Panopticon reported late last year that the First-Tier Tribunal overturned the first monetary penalty notice issued by the Information Commissioner for breaches of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. This was the decision in Niebel v IC (EA/2012/0260).

The Information Commissioner appealed against that decision. The Upper Tribunal gave its decision on the appeal yesterday: see here IC v Niebel GIA 177 2014. It dismissed the Commissioner’s appeal and upheld the First-Tier Tribunal’s cancellation of the £300,000 penalty imposed for the sending of marketing text messages.

I appeared in this case, as did James Cornwell (also of the Panopticon fold), so I will not be offering an analysis of the case just now. With any luck, one of my colleagues will be cajoled into doing so before too long.

It is worth pointing out simply that this is the first binding decision on the meaning of the various limbs of s. 55A of the DPA 1998, which contains the preconditions for the issuing of a monetary penalty notice.

Robin Hopkins @hopkinsrobin