Data & Privacy Notice

Our Privacy Policy

This notice is primarily for the benefit of our clients or potential clients or for related third parties whose data we may process as part of the provision of legal services. We maintain and will provide separate privacy notices in relation to the collection and use of personal information about our staff and employees, including potential employees, during and after their working relationship with us.

This company processes your data in accordance with the terms of the Data Protection Act 2018, the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 and the relevant provisions relating to the General Data Protection Regulation contained within the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (UK GDPR). This Data & Privacy Notice explains, in detail, the types of personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we'll store and handle that data and keep it safe. Unless otherwise indicated, references in this Data and Privacy Notice to the GDPR refer to the UK GDPR.

We know that there's a lot of information here, but we want you to be fully informed about your rights, and how our company uses your data. We hope the following sections will answer any questions you have but if not, please do get in touch with us.

Conditions for Processing Data

We are only entitled to hold and process your data where the law allows us to. The current law on data protection (Article 6 GDPR) sets out a number of different reasons for which a law firm may collect and process your personal data. These include:

Contractual obligations

The main purpose for our holding your data is to provide you with legal services under the agreement we have with you. This agreement is a contract between us and the law allows us to process your data for the purposes of performing a contract (or for the steps necessary to enter in to a contract). We may also need to process your data to meet our contractual obligations to the Legal Aid Agency where you receive legal aid to fund your case or advice.

Legitimate Interests

In specific situations, we require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests. This may include to satisfy our external quality auditors or our Regulators.

Legal compliance

If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity.

Consent

In some situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent.  When collecting your personal data, we'll always make clear to you which data is necessary in connection with a particular service.

When do we collect your data?

We normally collect your data when you provide it to us or when it is provided to us by others (your opponent's solicitors for example) during your case. You may give us your data by email; through an online web form; over the telephone; face to face; or by post.

What sort of data do we collect?

You voluntarily give us your personal information for instance when:

• you contact us via our website
• write a review
• use our services

Where we request information from you we will collect the information set out on the relevant web pages, or as explained to you over the phone or face to face.

Client services

We may collect personal data as follows:

• name and contact details (including address, email and phone numbers).This may include asking for and keeping a copy of your passport/driving licence and proof of address
• date of birth
• personal information that may be included in communication with us
• payment information and financial information that relates to a contractual relationship including bank details

We may gather details of your age; ethnicity; gender etc. if required to do so by the Legal Aid Agency where you are in receipt of Legal Aid. Where you have Legal Aid, we may also gather financial information from you.

We also collect and hold information about your case or legal problem.

Depending on the circumstances of their legal matters, for some clients, we may have access to or process personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences or related security measures. The special condition for processing this dat (pursuant to schedule 1 and Article 10 of the GDPR) is because it is necessary for, connected to and/or or relates to legal claims including for the purposes of assisting with legal proceedings, obtaining legal advice and/or establishing, exercising or defending legal rights. We have considered the risks and impact associated with the processing of criminal offence data not least with regard to data minimisation, security and transparency. All such data is processed in line with  the commitments and policies within this Privacy Notice.

We do not envisage that any data we hold would be classified as "special categories" under the GDPR. 

CCTV

We have installed CCTV systems on the outside of the buildings and personal data in form of images or CCTV footage may be recorded. We operate CCTV in accordance with the ICO CCTV Code of Practice and are processing CCTV data in order to pursue our legitimate interests of:

• promoting a safe working environment
• monitoring the safety and security of our premises
• deterring and assisting in the prevention, investigation and detection of crime and/or serious breaches of policies and procedures, and
• assisting with the identification and prosecution of offenders, including use of images as evidence in criminal proceedings.

Signs are displayed notifying individuals that CCTV is in operation. Images captured by CCTV will not be kept for longer than is necessary and ordinarily, will not be retained for more than 30 days. However, on occasions, there may be a need to keep images for longer such as where a crime is being investigated.

We will only disclose images and audio to other authorised bodies such as the police for the purposes as set above.

How do we use your data?

We only use your data for the purposes of providing you with legal advice, assistance and where appropriate, representation and for reasons directly associated with those services (i.e. providing information to quality auditors; the Legal Aid Agency etc).

Regulatory

We also use data to communicate with our regulators or legislators and to obey laws, regulations and codes of conduct that apply to us.

How do we protect your data?

We take protecting your data very seriously. The data you give us may be subject to Legal Professional Privilege and is often extremely sensitive and confidential.

With this in mind we will treat your data with the utmost care and take all appropriate steps to protect it. We have clear data protection and information security policies and procedures in place (along with Regulatory and other legal obligations to keep your data safe) and these are regularly assessed as part of our Quality Standards and compliance processes.

We protect our IT system from Cyber Attack. Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data is secured by encryption.

We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks, and we carry out penetration testing to identify ways to further strengthen security.

How long will we keep your data?

We only keep your data for as long as is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was provided. Normally this is for 6 years after your case or matter ends (enquiries where we do not take on your case are kept for only 6 months).

For some cases we may decide that it is proper and appropriate to keep data for longer than 6 years, but we will notify you if we believe that your case falls into this category.

Who do we share your personal data with?

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties. We only do this where it is necessary for providing you legal services or for the effective operation of our legal practice.

For example, we may share your data with barristers; experts; translators; costs draftsmen; process servers; secure file storage and destruction companies; auditors; the company that securely hosts our off-site cloud storage servers.

Here's the policy we apply to those organisations to keep your data safe and protect your privacy:

• We provide only the information they need to perform their specific services.
• They may only use your data for the exact purposes we specify in our contract with them.
• We work closely with them to ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all times.
• If we stop using their services, any of your data held by them will either be deleted or rendered anonymous.

Where is your data processed?

Your data is stored and processed within the United Kingdom (UK). If we ever have to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside the UK we will seek your specific consent to do so.

What are your rights?

You have the following rights under the UK GDPR:

• the right to be informed - the provision of clear and concise information about what we do with your personal data, as outlined within this Data & Privacy Notice
• the right of access - commonly referred to as a "data subject access request", this enables you to request a copy of your personal data to understand how and why we are using your data 
• the right to rectification - the ability to have personal data rectified or, in specific circumstances dependent on the purposes for our processing of your data, the ability to have incomplete personal data completed  
• the right ot erasure - also known as the right to be forgotten, this permits you to request we erase your personal data.This only applies to data we hold at the time your request is received and does not apply to any data that may be obtained in the future. Please note that this is not an absolute right and only applies in certain circumstances. We may have overriding duties to retain some data which you cannot ask to be erased immediately or at all. For instance, once you become a client or you are an interested party in a case, we will be required by our regulators and for legal purposes to retain some of your personal data and other information within casefiles for a certain period  
• the right to restrict processing - the ability to request a temporary restriction on the processing of your personal data, where one of a limited number of reasons specified by the ICO applies
• the right to data portability - the ability to receive personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format. This also gives you the right to request that we transmit this dat directly to another Data Controller 
• the right to object - the ability, in certain circumstances, to request we stop processing your personal data. This request may relate to all of your personal data we hold or only certain information, and may only apply to a particular purpose for processing
• rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling - restrictions on the use of automated decision making and profiling where such decisions have legal or similarly significant effect on you. It is unlikely that our company will use automated decision making and profiling. 

Contact Details

For information on how your information is used, how we maintain the security of our information, and to exercise your rights to access information we hold on you, please contact us. Similarly, if you believe that the information we hold is wrong or out of date, please let us know and we will update it. The person in this company responsible for data protection is our Data Protection Officer, Caroline Lewis, and enquires and requests can be sent to her by emailing caroline.lewis@faradayssolicitors.co.uk or in writing to Faradays Solicitors, 142 Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park, London, N7 7NS. 

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this policy. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement or policy applicable to the website in question.

The Regulator

If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office.

You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113.

Or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns (opens in a new window; please note we can't be responsible for the content of external websites)

Changes to this Notice

We do  not intend to process a client or related third party's personal information for any reason other than stated within this privacy notice. If this changes, we will update this privacy notice on this webpage and in any documentation we will send to you. However, internet and data privacy best practice and acceptable standards are developing. We therefore reserve the right to revise this Notice at any time. If this Notice changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this webpage. For all other clients with ongoing instructions, we will provide a copy directly. Continued instructions to us will signify that you agree to any such changes.