Section 176: Staying special purposes proceedings

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

Part 6: Enforcement

In any special purposes proceedings before a court, if the controller or processor claims, or it appears to the court, that any personal data to which the proceedings relate—

is being processed only for the special purposes,
is being processed with a view to the publication by any person of journalistic, academic, artistic or literary material, and
has not previously been published by the controller,

the court must stay or, in Scotland, sist the proceedings.

In considering, for the purposes of subsection (1)(c), whether material has previously been published, publication in the immediately preceding 24 hours is to be ignored.

Under subsection (1), the court must stay or sist the proceedings until either of the following conditions is met—

a determination of the Commissioner under section 174 with respect to the personal data or the processing takes effect;
where the proceedings were stayed or sisted on the making of a claim, the claim is withdrawn.

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