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Privacy Act 2020

Notifiable privacy breaches and compliance notices - Compliance notices - Proceedings

131: Appeal against compliance notice or Commissioner’s decision to vary or cancel notice

You could also call this:

“You can challenge a compliance notice or changes to it”

If you receive a compliance notice, you can appeal to the Tribunal. You can appeal against all or part of the notice, or against the Commissioner’s decision to change or cancel the notice.

You need to lodge your appeal within 15 working days from when you get the compliance notice or when you’re told about the decision.

The Tribunal can allow your appeal and order a remedy if they think the notice or decision doesn’t follow the law, or if they think the Commissioner should have made a different decision. They can also allow your appeal if you’ve fully followed the compliance notice.

The Tribunal can look at any facts that the compliance notice or decision was based on.

The Tribunal can’t cancel or change a compliance notice just because you didn’t mean to break the rules or because you’ve tried to fix the problem. However, if there’s nothing else you can reasonably do to fix the problem, the Tribunal might consider that.

If you want to know more about the remedies the Tribunal can order, you can look at section 133(1)(b).

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=LMS23524.

Topics:
Rights and equality > Privacy
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Part 6 Notifiable privacy breaches and compliance notices
Compliance notices: Proceedings

131Appeal against compliance notice or Commissioner’s decision to vary or cancel notice

  1. An agency that has been issued with a compliance notice may appeal to the Tribunal—

  2. against all or part of the notice; or
    1. against a decision by the Commissioner to vary or cancel the notice.

      1. An appeal must be lodged within 15 working days from the day on which the compliance notice is issued or the notice of the decision is given to the agency.

      2. The Tribunal may allow an appeal and order a remedy under section 133(1)(b) if it considers that—

      3. the compliance notice or decision against which the appeal is brought is not in accordance with the law; or
        1. to the extent that the compliance notice or decision involved an exercise of discretion by the Commissioner, the Commissioner ought to have exercised that discretion differently; or
          1. the agency has fully complied with the compliance notice.

            1. The Tribunal may review any determination of fact on which the compliance notice or decision was based.

            2. The Tribunal must not cancel or modify a compliance notice for the reason that—

            3. the breach was unintentional or without negligence on the part of the agency; or
              1. the agency has taken steps to remedy the breach, unless there is no further reasonable step that the agency can take to do so.

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