Privacy Notice

This notice describes how we collect and use personal data about you, in accordance with current UK Data Protection Legislation together with other laws which relate to privacy and electronic communications. In this notice, these laws are referred to as "Data Protection Law"

About us

We are Smith Gadd & Co Solicitors regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under SRA74954.

For the purpose of this notice, we are the ‘data controller' meaning that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal data about you. We are required under Data Protection Law to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

Our initial point of contact to assist with enquiries in relation to this privacy notice or our treatment of your personal data is our Managing Partner, who can be contacted at our offices at 1 The Courtyard, London Road, Horsham, West Sussex, RH12 1AT.

How we collect your personal data

We obtain personal data about you:

when you engage us to provide our services and also during the provision of those services;
when you contact us by email, telephone, post or fax
from third parties such as mortgagees and employers
from publicly available resources such as H M Land Registry and Companies House
from Government Departments such as the H M Revenue and Customs and the Probate Registry.

The kind of information that we hold about you

The information we hold about you may include the following:

your personal details (ie your full name, date of birth, nationality, address, national insurance number and bank account details;
special categories of personal data as defined in Data Protection Law;
details of the provision of services you have received from us
our correspondence and communications with you
details of any complaints or enquiries
information from questionnaires, research, surveys and marketing activities.

How we use your personal data

We may process your personal data for:

the delivery of our contract with you, and to comply with our legal obligations.
for the performance of our contract with our clients. This may include processing your personal data where you are an employee, subcontractor, supplier or customer of our client.
our legitimate interests provided that those interests do not override 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.
additional specific purposes, with your consent. In such limited circumstances, where your consent is required for the processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent to processing for such specific purposes.

Please note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.

Situations in which we will use your personal data

We may use your personal data in order to:

carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between you and us (usually for the provision of our services);
carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between our clients and us (usually for the provision of our services) where you may be an employee, supplier, subcontractor or customer of our client;
provide you with information related to our services that you request from us.
seek your opinions on the services we provide.
notify you about any changes to our services.

In the event that 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.

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.

Change of purpose

Where we need to use your personal data for another reason, other than that for which we collected it, we will only use your personal data where that reason is compatible with the original purpose. Should it be necessary to use your personal data for a new purpose, we will notify you and communicate the legal basis which allows us to do so before starting any new processing.

Data sharing

We will only share your personal data with third parties 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.

"Third parties" includes third-party service providers, other professional firms that we work with and product providers that Smith Gadd & Co use to arrange services for you. The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers:

IT and cloud services
Professional advisory services
Administration services
Banking services.

All of our third-party service providers are required to take 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. If we provide external users access to various third party cloud software the providers of that software will have their own privacy notices explaining why and how personal data is collected and processed by the software.

We may share your personal data with other third parties where necessary for the provision of our services. We may also need to share your personal data with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.

Transferring personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

We may transfer your personal data to other professional organisations in countries outside the EEA. We will, however, only do this when appropriate to provide you with certain services, or where we provide the data at your request.

As part of your engagement with us, we will notify you of any non-EU countries and details of the organisations to which we will be transferring your personal data. We will ensure your personal data is properly protected at all times.

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.

Our website - www.smithgadd.co.uk

We do not collect information from visitors to our website.

Cookies may be used to enable us to monitor site traffic and repeat visitor statistics. These statistics will not include information that can be used to identify any individual. Such information is anonymous and held on a temporary basis. You will not receive unsolicited paper or electronic mail as a result of visiting our website.

Rights of access, correction, erasure and restriction

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Should your personal information change, please notify us of any changes by contacting us.

Your rights in connection with personal data

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

Request access to your personal data. This enables you to receive details of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are processing it in a lawful manner.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this basis. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or another data controller if the processing is based on consent, carried out by automated means and this is technically feasible.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights) we may, however, charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is an appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal data for a specific purpose (for example, in relation to certain direct marketing that you have indicated you would like to receive from us) you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time.

To withdraw your consent, please email horsham@smithgadd.co.uk. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal information (personal data) for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Changes to this notice

Any changes we may make to our privacy notice in the future will be updated on our website at: www.smithgadd.co.uk. This privacy notice was last updated on 25 May 2018.

Contact us

If you have any questions regarding this notice or would like to speak to us about the manner in which we process your personal data, please initially contact our Managing Partner by writing to Smith Gadd & Co, 1 The Courtyard, London Road, Horsham, West Sussex, RH12 1AT.

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

The ICO's contact details are as follows:

Information Commissioner's Office Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF

Telephone - +44 (0)303 123 1113 (local rate) or +44 (0)1625 545 745

Website - https://ico.org.uk/concerns

Smith Gadd & Co - 25 May 2018