The ICO exists to empower you through information.

If your Sandbox application is successful, a member of the team will be in touch to tell you when we can expect to begin the development of your bespoke Sandbox plan. Subject to capacity, and your readiness to participate, we may be in a position to start this work straight away. Otherwise, you may be given an estimated date for when your participation can begin, or you may be placed onto a waiting list.

You will also receive a statement of ‘comfort from enforcement’. This will state that any inadvertent contravention to the data protection legislation as a result of product or service development, whilst participating in the Sandbox, will not immediately lead to regulatory action. This comfort will depend on you maintaining a collaborative and cooperative dialogue with the ICO and the Sandbox Team.

We will ask you to sign a copy of our terms and conditions prior to the beginning of your participation.

Following acceptance of the terms laid out in the letter of entry, your dedicated Sandbox team member will be in touch to arrange a meeting or call to begin developing your bespoke Sandbox plan.

Prior to this meeting, we may ask you to complete either the ICO’s data protection self-assessment checklist or small businesses checklist. The purpose of this is solely to help ICO tailor the Sandbox plan to your requirements.

Within the meeting, we will aim to discuss the following in more detail:

  • The proposed innovation in more detail.
  • The level of data protection understanding your organisation has and whether you require some additional support which needs to be factored into your Sandbox plan.
  • The data protection challenges or grey areas which you require ICO support on.
  • Your organisational requirements and how we will engage with each other throughout participation.
  • Your objectives and the tasks we will complete collaboratively to achieve your aims.

We hope to provide a bespoke service to each organisation within the Sandbox. This means that we will be flexible to your organisation’s requirements and timescales wherever possible.

We expect to finalise the plan with you as soon as possible, but within a maximum of four weeks following our initial meeting.