How we use your personal data
You have the right to be informed about how (and why) we gather, store, use and share your personal data. This Notice contains the information that you need to know.
Who we are and how to contact us
A H Brooks & Co is responsible for the processing of your personal data. If you have any questions about how we process your data or the content or the content of this page, please contact us by email: [email protected] or
by post:
Derby House, Derby Street, Leek, Staffordshire, ST13 6JG; or
by telephone:
01538 383201
The person with overall responsibility for this firm’s processing activities, and ensuring compliance with Data Protection Legislation, is our Data Controller, Miss Greta Williamson.
What information we will need and how we will collect it
We need information about you to provide our service to you. This information will either be required at the outset or in the course of our relationship with you. If you do not provide the information we ask for it may delay or prevent us from carrying out your instructions. We will tell you (when we ask you for information) whether you are under a legal or contractual obligation to provide it to us. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed of your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
We will gather most of the information that we need from you direct but sometimes we will collect data from:-
How we use your personal data
Data Protection Law states that we can only use your personal data if we have a lawful basis for doing so, and that we must tell you what it is. The information about you will mainly be used to deliver the legal services that you have requested, or to carry our pre-contract work, such as investigating the merits of a potential claim.
In addition, we may use your personal data to comply with regulatory and legal obligations or for our own legitimate interests (when we have a business or commercial reason for using your personal data)
Marketing
We may use your personal data to keep in touch, for example, about legal developments that might be of interest to you or the services that we offer. If your consent is needed, we will ask for it separately and clearly.
We take your privacy seriously and will treat your data with respect. We will never sell or share it with others for marketing purposes. If you want us to stop contacting you with marketing information, please tell us by email: [email protected]
Or by post:
Derby House, Derby Street, Leek, Staffordshire, ST13 6JG
Or by telephone:
01538 383201
Sharing and transferring your personal data
We will only share your data with others if it is necessary to:
Deliver the legal services you have requested; and/or do so for legitimate business purposes; and/or comply with a legal or regulatory obligation; and we are satisfied that appropriate measures will be taken to protect your personal data and restrict the purpose for which it is used.
We do not generally transfer data outside the European Economic Area and will only do so if one of the following applies:-
The European Commission has issued a decision confirming that he country to which we transfer the personal data ensures an adequate level of protection for the data subject’s rights and freedoms;
Appropriate safeguards are in place, such as binding corporate rules, standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission, an approved code of conduct or a certification mechanism;
You have provided explicit consent to the transfer after being informed of any potential risks;
The transfer is necessary for one of the other reasons set out in the GDPR, including the performance of a contract between us, reasons of public interest, to establish, exercise or defend legal claims or to protect your vital interests where you are physically or legally incapable of giving consent and, in some limited cases, for our legitimate interest.
How long will we keep your personal data
We will keep your personal information for as long as we need it to fulfil the purpose for which it was collected, including data kept for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirement. Our general retention period for hard copy data is six years, however, different retention periods apply for different categories of data. Documents that you have asked us to store on your behalf, such as title deeds and Wills do not have any destruction date.
For further information about how long your papers will be kept, please contact the lawyer acting for you.
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessioned in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will only do so in an unauthorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We 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.
Your rights
In certain circumstances you have rights under Data Protection Law in relation to your personal data which you can exercise free of charge, namely the right to:
The above rights are not absolute and we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply.
We may need to ask for information to confirm your identity, to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to a person who is not entitled to receive it, before we can process your request.
To find out more about these rights please visit the website of the Information Commissioner at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone 0303 123 1113.
If you would like to contact us about the above or exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the contact details provided above.
Complaints
Please contact us with any query or concern that you may have about our use of your information. If we cannot resolve your complaint you can pursue it with the Information Commissioner (our supervisory authority in respect of data processing) whose contact details are provided above.
