PHH Solicitors Privacy Notice

Palmer Hodgson & Heyes Limited, trading as PHH Solicitors is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This notice sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand how we will treat it, protect it and to understand more about your rights. By providing your personal information to us you are agreeing to us using your information as described in this policy.

Definitions

We or Us: PHH Solicitors of York House, 1 York Ave, Thornton-Cleveleys FY5 2UQ (telephone 01253 824216); and 25 Poulton Street, Fleetwood, FY7 6LP (telephone 01253 778231); email address info@b1q.e88.myftpupload.com
Personal data: Any data or information, in electronic or organised hard copy, that identifies you personally or which relates to you when you are identifiable.
Special categories of personal data: Sensitive information relating to you, namely: health records; information regarding your sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, racial or ethnic origin, trade union membership; and genetic and biometric data

Personal data we process

  • Your name and contact details
  • ID and other information we require to conduct due diligence on you
  • Personal and financial information relating to your legal matter
  • Special categories of personal data, where relevant to your legal matter

Our lawful basis for processing your personal data and special categories of personal data (sensitive information)

You have instructed us to give you legal advice and/or representation. The solicitor-client relationship is a contractual one, and it is a requirement that you agree to our terms of business. To perform this contract, it is unavoidable that this requires us to collect, process and store personal information about you.

We have legal and regulatory duties to process certain personal data, including ID and other information we require to conduct due diligence on you.

The information requested when you instruct us is required in order to identify you and perform our service for you.  If you do not provide the requested information we will not be able to provide our service to you.

We have a legitimate interest in contacting you to market our services to you.

For special categories of personal data, we are permitted to process your data (e.g. health records) for the purposes of giving legal advice.

In summary, we do not anticipate requiring your explicit consent to process your personal data. If that changes we will let you know.

How will we use your personal data

We use information you provide to us in the following ways:

  • to identify you and provide you with the legal services you have requested;
  • to provide you with information you have requested about services we offer;
  • to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information and services that you request from us;
  • to notify you about changes to our service;
  • to deal with your feedback, query or complaint;
  • we also use your information to administer, support, improve and develop our business generally and to enforce our legal rights.

Where we get your personal data from

  • You or your representatives
  • Public records
  • Other parties you instruct us to contact (e.g. doctors, employers, estate agents, accountants, banks, surveyors, medical professionals, courts, regulatory bodies and other advisors and specialists related to your matter)
  • Our clients and matter contacts may also provide us information about you if you are involved in a transaction or dispute with one of our clients or have a connection with them such as being a tenant or employee of a client.
  • Monitoring and recording equipment (including CCTV) at our offices, which we use to secure our premises to protect the people who use them.

Your data rights

You have the right, usually free of charge, to:

  • Access your personal data (known as a subject access request)
  • Have mistakes rectified
  • Have your personal data erased by us or restrict the way we process your personal data (subject to certain conditions)
  • ‘Port’ your personal data to another provider
  • Object to us using your personal data for direct marketing – simply
  • Not be subject to ‘automated processing’ (often referred to as ‘profiling’).

 

You simply need to contact us to exercise any of your rights.

For more information on your legal rights see the Information Commissioner’s website (www.ico.org.uk).

Retention of personal data

We are required by our insurers and regulators to keep your file and personal data for minimum periods. We are not however permitted to keep your personal data indefinitely or for longer than is necessary.

Our retention policy is that the minimum period we will keep files and other personal data relating to a legal matter is six years. We may keep your file for significantly longer than that if it is necessary and in our legitimate interests to do so (for example files relating to wills, property or children, or where you request this).

We operate a rolling annual programme of file destruction. All our files and other documents containing personal data are destroyed securely.

Sharing your personal data

We may need to share your personal data with other professionals who we instruct on your behalf (e.g. barristers and doctors), third parties who are vital to a transaction (e.g. mortgage provider, the courts), providers of services that are necessary to progress a legal matter (e.g. to perform our client due diligence checks on you), and people who you ask us to share your personal data with (such as estate agents, family members or other representatives).

We may also need to share your personal data with our regulators, insurers, and law enforcement agencies.

We use external auditors to review our files for training, compliance, and quality.

Where we share your personal data with third parties, we will ensure that they have appropriate data protection arrangements in place.

Where we hold your personal data

Your data will be stored at our offices and on our IT equipment, or where your information is shared with a third party, at their premises or on their IT equipment.

We archive our old files to a secure facility prior to destruction. Details are available on request.

Transferring your personal data outside of the UK

Since we do not have offices outside England & Wales, we have no reason to transfer your personal data outside the UK unless you or a third party with whom we must share your personal data are based outside the UK.

Where we use third party IT services (e.g. ‘cloud’ based software) we shall ensure that their data centres are either within the UK or that there are lawful safeguards in place to protect your personal data to the same standard as if it were held within the UK.

Data Privacy Manager

We do not have a Data Protection Officer (DPO) but have appointed a Privacy Manager to implement our data protection policies and procedures. Our Privacy Manager’s details are: Helen Hackett, York House, 1 York Avenue, Thornton-Cleveleys, FY5 2UQ, Telephone 01253 824216, e-mail helen.hackett@b1q.e88.myftpupload.com

For the purpose of Data Protection legislation, the data controller is Palmer Hodgson & Heyes Limited

Complaints and questions

If you have a complaint or question about our use of your personal data, please contact our Privacy Manager in the first instance.

You may also make complaints direct to the Information Commissioner’s Office (web: www.ico.org.uk/concerns telephone: 0303 123 1113).

Collection and Use of Personal Information
Personal information means any information that may be used to identify you, such as, your name, title, phone number, email address, or mailing address. In general, you can browse our website without giving us any personal information. We use several products to analyse traffic to this website in order to understand our visitors’ needs and to continually improve our site for them. We collect only anonymous, aggregate statistics. For example, we do not tie a specific visit to a specific IP address.

Cookie Policy

Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is stored on your computer, tablet or phone when you visit a website. These cookies allow us to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website.

There are two main types of cookie:

Session Cookies — these are deleted when you finish browsing a website and are not stored on your computer longer than this.

Persistent Cookies — these are stored on your computer after you have finished using a website so that the website provider can remember your preferences the next time you use it.
Cookies can be set by the website you have browsed, i.e. the website displayed in the uniform resource locator (URL) window. These are called first party cookies. Third party cookies are set by a website other than the one you are browsing.

To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org

How do we use Cookies?

This website uses cookies to help us improve your experience of the site. To ensure you can fully use all the features of our site, your computer or mobile device will need to accept cookies. If you disable cookies, you will still be able to navigate the site, but certain features might not function correctly.

Our cookies never store personal or sensitive information; they simply hold a unique random reference to you so that once you visit the site we can recognise who you are and provide certain content to you.

Information on how to block, limit or delete cookies can be found in the Managing Cookies section below.

Third Party Cookies

Some of the cookies stored on your computer when using our website are not directly related to us.

Google Analytics – This is used by nearly every website in the world and helps us view and analyse visitor information; such as browser versions, visitor numbers, and response to marketing activity. This information enables us to improve the website and your visiting experience.

The information stored by these cookies is secure, never contains any confidential information and can only be seen by us and Google.

Third party sites, including Google, may show our ads across the internet. They may also use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to our website. To opt out of Google’s use of cookies, visit the Google advertising opt-out page.

Share Tools – If you decide to ‘share’ any of our content with friends or associates through any of the social networks – you may be sent cookies from these websites. We cannot control the creation of these cookies, so we suggest you visit the third-party websites for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.

Consent

If you continue to use our website we will assume that you are happy to receive all cookies from our website. However, if you would prefer to change your cookie settings, you can do so at any time—see below ‘Controlling our use of cookies’.

Controlling our use of Cookies

Most browsers automatically accept cookies unless you change your internet browser settings. If you wish to restrict, block or delete the cookies which are set by any websites, you can generally do this through your browser settings. These settings are usually found in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your internet browser.

If you set your internet browser preferences to block all cookies, you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

If you delete cookies relating to this website we will not remember things about you, including your cookie preferences, and you will be treated as a first-time visitor the next time you visit the site.

To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org

Queries

If you have any questions or comments regarding this Cookies policy, please email info@b1q.e88.myftpupload.com