We take your privacy very seriously and we ask that you read this Privacy Notice carefully as it contains important information on:
who we are,
how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.
SK Lloyds Solicitors (‘we’ or ‘us’) collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the Data Protection Act 2018 and we are responsible as the ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.
We might collect your personal data from various sources, including you, your family members, employer or representatives, estate agents, accountants, mortgage lenders, solicitors, credit reference agencies and anti-fraud databases, sanctions list, court judgements and other databases, or third parties including the other party to your case or transaction, social services, carers or nursing and retirement homes. Which of these sources apply will depend on your particular circumstances, but most of the time the information will come direct from yourself.
If you give us information on behalf of someone else, you confirm that the other person has appointed you to act on his/her behalf and has agreed that you can give consent on his/her behalf to the processing of his/her personal data; receive on his/her behalf any data protection notices; and give consent to the processing of his/her personal or sensitive data.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed of any changes to your personal data during your relationship with us.
We may use your personal information for the following purposes:
The provision of legal services, including setting you up as a client (along with possible fraud, sanctions, bankruptcy and anti-money laundering checks), client care, including communicating with you and sending you updates and documents, filling out forms and documents as necessary for your case or transaction, credit control including receiving payments from you, returning payments to you or chasing for payment, letting you know of related legal services;
The administration and management of our practice, including statutory returns, legal and regulatory compliance, the prevention of money laundering or terrorist financing, keeping accounts and allocating payments, managing and retaining records and database of our clients and matters including to carry out conflict checks, analysing our client database and developing and improving our services, managing claims and complaints;
Marketing our services to you, including letting you know about events that we organise, sending you newsletters by email, carrying out surveys to improve our services and keeping in touch generally.
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
Legitimate interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests or against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.
Please note that when we carry out electronic identity checks via external search providers in order to comply with our regulatory requirements, the checks leave a footprint on an individual’s credit file. However, this footprint is not the same as a credit check footprint and will have no negative impact on your file. It is just shown as an ‘identity search’ which is effectively a light footprint, simply showing an anti-money laundering search has taken place. An individual can have many identity footprints and it still will not affect their credit file.
We collect and process personal data about you. Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which the person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). The types of personal data that are processed may include:
We also collect, use and share aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate information about how you use our services to calculate the percentage of clients utilising a particular service we offer. However, if we combine or connect aggregated data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this Privacy Notice.
Our web site uses the data we collect for three basic purposes: to operate our business and provide (including improving and personalising) the services we offer, to send communications, and to display advertising. In carrying out these purposes, we combine data we collect through the various web site services you use to give you a more seamless, consistent and personalised experience. However, to enhance privacy, we have built in technological and procedural safeguards designed to prevent certain data combinations. For example, we store data we collect from you when you are unauthenticated (not signed in) separately from any account information that directly identifies you, such as your name, email address or phone number.
We may disclose your personal data to The Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Legal Ombudsman, The Law Society, The National Crime Agency, The Office of the Public Guardian, HMRC, our insurers, our accountants and to other external organisations and firms who may conduct audit or quality inspections on our practice and our client services or provide services to us, and who are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to our files. We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law. We will not share your personal information with any other third party unless necessary for your case or transaction and with your consent (for example if we need to instruct a barrister or an expert).
We will only keep your personal data as long as it is necessary and for the purpose for which it was original collected. In particular, for so long as there is any possibility that either you or we may wish to bring a legal claims, or where we are required to keep your personal data due to legal or regulatory reasons.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In some circumstances we may preserve the anonymity of your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such personal information without further notice to you.
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please see the “How to Contact Us” section and let us have enough information to identify you:
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
If you fail to provide certain personal information when requested, we may not be able to perform the agreement we have entered into with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations.
Call us on 0161 870 6080 or email us on info@sklloyds.co.uk and we will call you to discuss your compensation claim.