Consultation on draft guidance about anonymisation, pseudonymisation and research

Overview

The Information Commissioner’s Office is consulting on our draft guidance on the use of anonymisation and pseudonymisation for research, archiving and statistical purposes. 

Your responses will help us identify where we can provide greater clarity or practical support before we publish the final version of the guidance. 

We welcome your feedback on the questions in this survey. They are split into the following sections: 

• Section 1: About you and your organisation 

• Section 2: Your use of anonymisation and pseudonymisation for research, archiving or statistical purposes 

• Section 3: Your views on the guidance 

• Section 4: Questions about particular parts of the guidance 

• Section 5: Any additional comments about the guidance 

The consultation will remain open until the end of Wednesday 14 October 2026. We may not consider responses received after this deadline. 

Why your views matter

Privacy statement 

For this consultation, depending on your preference, we may publish responses received from organisations in full or publish a summary of responses. If we publish consultation responses, we will remove email addresses, telephone numbers and other personal information where appropriate. Please do not include information in your response that you would not be content for us to make publicly available. 

If we receive a request under freedom of information legislation for your response, we will consider the request in accordance with the relevant legislation. Where appropriate, we may contact you for your views before making a disclosure decision. 

For more information about how we use personal information, please read the ICO privacy notice section on responding to our consultations and surveys. 

We use Citizen Space to collect consultation responses on our behalf. Citizen Space is supplied by Delib.