Privacy Policy
This Policy sets out who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your Personal Data which is data relating to an identified or identifiable individual. It also explains your rights in relation to your Personal Data and how to contact us or supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint. Our use of your Personal Data is subject to your instructions, Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), other relevant UK and EU legislation and our professional duty of confidentiality.
Bonallack & Bishop Solicitors is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s office. We will always comply with the DPA and GDPR when dealing with your personal data. Further details on the DPA and GDPR can be found at the website for the Information Commissioner (www.ico.gov.uk).
This guidance covers Personal Data processed during the course of visits to our website by Clients, contacts and other third parties but also during the course of a matter with a Client.
How and why we use your Personal Data
We have a legitimate interest in processing your data for certain reasons i.e.
- Providing information about services
- Providing and personalising our services
- Dealing with your enquiries and requests
- Following and progressing your instructions
- Finalising your matters and retaining information for PII cover
- Keeping you informed of changes in the Law which may be important to you
- Requesting information in relation to any unpaid fees or disbursements
Personal Data processed in relation to our Clients
Personal Data we will or may collect in the course of advising and/or acting for you and will depend on the area of law you need our help with as some require interaction with external organisations such as:
- Your name, address and telephone number Information to enable us to check and verify your identity, e.g. your date of birth or passport details Electronic contact details, e.g. your email address and mobile phone number
- Information relating to the matter in which you are seeking our advice or representation Your financial details so far as relevant to your instructions, e.g. the source of your funds if you are instructing on a purchase transaction – this may include international bank transfer, addresses, telephone numbers, etc.
- If you make a payment through our online payment system, your name, address, email and telephone number will be retained. No personal financial information is retained on our website as this service is provided by a Third Party.
- If you are an individual who has a business, information provided by you about your business and other individuals in connection with any advice we provide to your business.
- Your National Insurance and tax details including copy documents where necessary.
- Your bank and/or building society details
- Details of your professional online presence, e.g. LinkedIn profile, Facebook information
- Details of your spouse/partner and dependants or other family members, e.g. if you instruct us on a family matter or a Will
- Your employment status and details including salary and benefits, e.g. if you instruct us on matter related to your employment or in which your employment status or income is relevant
- Your nationality and immigration status and information from related documents, such as your passport or other identification, and immigration information, e.g. if you instruct us on anything which requires disclosure of immigration details
- Details of your pension arrangements, e.g. if you instruct us on a pension matter or in relation to financial arrangements following breakdown of a relationship
- Your employment records including, where relevant, records relating to sickness and attendance, performance, disciplinary, conduct and grievances (including relevant special category Personal Data), e.g. if you instruct us on matter related to your employment or in which your employment records are relevant
- Your racial or ethnic origin, gender and sexual orientation, religious or similar beliefs, e.g. if you instruct us on discrimination claim
- Your trade union membership, e.g. if you instruct us on discrimination claim or your matter is funded by a trade union Personal identifying information, such as your hair or eye colour or your parents’ names, e.g. if you instruct us to incorporate a company for you
- Medical records e.g. if you have instructed us on a clinical negligence or disability discrimination claim or they are relevant to other legal proceedings in which you are involved.
This Personal Data is required from you to enable us to provide our service to you. If you do not provide Personal Data we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you. In the event that you are not willing to supply requested information, we may be forced to terminate instructions.
We collect most of this information from you. However, we may also collect information from publicly accessible sources, e.g. Companies House or HM Land Registry; directly from a third party, e.g. sanction screening providers from a third party with your consent, e.g.: your bank or building society, another financial institution or advisor, consultants and other professionals we may engage in relation to your matter or your employer and/or trade union, professional body or pension administrators; via our information technology systems, e.g. case management, document management and time recording systems; through our own website, relevant websites and applications; Automated monitoring of our websites and other technical systems, such as our computer networks and connections, CCTV, communication systems and e-mail and through other processes we have in place e.g. telephone software reports, manual data entries such as guest books and reception logs.
How and why we use your Personal Data
Under data protection law, we can only use your Personal Data if we have a proper reason for doing so, e.g.: to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations; for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract; for our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or you have given consent.
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. The table below explains what we use (process) your Personal Data for and our reasons for doing so:
What we use your Personal Data for:
- To provide legal advice and services to you for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract
- Conducting checks to identify our clients and verify their identity Screening for financial and other sanctions or embargoes Other processing necessary to comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, e.g. under health and safety regulation or rules issued by our professional regulator
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies In particular, we are in some circumstances under a legal duty to disclose information to the National Crime Agency (NCA) or other enforcement agencies. If we make a disclosure we will usually not be able to tell you about it or the reasons for the disclosure.
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- Ensuring business policies are adhered to, e.g. policies covering security and internet use
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party
- Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party
- Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- Statistical analysis to help us manage our practice, e.g. in relation to our financial performance, client base, work type or other efficiency measures
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party
- Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems For our legitimate interests or those of a third party To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- To keep our central records up to date including updating and enhancing client records and manage the firms business
- For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- Statutory returns and deal with regulatory obligations To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- Ensuring safe working practices, staff administration and assessments
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations For our legitimate interests or those of a third party
- Marketing to you similar services that we think might be of interests to you
- External audits and quality checks, e.g. SRA and the audit of our accounts
Marketing communications
We may use your Personal Data to send you updates (by email, text message, telephone or post) about legal developments that might be of interest to you and/or information about our services. We will seek consent from individuals.
Personal Data in relation to interaction with our website
We collect Personal Data from visitors to this website through the use of a contract form should you choose to complete it. This requests your name, telephone number and email address together with the nature of your enquiry; this is sent through to the Firm and no data is held other than with the Firm.
All Clients
We will always treat your Personal Data with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes. You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing materials at any time by: contacting us by email to unsubscribe or update your marketing preferences to salisbury@bishopslaw.com ; using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails. We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
We routinely share Personal Data with:
- professional advisers who we instruct on your behalf or refer you to, e.g. barristers, medical professionals, accountants, tax advisors, expert witnesses or other experts;
- other third parties where necessary to carry out your instructions, e.g. your mortgage provider or HM Land Registry in the case of a property transaction or Companies House;
- the Courts
- credit reference agencies;
- our insurers and brokers;
- external auditors, e.g. SRA and the audit of our accounts;
- our banks;
- external service suppliers, representatives and agents that we use to make our business more efficient, e.g. typing services, marketing agencies, document collation or analysis suppliers; We only allow our service providers to handle your Personal Data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your Personal Data. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your Personal Data to provide services to us and to you. We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
- We may also need to share some Personal Data with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.
Information may be held at our offices and those of our third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described above (see ‘Who we share your Personal Data with’). Some of these third parties may be based outside the European Economic Area. For more information, including on how we safeguard your Personal Data when this occurs, see below: ‘Transferring your Personal Data out of the EEA’.
We will keep your Personal Data after we have finished advising or acting for you. We will do so for one of these reasons: to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf; to show that we treated you fairly; to keep records required by law.
We will not retain your data for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of data and we will retain data in accordance with our Document Retention Policy, which may change from time to time. When it is no longer necessary to retain your Personal Data, we will delete or anonymise it.
To deliver services to you, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your Personal Data outside the European Economic Area (EEA), e.g.: if your and our service providers located outside the EEA; if you are based outside the EEA; where there is an international dimension to the matter in which we are advising you. These non-EEA countries do not have the same data protection laws as the United Kingdom and EEA. We will, however, ensure the transfer complies with data protection law and all Personal Data will be secure.
You have the following rights, whether a client or a visitor to our website, which you can exercise free of charge:
- The right to be provided with a copy of your Personal Data (the right of access)
- The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your Personal Data
- The right to require us to delete your Personal Data—in certain situations
- The right to require us to restrict processing of your Personal Data— in certain circumstances, e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data
- The right to receive the Personal Data you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations
- The right to object: —at any time to your Personal Data being processed for direct marketing (including profiling); —in certain other situations to our continued processing of your Personal Data, e.g. processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests.
- Not to be subject to automated individual decision-making The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us or see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation. If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:
- email, call or write to us and let us have enough information to identify you (e.g. your full name, address and client or matter reference number, if you are a client); Our contact details are: Jane Bishop, GDPR Request, Rougemont House, Rougemont Close, Salisbury SP1 1LY. Tel: 01722 422300.
- let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill); and let us know what right you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.
Keeping your Personal Data secure
We have appropriate security measures to prevent Personal Data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your Personal Data to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your information. The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone: 0303 123 1113.
Live : 25th May 2018
