The watchdog fined Home Energy & Lifestyle Management Ltd (HELM) £200,000 after finding it had "recklessly" breached the UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).
"An ICO investigation discovered that HELM made over six million calls as part of a massive automated call marketing campaign offering ‘free’ solar panels," the ICO said in a statement. "An organisation should have people’s permission, which specifically names the company concerned, in order to make automated calls, but the ICO found this wasn’t the case, with the company admitting it didn’t even know what the rules were."
HELM has said it will appeal against the fine and blamed the problems on a third party.
In its monetary penalty notice (17-page / 131KB PDF) served to HELM, the ICO said that it had received 242 complaints about marketing calls consumers had received from the company. Upon investigating, the ICO found that nearly 60,000 consumers had received marketing calls from the company that they had not consented to. An opt-out feature the company offered "was not always effective" meaning some consumers received repeat calls from HELM, the ICO said.
The watchdog said the company was liable for a serious breach of PECR.
“This company’s ignorance of the law is beyond belief," Steve Eckersley, head of enforcement at the ICO, said. "It didn’t even bother to find out what the rules were and its badly thought out marketing campaign made people’s lives a misery. The monetary penalty is for a significant amount because of the clear failings of the company, and the number of people affected by its deliberate and unlawful campaign."
"It should be a warning to other companies to think before they launch into a campaign. Direct marketing campaigns can be run within the law with a little thought and there’s plenty of advice available to companies in the ICO’s website," he said.
Simon Entwistle, deputy chief executive at the ICO, told BBC One's 'Breakfast' programme that there is a further £1 million worth of fines "in the pipeline" in relation to non-compliance with PECR which the ICO expects to announce before the end of 2015. The ICO has the power to serve fines of up to £500,000 against an organisation that breaches PECR.
A statement from HELM’s legal representatives said: “During 2015 Helms have been subject to an investigation by the ICO in relation to wrongly using an automated marketing campaign by telephone calls to consumers. Helms had in fact stopped using the campaign before the ICO investigation commenced. Helms used a reputable third party company to provide software for the marketing campaign and for the making of all calls, which were carried out by an automatic dialing machine. Helms had significant difficulty in fully co-operating with the ICO, owing to the failure of the third party company to give any information to verify and explain the extent of the calls made.”
The statement confirmed that HELM plans to appeal against the ICO’s fine. The company said the watchdog had “seemingly disregarded” the representations it made in relation to the case. HELM said it will “also be taking proceedings against the third party company in relation to this issue”.
“Helms are extremely disappointed that the ICO elected to deal with the investigations in this manner, before hearing the appeal,” the statement said. “Helms are also surprised that details of the case have been leaked to the media in advance of the notification release date.”
Editor's Note 30/09/2015: This article has been updated to include the statement issued by HELM.