Privacy Act deadline calculator

How this is worked out

Section 7 of the Privacy Act 2020 defines a working day. It excludes weekends; Waitangi Day; Good Friday; Easter Monday; Anzac Day; the Sovereign's birthday; Matariki; Labour Day; the following Monday when Waitangi Day or Anzac Day falls on a weekend; and every day from 25 December to 15 January.

Regional anniversary days are not excluded, so Auckland Anniversary Day still counts as a working day for this purpose.

The count starts the day after the agency receives the request. The agency must respond "as soon as reasonably practicable", and no later than the deadline. The deadline is the outer limit.

What the response must include

By the deadline the agency must tell you whether it holds information about you and whether it will give you access. It can extend the time limit in some circumstances, but it has to tell you within the original period, say how long the extension is and why, and tell you that you can complain to the Privacy Commissioner about it.

If the deadline passes with no response, treat the request as refused. You can complain to the Privacy Commissioner. Our request letter builder writes the follow-up for you.

The calculator's logic is open source and tested against hand-worked examples. See tests/nzdates.test.js in the repository.