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UK GDPR

The UK General Data Protection Regulation

Art. 86 GDPR Processing and public access to official documents

  1. Personal data in official documents held by a public authority or a public body or a private body for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest may be disclosed by the authority or body in accordance with domestic law to which the public authority or body is subject in order to reconcile public access to official documents with the protection of personal data pursuant to this Regulation.[1]
  2. Chapter 3 of Part 2 of the 2018 Act makes provision about the application of this Regulation to the manual unstructured processing of personal data held by an FOI public authority (as defined in Article 2).

[1] Text amended by The Data Protection (Fundamental Rights and Freedoms) (Amendment) Regulations 2023.

Corresponding Recitals

This Regulation allows the principle of public access to official documents to be taken into account when applying this Regulation. Public access to official documents may be considered to be in the public interest. Personal data in documents held by a public authority or a public body should be able to be publicly disclosed by that authority or body if the disclosure is provided for by Union or Member State law to which the public authority or public body is subject. Such laws should reconcile public access to official documents and the reuse of public sector information with the right to the protection of personal data and may therefore provide for the necessary reconciliation with the right to the protection of personal data pursuant to this Regulation. The reference to public authorities and bodies should in that context include all authorities or other bodies covered by Member State law on public access to documents. Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (14) leaves intact and in no way affects the level of protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data under the provisions of Union and Member State law, and in particular does not alter the obligations and rights set out in this Regulation. In particular, that Directive should not apply to documents to which access is excluded or restricted by virtue of the access regimes on the grounds of protection of personal data, and parts of documents accessible by virtue of those regimes which contain personal data the re-use of which has been provided for by law as being incompatible with the law concerning the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data.

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