Subject Access Request to Plusnet

Which company holds your data. Plusnet's privacy notice is a joint notice covering two controllers: "Where we use the words 'We' or 'Our' we mean either Plusnet plc or British Telcommunications plc – both part of the BT Group" (Plusnet's spelling). The one responsible for you "will be the company that is named in any terms and conditions or messages sent to you", so check the name on your contract before you ask. Plusnet plc has its own ICO registration, Z9901036, separate from BT's Z5164594 and EE's Z7510687. Business customers — sole traders, partnerships and companies — are outside this notice and have a different route. Plusnet has its own request form, and it is not the same as BT's. Both sit on BT Group's platform, but Plusnet's is Plusnet-branded and skips the brand question BT's asks. That matters, because BT's form gives BT's answers even when you tell it you are a Plusnet customer: it says a free copy of your bill is in "your MyBT account", which a Plusnet customer does not have, and it quotes BT's retention periods rather than Plusnet's. Use the form linked from Plusnet's own privacy notice, which is the one above. Check whether you need a request at all. Plusnet says: "If you want a copy of your billing information, the quickest way to access this information is by logging in to your Plusnet account or alternatively, you can call us at 0330 1239 123." Its request form says the same thing and gives a different number — "you can instantly obtain this free of charge when you login in to your Member Center" and "Alternatively, please call 0800 432 0200 and we'll send it to you. (You must be the account holder to ask for this information)." Both are free, and neither of those numbers is a way of making a request. A request is for everything that is not in there. Ask early, because the windows are short and Plusnet prints them inside the form rather than on the privacy notice. Call recordings: "Call recordings are kept for 1 year and then are automatically deleted in accordance with our policy." Itemised call records: "Itemised call records are kept for 15 months." Bills: "we keep bills for a period of 15 months." Chat: "Chat transcripts are only kept for 12 months." Plusnet's privacy notice suggests otherwise — its retention table puts customer service records including calls and online chats at "Up to 6 years from the date of the interaction" and bills at "6 years from the date of the bill / 15 months", a single cell giving two answers. Plan around the shorter figures: they are the more specific, and they are the ones printed at the point of asking. Incoming calls and free numbers will not appear. Plusnet says itemised records cover "the people you call (from your home/mobile)" and that "It does not include records of incoming calls (i.e. the numbers that have called you)". Free numbers are excluded too — "itemised call records don't include records of any free numbers like '0800' or '999' calls". On timing, Plusnet says: "It will normally take us up to one month to complete your request, but it could take longer (up to a further two months) if it's a complicated request or you send us a lot of requests at once." Asking for someone else, and for someone who has died. "If you are making a request on behalf of someone else, you must provide written evidence of this authority", uploaded with the form. Where the person has died Plusnet refuses outright: "If the request relates to a deceased person, please note we will not be able to provide this information as part of an individual right request." Its bereavement page covers cancelling or transferring the account and says nothing about records, so Plusnet publishes no route to them at all. There is no email route. Plusnet's privacy notice publishes no data protection email address, and the same online form serves its "make a complaint to our data protection officer" link. cpo@bt.com appears on the ICO register against six BT-family registrations, but Plusnet does not ask anyone to use it, so it is not printed above. A request does not have to be made on an organisation's own form, and our free letter template will produce one — though note the Data Privacy Team address above is published for comments and questions about the privacy notice rather than as a stated request route, so the form is what Plusnet is set up to receive. Plusnet's own building, published for written complaints and for contractual notice but on no page as a data protection route, is Plusnet Plc, Endeavour, Sheffield Digital Campus, 1a Concourse Way, Sheffield S1 2BJ. Plusnet Mobile has closed. Plusnet says "Plusnet Mobile has now closed" and points former mobile customers at EE for a new plan — but that is a sales route, not a records route. Plusnet plc remains the registered controller for mobile records, because Plusnet Mobile is one of its own ICO trading names, and its form still offers Mobile as a product. Broadband is unaffected. A service complaint is a different thing again: Ofcom's approved schemes put Plusnet with the Communications Ombudsman rather than CISAS, and Plusnet says the Ombudsman "will not review any complaint which is less than 6 weeks old unless we agree we cannot do anything further and have provided you with a deadlock letter". A complaint about how Plusnet handled your request goes to the Information Commissioner's Office instead. When Plusnet's response arrives, check whether it is complete — and if parts are held back, Plusnet warns it "might not be able to provide you with information if it would infringe someone else's rights", which is one of the recognised limits on the right.

Made under UK GDPR Article 15

Telecoms providers hold account and billing records, itemised usage, call recordings and chat transcripts from customer service, contact and complaint notes, and the credit checks run when the contract was opened.

Requests here usually follow a billing dispute, a contract taken out fraudulently in the person's name, or a complaint that went nowhere. Call recordings and chat transcripts are typically the useful part, because they show what was actually promised.

Records of who you called or messaged and when are traffic data, and a provider has to erase or anonymise them once they are no longer needed to carry the communication or to bill you for it. That is why usage records reach back months where account paperwork survives for years, and it is the main reason a request made long after the events comes back with less in it than the person expected.

• Account and billing history
• Call recordings and live chat transcripts
• Customer service contact and complaint notes
• Credit checks run at contract opening
• Records of a contract you say you did not open

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.