, and
paragraph (b) is not to be read as implying anything about whether the Commissioner may refuse to act on requests that are neither manifestly unfounded nor excessive.

An example of a request that may be excessive is one that merely repeats the substance of previous requests.

In any proceedings where there is an issue as to whether a request described in subsection (A1) is manifestly unfounded or excessive, it is for the Commissioner to show that it is.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Article 57(3) of the UK GDPR (performance of Commissioner's tasks generally to be free of charge for data subject) has effect subject to this section.

About this text

This legislation text comes from legislation.gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. These source and reuse terms cover the legislation text, not Remedy's commentary.

Reuse reviewed 21 August 2026 under Open Government Licence v3.0.