GDPR Storage Limitation Explained: What Small Businesses Need to Know

Many businesses accumulate a range of personal information, keeping it for years even when they no longer need it. However, your company should know that this practice can lead to serious compliance issues under the UK GDPR regime. Complying with UK GDPR requirements is a legal requirement and an opportunity to build good data practices to help enhance your reputation, build customer trust, and improve your company’s data management. A fundamental principle for UK GDPR compliance is the storage limitation principle, which small businesses must consider and implement daily. This article will explore the concept of storage limitation and what small businesses should understand about this for compliance purposes.

Why is the UK GDPR Storage Limitation Important?

The UK GDPR storage limitation principle requires your business to retain personal data only as long as necessary for its original purpose and as long as you need it. 

Your company should regularly review your internal data retention periods to confirm if the data you hold is still relevant and aligned with its purposes. The storage limitation principle under the UK GDPR requires that personal data not be kept indefinitely.

This principle of storage limitation can help your business, and the ICO emphasises this in its guidance. 

For instance, applying this principle in practice can help you avoid holding irrelevant, outdated, or inaccurate data. Storing data beyond its purpose can also mean you reduce its accuracy and relevance, creating risks for your business.

Your business can benefit practically from limiting retention, as it reduces storage costs, can help you improve your response time when responding to data access requests, and reduces the burden of managing outdated data. Streamlining your data retention procedures can also enhance efficiency and security, saving your business time and resources.

What Should Your Business Do With Data That You No Longer Need?

The UK GDPR requires your business to securely delete or anonymise personal data once it’s no longer necessary. Your company should ensure deletion covers all systems involving data storage, including backups.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office guides small businesses on the UK GDPR’s storage limitation principle, highlighting that limiting data retention can help improve both compliance and efficiency. By keeping only essential data, you can locate important information faster, minimise storage costs, and lower the risk of retaining irrelevant or outdated data.

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How Your Business Should Determine Appropriate Retention Periods?

Your business may set its own data retention periods based on operational, legal, and industry requirements, but you must be able to justify them. 

For instance, HMRC requires you to keep tax records for a certain number of years, while some employment records may require longer retention. Your business should document these retention periods and review them regularly to ensure they align with your internal operational needs and compliance requirements. Setting and periodically reviewing these retention periods can help you support compliance with the UK GDPR’s storage limitation and data minimisation principles.

How Your Business Should Manage Data Retention Effectively?

Your business should align its internal data practices with the storage limitation principle to manage data retention effectively.

Some practical steps your business can consider to help you with this include the following:

• draft and implement a tailored data retention policy with clear retention periods for each data type (specifying how you will securely delete or anonymise data when it is no longer needed). This policy can help provide consistent, responsible data-handling guidelines for your teams across your business;
• regular audits should be carried out to help your business review the types of data it holds, the reasons for storage, whether it remains necessary, and whether you need it or not. Regular reviews also enable compliance with the UK GDPR accountability requirements by preventing data accumulation; and
• deliver staff training to cover data retention and other UK GDPR principles to ensure ongoing compliance and reduce risks. Employees who understand these practices are more likely to follow the UK GDPR rules on storage limitation, which can help your business reduce risk.

For a small business, it is vital to consider these issues right from the outset so you have robust and compliant data retention practices in place as your business grows. If you need advice on data storage limitations and how best to comply, you should seek legal advice from a data protection solicitor. 

Key Takeaways

Storage limitation is a key UK GDPR principle that small businesses must comply with and integrate into their data management practices from an early stage. Setting data retention policies, conducting regular audits, and securely deleting unnecessary data is vital for complying with the principle. By retaining data only as long as needed, your business is also in a better position to reduce risk and demonstrate its compliance with UK GDPR rules.

If your business needs legal advice on UK GDPR compliance, our experienced regulatory and compliance lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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