Section 25: Manual unstructured data used in longstanding historical research

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

Part 2: General processing — CHAPTER 3: Exemptions for manual unstructured processing and for national security and defence purposes

The provisions of the UK GDPR listed in subsection (2) do not apply to personal data to which the UK GDPR applies by virtue of Article 2(1A) (manual unstructured personal data held by FOI public authorities) at any time when—

the personal data—
is subject to processing which was already underway immediately before 24 October 1998, and
is processed only for the purposes of historical research, and
the processing is not carried out—
for the purposes of measures or decisions with respect to a particular data subject, or
in a way that causes, or is likely to cause, substantial damage or substantial distress to a data subject.

Those provisions are—

in Chapter II ...(principles), Article 5(1)(d) (the accuracy principle), and
in Chapter III ... (rights of the data subject)—
Article 16 (right to rectification), and
Article 17(1) and (2) (right to erasure).

The exemptions in this section apply in addition to the exemptions in section 24.

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.