A number of Building and construction companies in Britain are at risk of receiving hefty fines because of new Data Protection rules that are being put into place. The new wide ranging rules have been introduced that will change the way businesses are able to process personal information that they have access to. The government’s GDPR will replace the data protection laws that are already in place. The new rules are set to come into action in less than a year and the consequences of breaking the new rules are harsher than previously.

According to a survey that has been carried out by YouGov, only 30% of the 190 different construction firms that were asked knew that there were new rules coming into force. This is event more concerning when the results of the study showed that the maximum fine for breaching the new data protection rules would make 25% of the construction businesses go out of business. The new General Data Protection Regulations will come into force on the 25th of May 2018 and it has been stated that the maximum fine for specific data breaches that occur in the UK will increase from £500,000 to €20 million or 4% of the company’s global turnover, depending on which figure is larger.

From the results of the YouGov survey, 77% of the construction companies that were asked said that they were unaware of the new fines that are going to be implemented next year. It is thought that by the regulations some data breaches that would have an impact on privacy must see the Regulator notified within 72 hours. Although, further research that has been carried out by Irwin Mitchell has discovered that only18% of construction companies could be certain that they have the ability to detect a data breach in their organisation. 27% of companies have expressed confidence being able to inform the relevant stakeholders inside the required three day time period.