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UK GDPR

The UK General Data Protection Regulation

Art. 20 GDPR Right to data portability

The data subject shall have the right to receive the personal data concerning him or her, which he or she has provided to a controller, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from the controller to which the personal data have been provided, where:
1. the processing is based on consent pursuant to point (a) of Article 6(1) or point (a) of Article 9(2) or on a contract pursuant to point (b) of Article 6(1); and
2. the processing is carried out by automated means.
In exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to paragraph 1, the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible.
The exercise of the right referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article shall be without prejudice to Article 17. That right shall not apply to processing necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.
The right referred to in paragraph 1 shall not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others.

Corresponding Recitals

68 /uk-gdpr/recital/no-68Right of Data Portability

To further strengthen the control over his or her own data, where the processing of personal data is carried out by automated means, the data subject should also be allowed to receive personal data concerning him or her which he or she has provided to a controller in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable and interoperable format, and to transmit it to another controller. Data controllers should be encouraged to develop interoperable formats that enable data portability. That right should apply where the data subject provided the personal data on the basis of his or her consent or the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract. It should not apply where processing is based on a legal ground other than consent or contract. By its very nature, that right should not be exercised against controllers processing personal data in the exercise of their public duties. It should therefore not apply where the processing of the personal data is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject or for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of an official authority vested in the controller. The data subject's right to transmit or receive personal data concerning him or her should not create an obligation for the controllers to adopt or maintain processing systems which are technically compatible. Where, in a certain set of personal data, more than one data subject is concerned, the right to receive the personal data should be without prejudice to the rights and freedoms of other data subjects in accordance with this Regulation. Furthermore, that right should not prejudice the right of the data subject to obtain the erasure of personal data and the limitations of that right as set out in this Regulation and should, in particular, not imply the erasure of personal data concerning the data subject which have been provided by him or her for the performance of a contract to the extent that and for as long as the personal data are necessary for the performance of that contract. Where technically feasible, the data subject should have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another.

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Further Information

This version of the UK GDPR is offered purely as what we hope will be a helpful resource. It does not have the status of law, and should not be relied on as such. Nor do we guarantee it is free from errors. It was originally prepared using a Keeling Schedule made available by the UK Government.

Since then, a consolidated version has also been made available on the legislation.gov.uk pages.

By virtue of section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018, the GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) was retained in United Kingdom law as "direct EU legislation". However, the effect of the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, as amended by the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, was, from 1 January 2021, immediately to make changes to the retained GDPR, and to refer to it as the "UK GDPR". These pages reflect those changes.

This resource includes links to the GDPR recitals. The explanatory notes to the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018 confirm that where legislation is converted under section 3, it is the text of the legislation itself which will form part of domestic legislation, and this will include the full text of any EU instrument (including its recitals). Accordingly, recitals will continue to be interpreted as they were prior to the UK’s exit from the EU. They will, as before, be capable of casting light on the interpretation to be given to a legal rule, but they will not themselves have the status of a legal rule. However, it stands to reason that – as the recitals themselves have not been amended – they will in places contain language and references to EU bodies and rules which no longer apply to the UK.

In this resource we link Articles of the UK GDPR to the corresponding recitals. In deciding which recitals correspond to which Articles of UK GDPR, we have drawn on the working document of the EU GDPR which the Information Commissioner had previously published in 2017.