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UK GDPR

The UK General Data Protection Regulation

Art. 39 GDPR Tasks of the data protection officer

The data protection officer shall have at least the following tasks:
1. to inform and advise the controller or the processor and the employees who carry out processing of their obligations pursuant to this Regulation and to domestic law relating to data protection;
2. to monitor compliance with this Regulation, with other domestic law relating to data protection and with the policies of the controller or processor in relation to the protection of personal data, including the assignment of responsibilities, awareness-raising and training of staff involved in processing operations, and the related audits;
3. to provide advice where requested as regards the data protection impact assessment and monitor its performance pursuant to Article 35;
4. to cooperate with the Commissioner;
5. to act as the contact point for the Commissioner on issues relating to processing, including the prior consultation referred to in Article 36, and to consult, where appropriate, with regard to any other matter.
The data protection officer shall in the performance of his or her tasks have due regard to the risk associated with processing operations, taking into account the nature, scope, context and purposes of processing.

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Further Information

This version of the UK GDPR is offered purely as what we hope will be a helpful resource. It does not have the status of law, and should not be relied on as such. Nor do we guarantee it is free from errors. It was originally prepared using a Keeling Schedule made available by the UK Government.

Since then, a consolidated version has also been made available on the legislation.gov.uk pages.

By virtue of section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018, the GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) was retained in United Kingdom law as "direct EU legislation". However, the effect of the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, as amended by the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, was, from 1 January 2021, immediately to make changes to the retained GDPR, and to refer to it as the "UK GDPR". These pages reflect those changes.

This resource includes links to the GDPR recitals. The explanatory notes to the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018 confirm that where legislation is converted under section 3, it is the text of the legislation itself which will form part of domestic legislation, and this will include the full text of any EU instrument (including its recitals). Accordingly, recitals will continue to be interpreted as they were prior to the UK’s exit from the EU. They will, as before, be capable of casting light on the interpretation to be given to a legal rule, but they will not themselves have the status of a legal rule. However, it stands to reason that – as the recitals themselves have not been amended – they will in places contain language and references to EU bodies and rules which no longer apply to the UK.

In this resource we link Articles of the UK GDPR to the corresponding recitals. In deciding which recitals correspond to which Articles of UK GDPR, we have drawn on the working document of the EU GDPR which the Information Commissioner had previously published in 2017.