Purplebricks faces info request complaint weeks after new compliance head appointed
Contractors for Justice (C4J), the group behind a class legal action against the struggling agency, has reported it to the Information Commissioner.
Purplebricks has been reported to the Information Commissioner just a few weeks after appointing a senior director to improve its record on compliance.
A group making a claim against Purplebricks on behalf of ‘self-employed’ LPEs and territory owners 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, has not been complied with by Purplebricks.
Now, Contractors for Justice (C4J) has complained to the Commissioner saying that after requesting a time extension Purplebricks has still not provided the information.

Aidan Loy, the Legal Director at C4J, says: “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.”
A Purplebricks spokesperson said that all the information that C4J requested had been delivered to them.
Gaffes

Helen Martin was made director of risk and compliance in August after a series of gaffes. Purplebricks 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.
Loy adds: “The shiny new appointment of a compliance head would appear, on recent form, to be nothing, but a mitigating headline rather than anything of substance”.