We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal data. 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.When we use your personal data, we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal data for the purposes of the GDPR. Our use of your personal data is subject to your instructions, the GDPR, other relevant UK and EU legislation and our professional duty of confidentiality.
It would be helpful to start by explaining some key terms used in this policy:
Barker Gooch & Swailes Solicitors
Any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual
Special category personal data
Personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership
Genetic and biometric data
Data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation
Below sets out the personal data we will or may collect in the course of advising and/or acting for you.
This personal data is required 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.
We collect most of this information from you direct. However, we may also collect information:
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason for doing so, such as:
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.
Below explains what we use (process) your personal data for and our reasons for doing so:
- To provide legal 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
- 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, i.e. to make sure we are following our own internal procedures, so we can deliver the best service to you
- Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training, and quality control
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price
- Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect our intellectual property and other commercially valuable information
- 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, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price
- Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for us and for you
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- Updating and enhancing client records
- 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
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, e.g. making sure that we can keep in touch with our clients about existing and new services
- Statutory returns
- 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, e.g. to make sure we are following our own internal procedures and working efficiently so we can deliver the best service to you
- Credit reference checks via external credit reference agencies
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. for credit control and to ensure our clients are likely to be able to pay for our services
- External audits and quality checks, e.g. CQS accreditation and the audit of our accounts
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to maintain our accreditations so we can demonstrate we operate at the highest standards
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
The above does not apply to special category personal data, which we will only process with your explicit consent.
We may use your personal data to send you updates (by email, telephone, or post) about legal developments that might be of interest to you and/or information about our services or new services.
We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data for promotional purposes (see above ‘How and Why We Use Your Personal Data’). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.
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 promotional communications at any time by contacting us by letter or email.
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:
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 related service providers 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’).
We will keep your personal data after we have finished advising or acting for you. We will do so for one of these reasons:
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 cases. We hold your personal data on our client matter files. Normally, we do not retain our files in connection with client matters for more than 15 years. We may destroy those files in less than 15 years if it appears appropriate to do so.
However, we may retain records of the existence of the files and their subsequent destruction indefinitely. We also retain accounting records relating to your transactions in accordance with our Professional Accounting Regulations.
If we are instructed by you to store an item in safe-keeping at our offices, such as a Will or title deeds, these will be retained in accordance with your instructions. We may retain records of the retention of these items and where appropriate their release back to you indefinitely.
To deliver services to you, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA), such as:
These transfers are subject to special rules under European and UK data protection law. If you would like further information, please contact us (see ‘How to Contact Us’ below).
Your Rights
You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:
The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data
The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data
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.
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:
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.
This privacy policy was published on 24th May 2018 and last updated on 14th September 2018. We may change this privacy policy from time to time.
Please contact us by post or email if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you
Our contact details are shown below:
Barker Gooch & Swailes, Woodside House, 37 The Green, Winchmore Hill, London, N21 1HT