Boost your business fitness with free training from the ICO

Published: 20/08/26

At the North and Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, we know that our members small businesses are juggling lots of competing pressures, and it can be hard to know what to make a priority.

Making sure that the personal information you hold is stored securely and used responsibly in line with the law should be right up there, but it can be hard to know exactly how data protection applies to your business and where to start.

That’s why the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, has launched Data Protection Essentials. It’s a free online training and self-assessment programme, created especially for small and medium-sized organisations, their employees, and sole traders, to help them get to grips with the fundamentals.

It breaks things down into manageable, confidence building steps, which you can tackle at your own pace. By the time you finish you’ll have clear guidance to take the guesswork out of data protection and the practical know-how to apply the essentials confidently in your everyday work.

Think of it like a data protection couch-to-5k for your business. You can also invite up to two other staff to go through the training as well.

Once you’ve completed the training, you’ll take a short self-assessment that will give you a clear picture of how your organisation handles personal information and where small improvements could make the biggest difference. You’ll get a certificate to show you’ve completed the training and can choose to appear on the Data Protection Essentials public register, demonstrating your commitment to getting it right.