The UK writes access to customer and business data into law
The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 gives government the power to set up schemes that let customers and businesses get their data shared with services they choose.
Picture made for ABUREAU.
On 19 June 2025 the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 received Royal Assent. Its first purpose, in its own words, is to make provision about access to customer data and business data.
The Act lets the government create so-called smart data schemes, sector by sector, in which a business must share a customer's data, or data about its own goods and services, with a third party the customer authorises. Open banking is the model. The same Act reforms parts of UK data protection law, sets up an Information Commission in place of the Information Commissioner, and makes provision on copyright and the development of AI.
For owners, the shift is the same one Europe's Data Act made: data about a customer is treated less as the private stock of whoever collected it and more as something the customer can direct. Holding data no longer means keeping it to yourself. What is left to compete on is how well it is kept, described and offered.
