The UK’s current data protection rules

EU legislation on data protection has been in place since the 1995 Data Protection Directive (“DPD”), which guarantees the protection of citizens’ fundamental rights to data protection. Being a “directive”, rather than a “regulation”, the DPD required EU Member States to implement their own national legislation in order to achieve its goals. In the UK, the DPD was implemented by the Data Protection Act 1998 (“DPA”).

Therefore, the current UK data protection rules are governed primarily by the DPA.