A £350,000 fine for a Welsh-based company that clocked up a record 146 million illegal calls about Payment Protection Insurance was followed three days later by a £260,000 fine for a Coventry company that made 16.7 million calls about boiler replacements, as the Information Commissioner’s Office continued to crack down on automated marketing calls during September.

Based in Carmarthenshire but with registered offices in Darlington, record-breaking automated call-making company, Your Money Rights Limited, left people feeling ‘harassed and threatened’ as it made its calls over a 4 month period.

Coventry-based Easyleads Limited generated more than 550 complaints from people who, in some cases, had been distressed by multiple calls late at night or in the early hours of the morning. It also deliberately misled people by referring to a government scheme and the offer of a free boiler.

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), which sit alongside the Data Protection Act, firms can only make automated marketing calls to people who have given their specific consent.

‘ICO Monetary Penalty Notice: Easyleads Limited’ and ‘ICO Monetary Penalty Notice: Your Money Rights Ltd’ reveal that

• neither firm had obtained the consent of the people called
• both also broke the law by not including their name and contact details in the recorded message

Since the ICO investigations, Companies House has posted plans for Easyleads Limited to be struck off and dissolved, while the directors are seeking to dissolve Your Money Rights Limited.

Although the maximum fine is a hefty £500,000, the ICO is currently only able to fine the companies that make the nuisance calls, not the directors. According to a Daily Telegraph report on an automated calls case earlier this year, 15 of the 20 firms penalised by the ICO in 2016 dodged the penalty by going bust or declaring themselves insolvent.

While pointing out that a company seeking to avoid its fine by closing down will at least no longer be making nuisance calls, ICO also states that the planned introduction of a new law allowing it to fine company directors behind nuisance calls ‘can’t come soon enough’.

Nuisance calls can be reported via the ICO’s online reporting tool and concerns about an organisation’s information right practices can be reported at org.uk/concerns/.