Seminole v Abbey: £10,235 RECEIVED

[lostinparadise]

Seminole....WOW...WOW...WOW!!

Im knackered, got work in the morning, but sat up straight to read this thread.

Good luck with the Fast Track. Im on this thread like a rash......LOL

Is your claim the biggest? God, are they gonna try everything not to pay this out....but you know they will in the end.

 

LIP

[Seminole]

Go Seminole, Go

 

PS who/what is DLA? Nub question I know...

 

Abbey's solicitors.

[Lula]

1) DLA were not being wholly truthful in their letter;

 

Semi, you are not "seriously" suggesting that members of our esteemed and ancient legal profession might stoop to something a little less than the truth in order to get their way are you??

 

for shame sir

[Odd Fellow]

Bloody hell. This is getting difficult.

 

I am awaiting DLA's defence to my DPA claim and, frankly, I am not looking forward to fighting this - it's getting rather dirty. My case is not helped by them having posted the microfiche data to me the day before I filled (2nd class, it arrived the day after I filled).

 

I am keenly watching this thread. I am particularly interested in the progress (or lack of) with the ICO's reactions as any response they make to Semi's requests for the information must also be valid for ALL other DPA claims unless Abbey seeks additional capitulation (sorry, guidance) from them.

 

Semi, what is DLA threatening now?

 

Odd

[Seminole]

Bloody hell. This is getting difficult.

 

I am awaiting DLA's defence to my Data Protection Act claim and, frankly, I am not looking forward to fighting this - it's getting rather dirty. My case is not helped by them having posted the microfiche data to me the day before I filled (2nd class, it arrived the day after I filled).

 

I am keenly watching this thread. I am particularly interested in the progress (or lack of) with the Information Commissioners Office's reactions as any response they make to Semi's requests for the information must also be valid for ALL other DPA claims unless Abbey seeks additional capitulation (sorry, guidance) from them.

 

Semi, what is DLA threatening now?

 

Odd

 

Actually I don't think this is getting particularly difficult.

 

Abbey are capitulating and sending out the microfiche data and this seems to have accelerated since people have started bringing DPA actions. I am sure that they would argue that it's their systems catching up with demand but I've learnt in this process that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything.

 

DLA have threatened nothing other than what I've posted here already. Their contention seems to be that I should withdraw my claim because Abbey have sent me the data and, as they claim, the microfiche data is not held in a relevant filing system I should bear the costs of my claim. In one sense we're arguing about nothing. They say that it isn't relevant but they are eventially supplying the data. I say that it is relevant and they have scope under the DPA to ask for an extension of time to comply.

 

My suspicion is that this is quite an important argument for them but not for the reasons they are disclosing. I think they are supplying microfiche data to those that demand it and keep on demanding it. However, there are probably lots of people out there who give up when Abbey fob them off. If they accept the principle that their filing system is relevant then they can't use the microfiche argument and will have to supply the data pretty quickly.

 

Abbey's approach to dealing with this matter leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

[Odd Fellow]

So, what we are also suggesting here is this:

 

The microfiche is probably part of a relevant filing system.

 

This suggestion is based on the fact if it were not, then Abbey would not be obliged to provide the data in the form that they are and hence, would simply refuse to.

 

As they are entitled to charge £10 for the DPA data anyway, all people would get would be what is apparently on their computer systems (13 months or so) followed by another demand for £10 or whatever for Copy statements.

 

Abbey would certainly appear to be playing every game possible to limit the number of repayment demands. I am sure that we've not yet seen the extend of the dirty tactics that it is prepared to use, clearly intimidation is one of them and it will continue with this for as long as it can. It starts with threats to close accounts and escallates to solicitors making relatively worthless threats about recovering costs through a court system that rarely attributes such things.

 

What next, DLA?

[Montague123]

Hi

 

Sorry i have searched the threads but to no avail - Im looking for the address to send the requests for statements off to the Abbey?

 

Help

 

Thnks

[Odd Fellow]

Hi

 

Sorry i have searched the threads but to no avail - Im looking for the address to send the requests for statements off to the Abbey?

 

Help

 

Thnks

 

Any branch will do. But try the Milton Keynes office or Regents Place address.

 

It's pretty academic anyway, they'll make you wait like everyone else

[Seminole]

Update:

 

DPA Allocation Questionnaire filed today.

 

Application to amend claim (to £8k plus) also filed. The application has to be considered by a judge before it's allowed. I think it's unlikely to be a problem. If it is then I'll proceed with the £5k, particularlise it up to a point in time and recover the £3k later.

 

The amended claim held off from including a declaration that the charges are unlawful. However, I make a make a further application to amend unless Abbey settle this claim quickly.

[Seminole]

Essentially yes but I'm not certain that I'll try for this.

[abbi10]

Hi

I too have today received a load of seperate envelopes with statements for my abbey account going back to October 05. I also received a letter from obviously a very busy lady Pam Speed informing me that "unfortunately they cannot supply me with a list of charges going back 6 years as requested" However they will supply me with details held on microfiche but this will not be subject to the 40 day ruling. Also they cannot supply me with any manual interventions as they are not always recorded.

Do you think i should wait and see if they do send me the rest of the archived info or go straight to the letter template for data protection non compliance.

Thanks for you help

abbi10

[Seminole]

Yes, follow the FAQ. You can't really jump the gun in case they do comply.

[Seminole]

I received a response from the Information Commissioner today to my FOI enquiry. This related to DLA's assertion that Abbey had a preliminary view from the ICO that its microfiche archive was not a relevant filing system. The ICO letter is in this post and my response is in the next one:

 

Our reference: Freedom of Information Act/370

 

 

Dear Mr Seminole,

 

Re: Your Request for Information of Information Commissioners Office’s decision on whether Abbey’s microfiche system constitutes a ‘relevant filing system’.

 

Further to your request for information we enclose all the recorded information you have requested that is held by the Information Commissioner.

 

You asked us to confirm:

• Whether we were requested to provide a preliminary assessment of the microfiche system used by Abbey National plc to archive bank statement and transaction information;
  
• If we were asked to make such an assessment, you requested us to set out the terms of reference for that assessment; and
  
• If an assessment was completed, you requested a copy of the results.

We have attached a copy of the e-mail sent to us by Abbey asking us to ‘assess’ whether their microfiche system constitutes a ‘relevant filing system’. This attachment also includes our response to Abbey on this issue. Although you may not agree with the response we provided to Abbey, a court may take a different view on this issue. We should clarify that this ‘assessment’ was not conducted as a ‘request for assessment’ under section 42 of the Data Protection Act 1998.

 

If you are dissatisfied with the response you have received and wish to request a review of our decision or make a complaint about how your request has been handled you should write to the Information Request Team at the address below or e-mail Informationrequestteam@Information Commissioners Office.gsi.gov.uk.

 

If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right of appeal to this office in our capacity as the statutory complaint handler under the legislation. To make such an application, please write to the Senior Complaints Resolution Manager, Complaints Resolution Team at the address below or e-mail mail@Information Commissioners Office.gsi.gov.uk.

 

A copy of our review procedure is attached along with details of our enforcement powers and your rights of appeal.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

Jenny Wolfe

Guidance and Promotion Manager

 

 

Enc.

 

1. E-mail from Abbey to Information Commissioners Office asking whether their microfiche records are held in a ‘relevant filing system’; the response e-mail from Information Commissioners Office to Abbey and Abbey’s response to Information Commissioners Office.

 

Richard

Thank you very much for your prompt response.

Regards

Debbie

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Richard Ansell

Sent: 24 March 2006 14:27

To: Waghorn, Debbie

Subject: RE: Fiche records

 

 

Debbie

 

Thank you for your e-mail setting down the substance of our telephone conversation yesterday.

 

Having considered this I confirm my view that the manual microfiche operation described will not fall within the relevant filing system definition of the Data Protection Act. Accordingly, none of the provisions of the Act will apply.

 

 

Regards

 

 

Richard Ansell

Guidance and Promotion Officer

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Waghorn, Debbie

Sent: 23 March 2006 17:49

To: Richard Ansell

Subject: Fiche records

 

 

Richard

Thank you for taking the time to discuss this issue with me.

 

As I mentioned, we are currently receiving a large number of subject access requests from individuals who are asking for a complete list of the transactions and charges on their bank accounts for a period of up to six years. It would appear that this is to enable them to bring a claim to the small claims court to recover what they believe are excessive bank charges.

 

Currently we keep this information on our live system for up to 18 months and it is therefore clearly covered by the Data Protection Act and would be supplied as part of a SAR - (Subject Access Request). However, after this, the information is transferred onto microfiche. As requested, I confirm that the way we store and retrieve the fiche is as follows:

 

The fiche are stored in boxes covering a 2 month period (e.g. Jan-Feb, March-April etc). There are normally 4 boxes to cover each 2 month period. Each box covers a range of account numbers which can overlap (e.g. Box One covers account numbers 1-500, Box 2 covers 1-900 etc). Therefore, the person looking for a particular piece of fiche may have to check in more than one box before they find the fiche they are looking for. Each piece of fiche contains the records of a number of accounts and there is a note on the fiche itself of the range of account numbers that it covers. Even though the fiche in each box are stored in numerical order, each box contains between 8000-9000 pieces of fiche which the member of staff has to manually check through.

 

Once the correct fiche has been located, the member of staff has to put it into the fiche reading machine and then manually find the correct account number. Once the correct details have been located, the information is printed onto paper. The retrieval process is therefore a manual and labour intensive process.

 

I believe that following the Durant case, the way in which we store and retrieve our microfiche, means that they fall outside the definition of a "relevant filing system" and we would not therefore be required to provide copies of the fiche as part of a SAR - (Subject Access Request). I would be pleased to receive your confirmation that my interpretation is correct.

 

I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

 

Regards

Debbie Waghorn

Head of Data Protection

[Seminole]

Comments welcome before I send it!

 

Dear Ms Wolfe

 

Thank you for your letter of 28 June 2006, a copy of which you emailed to me today.

 

Having read through your letter I now have further questions regarding this matter which you will presumably wish to treat as a separate Freedom of Information Act enquiry. I have added notes in brackets to help you to understand the context in which the question is being asked and to limit the scope of the response I am seeking where appropriate. My requests and questions are as follows:

 

• Please provide me with copies of all correspondence, file notes and emails in respect of the enquiry made by Debbie Waghorn on 23 March 2006 regarding the relevant filing system status of Abbey National plc’s microfiche archive system.

• Please provide me with copies of the recordings of the telephone conversation between Debbie Waghorn and Richard Ansell that seems to have taken place on 23 March 2006 and any further telephone conversations about this matter that took place after this.

• Please provide me with copies of any correspondence and recordings of telephone conversations that took place between the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and Abbey or their solicitors regarding my Freedom of Information Act enquiry dated X with your reference FOI/370 or confirm that no such correspondence or telephone conversations took place.

• Please provide me with copies of the assessment criteria and procedural guidelines under which Richard Ansell expressed his opinion in his email dated 24 March 2006. (I am particularly interested in how such an opinion could be reached and the criteria used to assess whether a filing system is relevant).

• Please confirm the legal and regulatory status of the opinion expressed in Richard Ansell’s email of 24 March 2006. What are your policies and procedures for referring to such opinions in considering complaints by data subjects? (This is a particularly important issue. Abbey are clearly relying on Mr Ansell’s opinion in refusing to comply with Subject Access Requests for information recorded on microfiche. In doing so they are actively seeking to deter SARs and, by expressing an informal opinion, the ICO is in danger of being seen as complicit in this process if a court subsequently decides that Abbey’s microfiche archive system is a relevant filing system).

• What are your procedures for publicising opinions such as that expressed by Richard Ansell in his email of 24 March 2006? (I am particularly concerned that Mr Ansell provided a response to Debbie Waghorn within 24 hours but it has taken more than two weeks for the ICO to provide a copy of this opinion to a data subject. This seems to at variance with the ICO’s role of protecting data subjects).

• Please confirm how many complaints under Section 7 of the DPA you have received since 1 January 2006 regarding Abbey’s microfiche archive system.

• Please provide me with a copy of your procedures for determining whether any filing system constitutes a “relevant filing system” within the meaning of the DPA. Please provide me with copies of all formal opinions expressed by the ICO about relevant filing systems and any informal opinions expressed about microfiche based systems and bank transaction archive systems (other than that already provided. I am seeking to understand how you make such assessments and the basis on which such assessments have been made in the past. I am happy to accept electronic copies of any documents).

I am sending this request by email on 29 June and also posting a copy. I therefore assume that the time limit for compliance will commence on 30 June 2006.

[Robertxc]

That'll be you off Ms Wolfe's Christmas list then Seminole.

[Movingon]

It's far more questions that *I* could have dreamt up... Nice one mate!

[andrew1]

Seminole, I will leave to your better judgement the content of this extremely well constructed letter and the implications. However, one minor ommission in the third from last paragraph " This seems to ... be....at variance with ICO's role.."... 'be' missing? trivial I know but might as well get it right. Well done and good luck with this.

[noobrider]

in fear of asking the dumb question but should reference not be made to the fact that the financial records could/would be retrieved by the bank should a credit reference be requested for the bank or other lenders purposes which would therefore require data access and under the DPA are not such records required to have a "relevant filing system" due to their very nature?

 

Finally..and I suppose the biggest question....where does this leave us?

[noobrider]

just had a thought and maybe answeredmy own question...does this mean that we have to submit estimated claims...inflated to ensure that Abbey do have to access their "irrelevant filing system" in order to reduce the claim...what ramifications does that have?

[Seminole]

I have to say that I am extremely angry at the way in which the ICO has dealt with this.

 

Here we have a public body set up to protect the right of data subjects under the Data Protection Act, providing what seems to amount to a telephone consultancy service for a data controller. Moreover, when Richard wrote Debbie (note the first name terms) he was able to tell her based on a telephone conversation and an email that "none of the provisions of the Act will apply". Well that was obviously an in depth investigation wasn't it? On this basis Abbey has been doing its utmost to delay, prevaricate and intimidate people into not exercising their rights and the ICO is culpable in this.

 

It's a disgrace and totally unacceptable. What's even worse is that Richard wrote to Debbie within 24 hours of her ringing him but it took two weeks for the ICO to provide copies of this correspondence. Are they protecting the public or are they protecting the banks? How are they dealing with Section 7 complaints? Are the ICO sitting on these for weeks when they already know what the answer is going to be based on a telephone call or are they actually going to get off their arses and actually look at the system in detail?

[Seminole]

I get the impression that the S42 request comes from a data controller. There would need to be such a mechanism in the Act to help data controllers as otherwise everything would be done by complaint.

 

The proper course for Abbey to have followed (and for the IC to have requested) is a review of the archive storage system. That doesn't seem to have happened but that hasn't stopped Abbey relying on this preliminary review in its dealings with data subjects.

 

Let's be blunt about this. There has been a cosy little exchange of emails, a completely unthorough review and quite possibly large numbers of people being disuaded from pursuing their subject access rights. The ICO is a public body and it needs to be held to account for this.

[Movingon]

I'm with Karnevil on this one; s.42 clearly enables ANYONE affected by the processing of data to request an assessment - which would bind the ICO into doing one. However this is a double edged sword; what if they find that Abbey's system is NOT a relevant one? It would be binding on all parties.

 

So I think you should look at this possibility a little more closely Semi; see what you think. Your original letter however should stand, as it asks all the questions that you need answered at the moment. Once you have answers to all of these questions you could maybe move into a formal complaint against the ICO. (But WHO TO?!?!)

[mahala]

So I think you should look at this possibility a little more closely Semi; see what you think. Your original letter however should stand, as it asks all the questions that you need answered at the moment. Once you have answers to all of these questions you could maybe move into a formal complaint against the Information Commissioners Office. (But WHO TO?!?!)

 

Well, according to the reply from the Information Commissioners Office that Seminole got, a formal complaint about the Information Commissioners Office is made to .... the Information Commissioners Office .... who investigate themselves ....

 

Stonelaughter, when's your meeting with the lovely Mr Geoffrey Hoon? Perhaps this should be added to the list of topics for conversation over Earl Grey and Rich Tea biccies.

[Movingon]

Well, according to the reply from the Information Commissioners Office that Seminole got, a formal complaint about the Information Commissioners Office is made to .... the Information Commissioners Office .... who investigate themselves ....

 

Stonelaughter, when's your meeting with the lovely Mr Geoffrey Hoon? Perhaps this should be added to the list of topics for conversation over Earl Grey and Rich Tea biccies.

 

Indeed it should, indeed it should... 7th July @ 4.14pm here we come!

[Lula]

"(2) On receiving a request under this section, the Commissioner shall make an assessment in such manner as appears to him to be appropriate"

 

 

I think that this section might be the crux of the matter, will the commissioner think it appropriate to go and look? I am beginning to think not