Tougher penalties for firms that annoy Brits with nuisance calls
COMPANIES exploiting data to make nuisance phonecalls will face fines worth hundreds of thousands of pounds under new plans from the government.
Culture secretary Maria Miller is set to launch a consultation this year on lowering the threshold for when firms can be fined for making nuisance calls and sending spam text messages, according to plans published yesterday.
Currently the Information Commissioner’s Office will only take action if unsolicited calls cause “substantial damage” to households.
The Ministry of Justice also plans to consult on whether to impose hefty fines on claims management companies which use information gathered by unsolicited calls and texts, among other bad practices.
Justice secretary Chris Grayling said: “It is time to stop these claims companies from plaguing hardworking people’s lives and wasting everyone’s time – the scale of these fines shows just how serious we are about stopping them.”