Companies that plague householders with nuisance phone calls and texts face fines totalling more than £1m this year, a government watchdog has warned, after tripling the financial punishment for rogue callers last year.
The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating 90 nuisance cases following thousands of complaints dominated by calls about compensation for payment protection insurance and accidents.
Related: Nuisance calls continue to plague consumers despite crackdown
In 2015 the ICO imposed more than £1.1m worth of penalties for nuisance calls and text messages – up from £330,000 in 2014 – and already has the same total in the pipeline for 2016. The ICO has also identified new pestering topics for nuisance firms, including call-blocking services, industrial hearing injury claims and oven-cleaning services.
It received about 170,000 complaints in 2015 from people who had received nuisance calls and texts; a slight decrease on 2014 when the total was 175,330.
Andy Curry, ICO enforcement group manager, said: “Nuisance marketing calls frustrate people. The law is clear around what is allowed, and we’ve been clear that we will fine companies who don’t follow the law. That will continue in 2016. We’ve got 90 ongoing investigations, and £1m worth of fines in the pipeline.”
The ICO has the power to impose a maximum fine of £500,000, with the proceeds going straight to the Treasury. The fines imposed by the ICO in 2015 include:
- A record £200,000 fine in September to Home Energy & Lifestyle Management Ltd (Helms), a solar panels company that made six million nuisance calls to householders on an “industrial scale”.
- A £130,000 fine in October to Pharmacy 2U Ltd, a company that was selling customer details to postal marketing companies. Buyers of the details included a health supplements company that has been cautioned for misleading advertising.
- A £90,000 fine in November to Nuisance Call Blocker Ltd for making unsolicited marketing calls to sell cold-call-blocking devices. The Poole-based company was telephoning people to sell a call-blocking service and device to stop the same type of calls the company itself was making.
- A £80,000 fine to UKMS Money Solutions Limited (UKMS), a PPI claims firm that sent 1.3m spam text messages to mobile phone numbers it had bought from list brokers.
Related: Firm fined £850,000 for bombarding UK households with nuisance phone calls
The most recent fine was earlier in December when the ICO fined the Telegraph Media Group £30,000 for sending hundreds of thousands of emails on the day of the general election urging readers to vote Conservative, breaking the rules around direct marketing. The plea came in a letter from Daily Telegraph editor Chris Evans and attached to the paper’s usual morning e-bulletin.
The ICO was given new powers earlier this year to crack down on nuisance calls, but information commissioner Christopher Graham is now pressing the government to go further. In particular, he wants ministers to bring in tougher punishments for individuals who breach data protection laws by selling lists of phone numbers to cold-calling companies. Currently, the strongest punishment for unlawful disclosure of personal data is a fine from a magistrates court.
Richard Lloyd, executive editor of the Which? consumer group, said: “Millions of people are still being plagued with nuisance calls so it’s good to see more firms being fined for flouting the rules. However we also need to see further action including much tougher penalties for senior executives of companies making unlawful calls, including board directors being held personally accountable.”
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