Subject Access Request to Acas

Most people searching for this want Acas's advice on making a request to their employer, not a request to Acas itself. If that is you, start with asking an employer for your HR file, and you can write the request free without paying anyone. Acas used to publish its own guidance and a template letter for this; it has archived them and now points readers to GOV.UK and the Information Commissioner's Office instead, so there is no Acas template to find. What Acas holds about you as an organisation in its own right is much narrower: early conciliation and tribunal conciliation case records, notes made by a conciliator, correspondence, helpline contact records, and records of people who used its training or arbitration services. Retention is the fact that decides whether asking is worth it, and Acas publishes it. After a case closes it "usually" keeps early conciliation data for 9 months and employment tribunal conciliation data for 6 months, and then securely destroys it. Helpline recordings and transcripts are kept for 35 days — shorter than the month Acas has to answer a request. If the records matter to you, ask early. A request will not get you what the other side said. Acas does not record conciliation calls at all: it says that "to make sure conciliation cases are confidential, calls relating to conciliation services are not recorded". It treats what each party tells a conciliator as covered by legal privilege and will not pass it to the other side without clear permission, which cuts both ways. Section 18 of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 then makes anything communicated to a conciliation officer inadmissible in employment tribunal proceedings without the consent of the person who said it. Acas covers England, Wales and Scotland. In Northern Ireland the equivalent body is the Labour Relations Agency. Acas publishes no identity-document list and no response time of its own, so the usual month applies. It publishes no route for records about a person who has died either — data protection rights end at death, and conciliation files are usually destroyed within 9 months of a case closing in any event.

Made under UK GDPR Article 15

Any organisation that decides how and why your personal data is used is a data controller, and must respond to a subject access request. That covers retailers, employers, membership bodies, landlords, charities, gyms and online services alike.

The organisation must confirm whether it is processing your data, provide a copy of it, and explain why it holds it, who it shares it with and how long it keeps it. There is normally no fee.

• All personal data held about you
• Correspondence and internal notes referring to you
• Account, order or membership history
• Call recordings and chat transcripts
• Marketing preferences and consent records

Deadline. An organisation must respond without undue delay and within one month. It may extend by up to two further months where the request is complex or you have made a number of requests, but it must tell you within the first month that it is doing so, and why.

Cost. There is normally no fee. A reasonable fee may only be charged where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, or where you ask for further copies.

Proving who you are. An organisation may ask you to verify your identity, but only where it has reasonable doubts about who you are, and it should ask for the minimum needed. Where it needs further information to deal with your request, the one-month clock pauses until you provide it.

How hard they have to look. An organisation has to carry out a reasonable and proportionate search — not an exhaustive one. What counts as reasonable depends on the volume of information, the difficulty of locating it, and the size and resources of the organisation. This is a common reason for a partial response, and it is worth being specific about what you want.

If they ignore you. Complain to the organisation first. Since 19 June 2026 every organisation has had a legal duty to give you a clear way to raise a data protection complaint, to acknowledge it within 30 days, to look into it properly and to tell you the outcome. If it does not, or the answer is incomplete, you can then complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.