Purplebricks is facing a renewed demand to hand over documents relating to ‘self-employed’ LPEs and territory owners.

A group making a claim against Purplebricks on behalf of LPEs and TOs says the troubled agency has failed to meet deadlines to provide invoice copies.

A ‘Subject Access Request’ under the Data Protection Act 2018 requesting the invoices in July, was not complied with by Purplebricks, the group says, and a complaint was made to the Information Commissioner.

Now, Contractors for Justice (C4J) says documents have still not been forthcoming, and is planning to make an ‘application for discovery’ through Lincoln Magistrates Court with a preliminary hearing next week.

Aidan Loy, the Legal Director at C4J, said at the time of the complaint to the Information Commissioner: “It beggars belief that a public limited company with over 400 employees is unable to meet such a simple, statutory deadline.

“In fact, they were not even capable of meeting their own subsequent, revised, self-imposed deadline and consequently they are in breach of the Data Protection Act, for which I have now had no alternative but to report them to the Information Commissioner.

“One wonders if such a disregard for the rules is incompetence or arrogance? Frankly, it has to be one or the other.”

New director

A Purplebricks spokesperson said in September that all the information that C4J requested had been delivered to them.

Helen Martin was made director of risk and compliance at Purplebricks in August after a series of gaffes. The agency faced multi-million pound fines last year following its failure to complete the mandatory paperwork for an unspecified number of deposits.

In 2020, the company was given a fine of more than £266k by HM Revenue & Customs for breaches of money laundering rules.