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Government consultation on data intermediaries closes tonight after an extension

Responses to the DSIT and DCMS consultation on removing barriers for data intermediaries have to be in by 11.59pm on 7 September. It sets out legislative and non-legislative options, including on whether people can delegate their data rights to a third party.

Daily Tech Times ·

The government’s consultation on data intermediaries closes at 11.59pm tonight, 7 September, after the response window was extended.

Run by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, it opened on 1 May and asks how to remove the barriers facing data intermediaries, the third-party organisations that act on someone’s behalf to exercise their data subject rights.

What the consultation covers

The department defines data intermediaries broadly, spanning secure personal data storage through to services that let people donate health data for research. The common thread is a company acting for an individual so that person can access, manage or share data they contributed to or helped generate.

A call for evidence published last year identified three problems that this consultation now proposes to address:

  • awareness, in that many people do not know what data subject rights they have or how using them might benefit them
  • friction, in that third-party data access requests are often slow and burdensome, and the organisations holding the data have little incentive to improve that
  • legal ambiguity, in particular confusion about the legal role of a data intermediary and whether an individual can delegate their data subject rights to one

The department describes that last point as underpinning the other two. For anyone building a business on acting for users, whether their delegated authority is legally solid is not a detail.

The options on the table

The consultation sets out both legislative and non-legislative options. The document notes that some are more direct while others are quicker to implement, and that some are aimed at longer-term structural change. They are presented as complementary, so they can be taken forward individually or together rather than as a single choice.

What to do before tonight

Responses go through the consultation page. The full document is published on GOV.UK in both print-ready and web-accessible versions, and the response deadline is 11.59pm on 7 September 2026.

For founders building consent, personal data or data-portability products, this is the point at which the legal footing for delegated data rights is being decided, and the window to say so closes tonight.

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