Swindon lawyer Lauren Harkin gives talk at Double Tree Hotel

Data has been mapped, policies have been rewritten and procedures created so that businesses and individuals must follow the new laws updated from the Data Protection Act 1998.

The Swindon expert on the GDPR is lawyer Lauren Harkin with Royds Withy King, who has spent the last three months making sure she knows all the facts and figures involved with the new regulations.

So why was it necessary to have the change to the law in the first place?

At the bi-monthly business lunch sponsored by the Swindon Double Tree Hilton Hotel, Lauren said that the capability of technology, as well as its uptake among the public has exploded over the last 20 years.

“Being able to do all manner of things on a smartphone is now an expected and accepted part of daily life,” said Lauren.

“Our data protection laws were out of sync with these changes and legislation has been enacted accordingly.

“The rights of the data subject have been improved so that an individual is now able to request erasure of their data as well as portability of their data.

“The GDPR aims to achieve data protection by design and default to protect the individual.

“Data can only be held for as long as is reasonably necessary. Keeping a candidate’s CV in a bottom drawer is no longer acceptable and businesses must destroy data as soon as it is no longer required.

“On the penalty front fines have been increased dramatically and in the future fines will be scaled dependent upon the type of breach. The largest penalty under the previous legislation was a £400,000 fine issued to Carphone warehouse but this is likely to be dwarfed in the future.

“But there will be a bedding-in period for businesses to get used to the new system.”

An example of the new system is the photograph which accompanies today’s story. Each of the six people had in theory to give their permission for it to be published and afterwards withdraw that permission.