privacy policy

PRIVACY POLICY

1.  Introduction and terms

Conroys Solicitors is a trading name of Conroys Solicitors which is a Data Controller and registered with the Information Commissioners Office [ICO] under reference ZA306908.

We are committed to protecting and respecting your personal data and privacy. This privacy and cookie policy relates to our use of any personal data we collect from you from any of our services. Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal data.

As well as this Privacy Policy, your privacy is protected by law. The General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) ensures that we use your personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so.

The law says we must have one or more of these reasons for using your data:

  • to fulfil a contract, we have with you to provide our services;
  • where it is our legal duty;
  • when it is in our legitimate interest;
  • when you consent to the use of the data.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information.

If you want to request more information about our privacy policy or information regarding data protection you should contact us using the details provided below:

Mail: for the attention of Elizabeth Conroy, Privacy Officer, Conroys Solicitors LLP, 7-9 Old Bridge Street, Truro TR1 2AQ.

Email: econroy@conroys-solicitors.uk

Telephone:01872 272457

2. Your rights

Under the GDPR your rights are:

  • The right to be informed – we must make available this privacy notice with the emphasis on transparency over how we process your data.
  • The right of access – you are entitled to find out what details we may hold about you and why.
  • The right of rectification– we are obliged to correct or update your details.
  • The right of erasure – this is also known as the right to be forgotten.
  • The right to restrict processing – you have the right to ‘block’ or suppress the processing by us of your personal data.
  • The right to data portability – you have the right to obtain and re-use your personal data that you have provided to us.
  • The right to object – you have the right to object to us processing your data in relation to direct marketing and or profiling.
  • Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling – we do not use automatic decision making or processing.

3. The data we collect about you

We process both personal and sensitive (special) categories of data. Personal data we process may include your (or your employer’s or our client’s) name, address, date of birth, family relationships and email address. It also may include your IP address and cookies (website).

Due to the nature of our business, we also process sensitive (special) categories of data, such as health data, racial or ethnic origin.

We may require documentary details from you such as a driving licence, passport or birth certificate, in order to comply with our obligations under identification, money laundering and anti-terrorism legislation.

Our collection methods are:

  • via our website;
  • through engagement (or potential engagement) of our services;
  • by communications, including email, telephone, post or social media;
  • networking;
  • through engagement of service providers;
  • via third parties and/or publicly available resources

4. How will your data be used?

We use information held about you to:

  • provide services to you (or your employer or our client) under a contract, as set out in a terms of business letter between us;
  • ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your devices;
  • provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes or by legitimate interests;
  • allow you to participate in interactive features of our service when you choose to do so, e.g. asking a question through our website;
  • carry out necessary maintenance to our infrastructure;
  • notify you about changes to our services;
  • fulfil our legal obligations including money laundering and identification checks, complying with anti-terrorism financing and Criminal Finances Act legislation;
  • use in the investigation and/or defence of potential complaints, disciplinary proceedings and legal proceedings; and
  • enable us to invoice you for our services and investigate/address any attendant fee disputes that may have arisen.

If you refuse to provide us with certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you. Alternatively, we may be unable to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations.

We may also process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in accordance with this notice, where we are legally required or permitted to do so.

5. Legitimate interest and marketing

We may process your data for the purposes of our own legitimate interests provided that those interests do not over-ride any of your own interests, rights and freedoms which require the protection of personal data. This includes processing for marketing, business development, statistical and management purposes.

If you are an existing client or contact, we may send you information about other products, events and services that we feel may be of interest to you. You have a right at any time to ask us to stop contacting you for marketing purposes.

We will never sell your data to a third party for marketing purposes.

6. Will your data be shared with anyone else?

We will will keep your information within the firm except where disclosure is required or permitted by law or when we use third party service providers (data processors) to supply and support our services to you. We have contracts in place with our data processors. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do so. They will not share your personal information with anyone else apart from us. They will hold the information securely and retain it for the period that we instruct.

We may also pass your data to third party external organisations where we are required by law, where it is necessary to administer the relationship between us or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

Please see below the list of our data processor services:

  • IT provider – cloud service – IT support
  • Email provider
  • Dictation service
  • Wi-fi provider
  • Secure document storage facility
  • Accountants
  • Medical/other professional experts
  • Legal Aid Agency (in legal aid cases only)
  • Cleaning services

All of our third-party service providers are required to take commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect your personal data. We only permit our third-party service providers to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

7. Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it is collected.

When assessing what retention period is appropriate for your personal data, we take into consideration:

  • the requirements of our business and the services provided;
  • any statutory or legal obligations;
  • the purposes for which we originally collected the personal data;
  • the lawful grounds on which we based our processing;
  • the types of personal data we have collected;
  • the amount and categories of your personal data; and
  • whether the purpose of the processing could reasonably be fulfilled by other means.

8. Data deletion

Under GDPR you have the right to erasure under specific circumstances. A request for your personal data to be deleted will be decided on a case by case basis and must be submitted in writing to the contact details provided in this policy.

9. Data correction

We will correct or update your data without delay provided you make the request in writing to the contact details provided in this policy, clearly specifying which data is incorrect or out of date.

10. Data security

We have put in place commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

11. Data inspection

We try to be as open as we can be in terms of giving people access to their personal data. A Subject Access Request under the GDPR is your right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. Such requests must be in writing to the contact details provided in this policy. If we do hold your personal data, we will respond in writing within one calendar month of your request (where that request was submitted in accordance with this policy).

The information we supply will:

  • confirm that your data is being processed;
  • verify the lawfulness and the purpose of the processing;
  • confirm the categories of personal data being processed;
  • confirm the type of recipient to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed, and
  • let you have a copy of the data in an intelligible form.

Please note that you may need to provide identification to confirm who you are to access your data.

If you agree, we will try to deal with your request informally, for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the telephone.

If we do not hold information about you, we will also confirm this in writing as soon as possible.

12. Changes to this policy

We keep our privacy notice under regular review and changes may be made from time to time. The current policy will be displayed on our website.

13. Withdrawal of consent

Where you have consented to our processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Please inform us immediately if you wish to withdraw your consent.

Please note:

  • The withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing.
  • If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to continue to provide services to you.
  • Even if you withdraw your consent, it may remain lawful for us to process your data on another legal basis (e.g. because we have a legal obligation to continue to process your data).

14. Complaints

You have the right to complain about the processing of your personal data. Please contact us using the details provided above. If you are still dissatisfied, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioners Office. (https://ico.org.uk/concerns)