EA/2023/0314.FP - [2025] UKFTT 01119 (GRC)

The Appellant had instigated the making unsolicited calls for direct marketing purposes to subscribers whose numbers were already held on the no-call list held under reg 26 of PECR. This resulted in a large number of complaints being made to the TPS and the Commissioner. Since 2018, the Commissioner and the TPS have received several hundred complaints about other CLIs that appear to be associated with the Appellant;

there was no evidence that any of the subscribers on the no-call list had notified the Appellant under reg 21(4) of their willingness to receive marketing calls from the company. Nor had the Appellant provided the recipient of the calls with the information required under reg 24(1);

The Appellant's contravention of regs 21 and 24 was serious given the number of breaches and their nature, i.e. calling subscribers who had registered with the TPS or CPTS and had not notified the Appellant under reg 21(4) that they were willing to receive such calls;

The contravention was also serious due to the frequency and content of the calls, including making multiple calls over a short period of time, the use of aggressive and misleading sales tactics to persuade businesses to change energy suppliers, causing distress to individuals who were on the receiving end of calls and potential financial damage to businesses who agreed to switch suppliers based on inaccurate information;

The Appellant's contravention was deliberate, given the persistent nature of the calls, the ignoring of suppression requests, the use of spoofed CLI numbers and withholding caller's name and identity. In addition, the Appellant's use of TPIs and overseas call centres appears to have been adopted to avoid it being identified as the instigator of the calls. In the alternative, the Commissioner was satisfied that the Appellant should have been aware of its responsibilities under the PECR and that it failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the contravention, e.g. by conducting proper due diligence on AT and screening the data against the TPS itself before providing it to call centres;

There were no mitigating factors;

The Appellant's procedural rights under s55B had been respected, including by way of the Commissioner's decision to issue a Notice of Intent on 14 December 2022, setting out his preliminary thinking, and his taking the Appellant's representations into account before issuing the Penalty Notice on 30 May 2023;

It was appropriate for the Commissioner to exercise his discretion to issue a penalty in this case in order to encourage compliance with the law and deter non-compliance. The Commissioner had taken into account the factors in s108(2) of the Deregulation Act 2015. The Appellant had been invited to provided financial representations in response to the Commissioner's notice of intent but failed to do so; and

A penalty of £120,000 was reasonable and proportionate given the particular facts of the case and the underlying objective in imposing the penalty.