Subject Access Request to Hampshire County Council

Say which service you mean, because Hampshire runs three separate subject access routes and they do not share a mailbox. Children's Services records go to the Childrens Services Subject Access Request Team, 2nd Floor North, E11 Court, Winchester, SO23 8UG, or childrens.services.sar@hants.gov.uk. Adult social care records go to the Adult Social Care Subject Access Request Team, 3rd Floor West, E11 Court, Winchester SO23 8UQ, or adult.services.sar@hants.gov.uk, and that team publishes a telephone number for its own service, 0300 555 1386. Everything else — schools and education, highways, libraries, trading standards, waste, employment records, complaint files — goes to the Information Compliance Team at the address above, using the application form. Only the first two have an email route on the council's page; the third is a posted form. The timescale is on the form rather than the web page: "you are entitled to access your personal information held by Hampshire County Council within 1 calendar month of us receiving and verifying your completed application". The same figure appears on the council's children's records page. Both attach it to a validated request, so the identity documents are what starts the clock. CCTV is the one route where the council mentions money, and its own two documents disagree. The web page says to "send the completed form with appropriate payment and documentation to the Information Compliance Team"; the form that page links to names no fee at all and says only that "in a few cases, we may make a charge for supplying information but we will tell you in advance if we think this will be the case". No amount is published anywhere. A subject access request is normally free, and a fee is only lawful where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive or you are asking for further copies, so ask what the charge is for before paying one. One other CCTV point the council does publish: "no images are recorded from the County Council's CCTV traffic surveillance cameras". Do not use the council's online Data Subject's Rights request form for a subject access request. It is introduced by the words "if you would like to exercise any of the rights above", and the rights listed above it are direct marketing, automated decisions, rectification, restriction, erasure and portability. Access is not among them, and it is handled by the three routes at the top of the same page. One mismatch worth knowing before you post. The web page addresses the general route to the Information Compliance Team; the form it links to asks you to return it to the "Data Protection Officer, Information Governance Team, Hampshire County Council, Corporate Services, The Castle, Winchester". Same building, same postcode, two team names. Either arrives, and the form also carries a data protection telephone number, 01962 847374 or 667958, which appears nowhere on the council's website. Hampshire is a county council, so district and borough councils are separate controllers. Council tax, housing benefit, homelessness and planning in most of Hampshire are your district or borough council's, not the county's, and need their own request. If a reply arrives and you cannot tell whether it is complete, our free response checker will show you what is missing.

Made under UK GDPR Article 15, subject to the social work exemption in Schedule 3, Part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018

Councils hold an unusually wide spread of personal data across services that rarely talk to each other: children's and adult social care, housing and homelessness, council tax and benefits, planning, licensing, education, and complaints. A request that does not say which service you mean tends to be routed to one department and answered narrowly.

Social care files are the most commonly requested and the most heavily redacted. They are written by multiple professionals about multiple people, so a child protection or adult safeguarding file will contain a great deal of information about family members and reporting parties. Schedule 3, Part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 also allows a council to withhold social work data where disclosure would be likely to prejudice the carrying out of social work by causing serious harm.

Naming the service, the approximate dates and any reference number you have is worth more here than in any other category. It is the difference between a targeted file and a generic council tax printout.

• Children's services and social care case files
• Adult safeguarding records
• Housing applications, homelessness decisions and disrepair reports
• Council tax and housing benefit records
• Complaint files and internal correspondence about you

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.