Fines rocket to £2m for nuisance calls companies

A company that made 40m unwanted calls trying to sell PPI was fined £350,000 by the regulator. Photograph: Richard Pohle/the Times/PA

The government’s data protection regulator has issued fines totalling more than £2m since the law was changed 12 months ago to make it easier to crack down on nuisance marketing and phone calls.

The penalties levied by the Information Commissioner’s Office on companies found to be breaking the law are more than four times higher than the £360,000 handed out during the previous 12 months. The law was changed last April.

This week, the ICO will fine a Scottish company for making 2.5m recorded calls in an effort to sell its home improvement services. It will be the 19th firm that the regulator has taken action against in the past year, and brings the tally of penalties for nuisance marketing during this period to £2,035,000.

The law change made it easier for the ICO to fine firms behind nuisance calls, texts and emails, up to a maximum of £550,000. The companies fined so far have been responsible for 55m nuisance calls, more than 1m text messages and hundreds of thousands of emails.

The fines range from a £5,000 penalty issued to David Lammy, the Labour MP, who made recorded calls as part of an election campaign, to a record £350,000 fine for a company that made 40m illegal calls trying to sell payment protection insurance.

Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, said: “This time last year, we promised that these changes to the law would make a difference, and they have. The fines we’ve issued should mean fewer calls next year. But we know there is more to do. We’ve got more fines in the pipeline and more ways to stop the nuisance these calls create.

The ICO, which regulates marketing calls, typically receives more than 14,000 complaints about nuisance calls every month.

Under a separate change in the law due to come into effect in mid-May, marketing companies will be forced to display their telephone numbers or face heavy fines. It is part of an attempt to end anonymous phone calls from British companies that have call centres based in the UK and overseas. Firms will have to display their working phone number so that customers know who is calling and can follow up with formal complaints.

“The law change put forward today around caller ID is another step forward,” Graham said. “We know that people are more likely to complain to us when they can see the number behind the call they’ve received. Those complaints inform many of our investigations, lead to fines and, ultimately, stop the calls.”