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Section 30: Meaning of "competent authority"

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

Part 3: Law enforcement processing — CHAPTER 1: Scope and definitions

In this Part, "competent authority" means—

a person specified or described in Schedule 7, and
any other person if and to the extent that the person has statutory functions for any of the law enforcement purposes.

But an intelligence service is not a competent authority within the meaning of this Part.

The Secretary of State may by regulations amend Schedule 7—

so as to add or remove a person or description of person;
so as to reflect any change in the name of a person specified in the Schedule.

Regulations under subsection (3) which make provision of the kind described in subsection (3)(a) may also make consequential amendments of section 73(4)(b).

Regulations under subsection (3) which make provision of the kind described in subsection (3)(a), or which make provision of that kind and of the kind described in subsection (3)(b), are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.

Regulations under subsection (3) which make provision only of the kind described in subsection (3)(b) are subject to the negative resolution procedure.

In this section—

  • "intelligence service" means—

    (a)the Security Service;

    (b)the Secret Intelligence Service;

    (c)the Government Communications Headquarters;

  • "statutory function" means a function under or by virtue of an enactment.

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.