CHG865 | Dealing with complaints: Complaints including Freedom of Information (FOI) and Subject Access requests (SARs)

Customer complaints may include requests for information that fall within scope of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000 or the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

You should deal with any such requests as explained below and respond to the rest of the complaint as usual. Please be sure to tell the customer their request for information is being dealt with separately.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests

The FOIA gives people the right to see recorded non-personal information held by public authorities.

If you identify an FOI request within a complaint you should contact the HMRC FOI Team at [email protected] without delay.

If a customer complains about the handling of an FOI request, this should be dealt with as an FOI internal review. These complaints should also be sent to the HMRC FOI team at [email protected] without delay.

Please see the Freedom of Information SharePoint site for more advice.

Subject access requests (SARs)

The UK GDPR gives individuals a right of access to personal information held about them and to know how it is processed.

A SAR is a request from a living individual for access to their personal information.

If you identify a SAR within a complaint, please contact the Central SAR Team at [email protected] or the SAR team in the relevant business area without delay.

The Subject Access Request SharePoint site contains more information about SARs.

Complaints about SARs must be dealt with as SAR internal reviews if they relate to the following issues:

• a delay in HMRC responding to a SAR

• personal data being omitted from a SAR response

• historical data not being retrieved

• the response not fully answering the issues raised in the SAR

Please send SAR internal reviews to the Central SAR team at [email protected] or the SAR team in the relevant business area without delay.