Quote:
I would like to advise you that under a Data Protection Act Request, you will only receive the transactions that are currently held on our systems. These will be forwarded to you within 40 days, free of charge, under separate cover. Any earlier transactions have been archived onto microfiche, which is not covered by the Data Protection Act. These archived transactions will not therefore be supplied to you under a Data Protection Act request and will not be subject to the 40-day ruling.
Any bank / financial institution citing this as a reason for exemption / non compliance is chancing its arm.
Under the terms of the DPA Part 1: 1(c) it is stipulated that the data covered by the act includes
all and any data held in relation to an individual which
"is recorded as part of a relevant filing system or with the intention that it should form part of a relevant filing system".
Microfiche IS a filing system. It forms a part of their archiving system and is, therefore, a part of their relevant filing system. Otherwise why do they have it?
The banks are simply trying to put claimants off by citing this nonsense as it is more expensive for them to convert microfiche records into legible understandable paper documents for claimants (which the act requires them to do).