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Section 53: Manifestly unfounded or excessive requests by the data subject

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

Part 3: Law enforcement processing — CHAPTER 3: Rights of the data subject

Where a request made by a data subject under or by virtue of any of sections 45, 46, 47, 50C or 50D is manifestly unfounded or excessive, the controller may—

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

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 (1) is manifestly unfounded or excessive, it is for the controller to show that it is.

The Secretary of State may by regulations specify limits on the fees that a controller may charge in accordance with subsection (1)(a).

The Secretary of State may by regulations—

require controllers of a description specified in the regulations to produce and publish guidance about the fees that they charge in accordance with subsection (1)(a), and
specify what the guidance must include.

Regulations under this section are subject to the negative resolution procedure.

If, in reliance on subsection (1)(b), the controller does not take action on the request, the controller must inform the data subject of—

the reasons for not doing so, and
the data subject's right to lodge a complaint with the Commissioner.

The controller must comply with subsection (6)—

without undue delay, and
in any event, before the end of the applicable time period (as to which see section 54).

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.