Privacy Policy

 

Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice will help you understand how we collect, use and protect your personal information. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. If you have any queries about this Privacy Notice or how we process your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer by email: susan@susanclarksolicitor.co.uk or by post: Susan Clark Solicitors, Unit 12 Bridge Road Industrial Estate, Bridge Road, Haywards Heath RH16 1XT marked for the attention of the Data Protection Officer.

Who we are

Susan Clark Solicitors is a registered ‘data controller’ and processes your data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (also known as GDPR). Our registration number with the Information Commissioner’s Office is ZA106352

What information we collect about you

The personal data you have provided, we have collected from you, or we have received from third parties includes:

  • title, name, address, contact details: including:
    • telephone numbers,
    • email address;
    • employer and address history (if applicable)
  • photographic ID, such as a driving licence or passport for the purposes of carrying out anti-fraud and anti-money laundering checks and verifying your identity;
  • details of services we have been instructed to carry out for you and/or on your client’s behalf including: written legal opinions, other written work and correspondence, previous and forthcoming conference arrangements, hearing bookings and mediation dates;
  • information received within papers relating to existing and previous legal proceedings;
  • financial information such as invoices, payments and receipts;
  • identifiers assigned to your computer or other devices, including your Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is used for fraud prevention and to improve customer experience.

When you contact us through any digital channel we will inform you of the methods used by each of those channels at the point of entry and at any point where we capture personal information.

How we collect information about you

Most of the personal information we hold about you is that which we collect directly from you, for example:

  • each time you contact us about a potential piece of work;
  • each time you formally instruct us on a piece of work/instruction;
  • when you purchase our products or services;
  • each time you interact with us, or respond to our communications or surveys;
  • when you make enquiries or raise concerns with our members and other staff;
  • when you use our guest Wi-Fi, during which we may collect data about:
  1. a) your device;
  2. b) the volume of data which you use;
  3. c) the websites and applications which you access; and
  4. d) your usage by access time, frequency and location.  

What we use your information for and the legal base for processing

We may store and use your personal information for the purposes of:

  • administering your case: to contact you, to obtain or provide additional information; to check our records are correct and up-to-date and to check every now and then that you are happy and satisfied;
  • as is necessary to perform a contract between you and us and/or as is necessary, in accordance with our legitimate interests;
  • carrying out anti-fraud and anti-money laundering checks and verifying your identity (as is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations and/or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests);
  • using your payment details to process payments relating to your instruction, including fees and refunds (as is necessary to perform a contract between you and us and/or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests);
  • carrying out client conflict checks in relation to a potential new instruction(s) on our databases (as is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us and/or as is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations and / or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests);
  • communicating with you about your instruction(s), including responding to your enquiries (as is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us and/or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests);
  • administering debt recovery processes, where you owe us money under a contract or otherwise (as is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us and/or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests);
  • fulfilling our obligations owed to a relevant regulator, tax authority or revenue service (as is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations and/or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests).

Our “legitimate interests” as referred to above (and below) include our legitimate business and commercial interests in operating our business in a customer-focused, efficient and sustainable manner, in accordance with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Profiling

We use the personal data you provide to us alongside information about you provided by third parties (please see “How we collect information about you” for further details).

This is necessary, for example, to allow us to carry out our fraud and / or money laundering checks.  Assessing the risk of such activity is essential to allow us to decide whether we are able to offer our services to you, as well as to identify suitable counsel with the relevant level of expertise to meet your needs.

You have the right to contact us to express your point of view about this profiling activity (including providing any additional information that you want us to consider) and to contest such decisions.  A member of our team will then re-consider it.  If you wish to exercise these rights, please contact us by emailing to susan@susanclarksolicitor.co.uk or by post: Susan Clark Solicitors, Unit 12 Bridge Road Industrial Estate, Bridge Road, Haywards Heath RH16 1XT.

Consequences of processing

If we, or a fraud prevention agency, determine that you pose a risk of fraud or money laundering, we may refuse to provide the products or services you have requested. We may also stop providing existing services to you. A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by us and the fraud prevention agencies.  It may also result in others refusing to provide products, services, financing or employment to you.  If you have any questions about our processing of your data for fraud purposes, please contact our Data Protection Officer at the details provided above.

Who we share your data with

Where relevant, given the nature of the products and services provided to you, we may also share your information with the following categories of third parties:

  • third party service providers who we instruct for the purposes of handling cases, including solicitors, surveyors, experts, insurers, third parties involved in a claim, medical agencies (as is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us);
  • third party data suppliers, as explained under “How we collect information about you” (as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests);
  • third party service providers who support the operation of our business, such as IT and marketing suppliers, financial service providers, and debt collection agencies (as is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us and/or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests);
  • the operators of claims/instructions related databases (as is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us and/or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests);
  • fraud prevention agencies and associations, (as is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations);
  • regulators and law enforcement agencies, including the police, the Financial Conduct Authority, HM Revenue and Customs or any other relevant authority who may have jurisdiction (as is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations and/or as is necessary in accordance with our legitimate interests).

Please contact our Data Protection Officer if you would like details of the agencies we share your data with. Email: susan@susanclarksolicitor.co.uk or by post: Susan Clark Solicitors, Unit 12 Bridge Road Industrial Estate, Bridge Road, Haywards Heath RH16 1XT marked for the attention of the Data Protection Officer.

How long information is kept

We will retain your personal information for a number of purposes, as is necessary to allow us to carry out our business in accordance with our legitimate interests and / or as is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations.

Your information will be kept for up to 7 years on our main systems, after which time it will be archived, deleted or anonymised depending on the content of the material and whether there is any continuing need for it to be retained.  For example, some of the archived information may be retained for a further period of time in order to allow us to process your existing or future instructions

Any retention of personal data will be carried out in compliance with legal and regulatory obligations and with industry standards. These data retention periods are subject to change without further notice as a result of changes to associated laws or regulations.

Records created by us for fraud prevention purposes will be deleted 7 years after creation. Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time, depending on how that data is being used. If you are considered to pose a risk of fraud or of money laundering, your data can be held by fraud prevention agencies for up to 7 years from its receipt by them. Further information may be obtained by contacting those agencies.

If you have any questions in relation to the retention of your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer via email: susan@susanclarksolicitor.co.uk or by post: Susan Clark Solicitors, Unit 12 Bridge Road Industrial Estate, Bridge Road, Haywards Heath RH16 1XT for the attention of the Data Protection Officer.

Your rights & responsibilities

As the data subject of the data that we hold about you, you have the following rights and we have the following responsibilities:

Rights

  • to obtain access to, and copies of, the personal information that we hold about you;
  • to require that we cease processing your personal information if the processing is causing you damage or distress;
  • to require us not to send you marketing communications;
  • to require us to erase your personal information;
  • to require us to restrict or object to our data processing activities;
  • to receive from us the personal information we hold about you which you have provided to us, in a reasonable format specified by you, including for the purpose of you transmitting that personal information to another data controller; and
  • to require us to correct the personal information we hold about you if it is incorrect.

Responsibilities

Susan Clark Solicitors acknowledges its obligations as a data controller and data processor.

Please note that these rights may be limited by data protection legislation, and we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply.

If you are not satisfied with how we are processing your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer via email: susan@susanclarksolicitor.co.uk or by post: Susan Clark Solicitors, Unit 12 Bridge Road Industrial Estate, Bridge Road, Haywards Heath RH16 1XT, who will look into your complaint. If you remain dissatisfied, you are entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Officer.

You can find out more about your rights under data protection legislation from the Information Commissioner’s Office website: www.ico.org.uk.

Who we are

Our website address is: http://www.susanclarksolicitor.co.uk/

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.