The Data and Marketing Association (DMA) has called on the Government to introduce further exemptions from cookie consent requirements for a wider range of “routine, low-risk functions”.
Already, the Government has been urged to take advantage of new powers under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 to relax the rules relating to storage and access technologies such as cookies and scripts, governed by Regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR).
Earlier this year, for example, we discussed here advice from the Information Commission’s Office (ICO) that an exemption be introduced to the Regulation 6 PECR requirements which would allow publishers to store and access information on a user’s device without their consent for certain low-risk advertising purposes. As the ICO explained, the change could help address so-called ‘consent fatigue’ while encouraging the development of privacy-enhancing alternatives to more intrusive behavioural advertising models.
The DMA has called on the Government to adopt the ICO’s recommendations, but also to go further and extend exemptions to other low-risk uses beyond advertising, including:
- Service delivery;
- Security;
- Fraud and bot detection;
- Measurement; and
- Accessibility and language preferences.
The DMA also argued that the Government should allow “relevant advertising and measurement within a company’s own relationship with its customers, on strict conditions” and recognise pseudonymisation and other privacy-enhancing technologies “as a route to low risk status”. At the same time, it called for consent requirements to be retained for sensitive data, for profiling children, and for tracking people across unrelated websites.
The Government has previously confirmed that it is considering how to use its new powers to introduce further exemptions from the PECR consent requirements, however there is no indication of when that might be, or whether the changes will be along the lines of those proposed by the ICO or DMA.
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