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Data Protection Guide

Introduction

The EU Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) came into effect in the UK from 24 October 1998. The Directive was implemented in the form of the Data Protection Act 1998. The Act received Royal Assent on the 16 July 1998 and the Act came into force on 1 March 2000.

The Act sets rules for processing personal information and applies to some paper records as well as those held on computers. The Data Protection Act applies to ‘personal data’, that is data about identifiable, living individuals. Those who decide how and why personal data are processed (data controllers) must comply with the rules of good information handling, known as the data protection principles and the other requirements of the Data Protection Act. mhs homes group is a data controller.

For details on terminology, see our Data Protection Terminology page.

To read the principles, see our Data Protection Principles page.