PAIA manual.

About this manual

The Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (PAIA) lets you ask for records a business holds when you need them to use or protect a right. This manual tells you what records we hold, which you can have without asking formally, how to ask for the others and what it costs, and how we process personal information under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

Version 1, October 2026. We update it whenever anything in it changes.

Our details

The Regulator's guide

The Information Regulator has updated and published the Guide on how to use PAIA (section 10 of PAIA). It explains, in plain language, the objects of PAIA and POPIA, how to ask a public or private body for a record, the help the Regulator gives, and what you can do if a request is refused, including how to complain to the Regulator or go to court.

The Guide is available in every official language and in braille. You can:

• download it from the Regulator's website: Guide on how to use PAIA (English, PDF), with the other languages on inforegulator.org.za/paia;
• read a copy in English or isiZulu at our workshop during office hours;
• ask our Information Officer for a copy.

The Information Regulator: Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191. Phone 010 023 5200. Email enquiries@inforegulator.org.za. Website inforegulator.org.za.

The records we hold

Available without asking formally

These you can have without a PAIA request (section 52 of PAIA):

Kept because the law requires it

Everything we hold, by subject

How to ask for a record

Your own personal information

To find out what personal information we hold about you, or to have it corrected or deleted, just email shadow@dougfordsigns.co.za. We'll tell you free of charge whether we hold information about you (section 23 of POPIA). You can also use the Regulator's POPIA Form 2 to ask for a correction or deletion, and POPIA Form 1 to object to us processing your information.

Any other record

1. Fill in PAIA Form 2, Request for access to a record.
2. Describe the record clearly enough for us to find it, and say how you'd like to receive it (a copy by email, a printed copy, or a look at it at the workshop).
3. Say which right you want to use or protect, and why you need the record for it (section 50 of PAIA).
4. If you're asking for someone else, include proof that you may act for them.
5. Email it to our Information Officer at shadow@dougfordsigns.co.za, or hand it in at the workshop.

We decide within 30 days of getting your request, and tell you in writing. If the request covers many records, we may take up to 30 days more once, and we'll tell you why. We can refuse only on the grounds PAIA sets out, for example to protect someone else's personal information or a client's commercial information (sections 62 to 70).

Fees

These are the fees for private bodies set in the PAIA Regulations, 2021 (Annexure B). We tell you what you owe before we go further.

If you're not happy with our answer

Within 180 days of our decision, you can complain to the Information Regulator on PAIA Form 5, by email to PAIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za, or apply to court. There's no internal appeal at a private business.

Personal information

Why we process it

To quote, make, deliver, fit and invoice our clients' jobs; to reply to enquiries; to keep our accounts and tax records; to buy from and pay our suppliers; to employ and pay our staff; to keep this website and our office system secure; and, only if a visitor allows it, to count visits to this website. We don't send marketing unless someone asks us to, and we never sell personal information.

Whose information, and what

Who receives it

Information sent outside South Africa

Our records are kept on our hosting in South Africa. If a visitor allows visit statistics, Google (Google Analytics) and Microsoft (Microsoft Clarity) process them outside South Africa under their own data protection terms; we never send them names, contact details, what's typed into our forms or the link to a quotation. The tool that makes a quotation PDF loads from cdnjs, a public library host that may serve it from outside South Africa; it sees the visitor's IP address and nothing else. Emails we send pass through the recipient's own email provider.

How we keep it safe

• The website and the office system work only over encrypted connections (HTTPS).
• Records, artwork and PDFs are kept outside the public part of our hosting. Files are shared only through private links that stop working after a set time.
• Everyone who signs in to the office has their own password, a new computer needs a code emailed to that person, and repeated wrong passwords pause signing in.
• Files sent through the website are checked for their type and size.
• We keep information only as long as we need it, as set out under Your information, and take weekly backups.
• If we suspect a breach, we tell the Information Regulator and the people affected as soon as we reasonably can.

Getting this manual

This manual is on our website at dougfordsigns.co.za/paia, and you can read it at our workshop during office hours. We email it free of charge to anyone who asks; a printed copy is R2.00 per A4 page. The Information Regulator can ask us for it at any time.

Doug Ford, owner and Information Officer, Doug Ford t/a Doug Ford Signs.