The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued £2m in fines since a change in the law allowing it to crack down on nuisance marketing, an increase of more than 565 per cent on the preceding 12 months.

As the law stands, companies intending to make marketing phone calls without prior permission must first check the Telephone Preference Service, which lists individuals who have opted out of marketing calls.

Prior permission is required before companies can send marketing text messages, however, and companies should always inform the recipient of how they can opt out of any future messages.

Since the change in the law was introduced, the ICO has issued £2,035,000 in fines, compared £360,000 over the previous 12 months. The most recent firm to be fined, a Scottish nuisance calling firm which made 2.5 million recorded calls attempting to flog home improvement services, will be named this week.

The Scottish spam artists will be the 19th firm the regulator has taken action against since the law changed in April 2015.

Companies the ICO has fined have been behind 55 million nuisance calls, more than a million text messages and hundreds of thousands of emails.

The fines range from a £5,000 penalty issued to an MP who made recorded calls as part of an election campaign, to a record £350,000 fine for a firm that made 40 million nuisance calls.

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said: “This time last year we promised that these changes to the law would make a difference, and they have. The fines we’ve issued should mean fewer calls next year. But we know there’s more to do. We’ve got more fines in the pipeline, and more ways to stop the nuisance these calls create.”

“The law change put forward today around caller ID is another step forward. We know that people are more likely to complain to us when they can see the number behind the call they’ve received. Those complaints inform many of our investigations, lead to fines and, ultimately, stop the calls,” concluded Graham. ®