Utilities firms get data protection guidelines

Utilities firms are to get an updated set of guidelines on coping with the Data Protection Act.

The advisory document comes from the Office of the Data Protection Registrar (ODPR) and will detail the use of client databases for marketing campaigns.

The decision comes less than two months after a tribunal found that British Gas Trading was in violation of the Data Protection Act because it used customer information to market non-gas-related goods and services, without obtaining explicit consent from customers.

British Gas Trading mailed a leaflet to all its customers explaining that non-gas-related marketing would be sent to them if they did not respond to the leaflet. The tribunal called a stop to that practice, saying that no consent could be inferred from non-response. When British Gas Trading argued about the difficulty of obtaining consent from all its current customers, the tribunal said that difficulty was no reason not to comply.

Phil Jones, an assistant registrar at ODPR, said: "Unless what you are seeking to market is relatively closely associated with your core business, you need to obtain consent. With new customers, that's easy, but with existing customers it's more difficult.

"The problem with utilities is that it's like turning an oil tanker around," Jones continued. "They're old monopolies and they're new to direct marketing."

ODPR hopes to have the latest guidelines completed by September.