EU Regulation 2016/679 - Decision Register

ICO / 2024 / 17383/MONETARY PENALTY

Breathe Services Ltd

Monetary penaltyPECR 200312 December 2024

None

Financial penalty

Monetary penalty, no fine

12 December 2024

Date on the register

PECR 2003

Law relied on

provision not named

Sector not stated

Sector

35 actions on the register

In one line

The ICO issued Breathe Services Ltd with a monetary penalty on 12 December 2024 under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. No financial penalty attaches to it.

01The record

Organisation named
Breathe Services Ltd
Action
Monetary penalty
Date published
12 December 2024
Register year
2024
Law relied on
PECR 2003
Provisions cited
Not named in the published notice
Penalty
Not stated in the published entry
Sector on the register
Sector not stated
ICO register reference
17383
Register status
Published on the ICO enforcement register, 4 September 2026
Notice documents
2 PDFs published by the ICO
Sector share of register
35 of 216 actions (16%)
Actions published that year
52
Actions under this law
87
Position on the register
161st of 216, oldest first
Published the same day
3 actions dated 12 December 2024
Calls or messages recorded
4,376,037
Complaints recorded
58
Entries for this organisation
2 on this register

02What happened, and where it sits

Breathe Services Ltd received an ICO monetary penalty on 12 December 2024. The Commissioner acted under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. A fine. The ICO issues a monetary penalty notice setting out the contravention and the sum payable. PECR is a separate instrument from the UK GDPR, so this is an ICO penalty under the marketing rules and not a GDPR fine.

The register entry for this penalty does not state the sum, and no single unambiguous figure could be read from the published notice, so no amount is shown here. The linked notice is the authority for the amount.

The notice puts numbers on the contravention: 4,376,037 marketing calls or messages and 58 complaints. Those figures are the ICO's, taken from the published notice for this action.

The register entry does not assign this action to a sector. In 2024 the ICO published 52 enforcement actions in total, 17 of them monetary penalties. 87 actions on the register name PECR 2003.

Counted from the oldest entry forward, this is the 161st of 216 actions on the register. The ICO published 3 actions on 12 December 2024, so this one was part of a batch: Money Bubble Ltd EN (enforcement notice) and Money Bubble Ltd MPN (monetary penalty). Breathe Services Ltd appears 2 times on this register: monetary penalty on 12 December 2024 and enforcement notice on 12 December 2024. The ICO publishes 2 documents for this action, 792 KB in total: "Breathe Services monetary penalty notice" and "Rogue companies receive fines totalling £290k for making millions of nuisance calls". They are the authority for everything on this page.

03The ICO's own account

Breathe Services Ltd (BSL), a debt advice company based in Bolton, first came to the attention of the ICO as part of a wider investigation into complaints received about unsolicited phone calls to potentially vulnerable individuals.

In a failed attempt to hide their real identity, BSL was found to have spoofed its outbound phone number by presenting over 1,000 different telephone numbers on calls. In March 2023 the ICO carried out a search at BSL’s office in Bolton, seizing evidence including documents and electronic devices.

Our extensive investigation revealed that between March - July 2022 and October - December 2022, BSL bombarded people with 4,376,037 unsolicited direct marketing calls to numbers that had been registered to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). This resulted in 58 complaints to the TPS and a further 193 complaints to the ICO.

Quoted from the ICO's published register entry (ico.org.uk), Open Government Licence v3.0.

The law behind this action

PECR 2003

PECR governs electronic marketing, cookies and communications-service security. It is a separate instrument from the UK GDPR: an action taken under PECR is not a GDPR fine, and the register pages here never describe it as one.

All 87 register actions under PECR 2003

What a monetary penalty does

A fine. The ICO issues a monetary penalty notice setting out the contravention and the sum payable.

04Other entries for Breathe Services Ltd

1 further entry on the register
OrganisationDateActionLawPenaltySector
Breathe Services Ltd12 Dec 2024Enforcement noticePECR 2003-Sector not stated

05Published the same day

2 other actions carry the date 12 December 2024
OrganisationDateActionLawPenaltySector
Money Bubble Ltd EN12 Dec 2024Enforcement noticePECR 2003-General business
Money Bubble Ltd MPN12 Dec 2024Monetary penaltyPECR 2003£120,000General business

06Nearest entries on the register

All Sector not stated actions/All 2024 actions/The full register

07Work out an exposure of your own

Provenance and independence

Source: ICO enforcement register (ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/enforcement/), as published on 4 September 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

GDPRFine.com is an independent tracker of ICO enforcement. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the Information Commissioner's Office, and it uses no ICO branding. Where the ICO's own wording is reproduced it is quoted and attributed; everything else on these pages is our own summary of the published record.

The ICO's register held 222 entries on that date. 6 of them are prosecutions of named individuals, with ages and home towns in the ICO's own summary. This tracker indexes organisations, so those 6 are excluded and every count on these pages is out of 216. They remain on the ICO's own register.

An entry says what the Commissioner did on the date shown. It is not a statement about the organisation today, and the ICO can amend or remove a register entry at any time. Amounts and provisions are as published by the ICO; where the published notice does not state a figure or name a provision, these pages say so rather than filling the gap. This entry was read from the register page at https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/enforcement/2024/12/breathe-services-ltd-mpn/.

Register: ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/enforcement/. Corrections: [email protected].

REGISTER UPDATED 2026-04-28