Privacy Statement

This privacy statement together with our retainer letter, general terms of business and terms and conditions of our website will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. Please refer to the Glossary at the bottom of this page to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy statement.

This privacy statement was created in May 2018 and we reserve the right to amend it from time to time to reflect changing legal requirements or our processing practices. Any such changes will be posted on our website and will be effective upon posting.

1. Important information and who we are

Purpose of this privacy statement

This privacy statement aims to give you information on how we collect and process your personal data.

We do not provide services to nor knowingly collect data relating to children.

Responsibility

Gilchrist Solicitors is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy statement). Please note that there are instances where we may be joint controllers and therefore share the responsibility for your personal data with External Third Parties as defined in the Glossary.

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact this firm’s principal, Mark Gilchrist, using the details set out below.

Contact details

Email address: mg@markgilchrist.co.uk

Postal address: 12 Upper Berkeley Street, London, W1H 7QD, United Kingdom

Telephone number: +44(0)207 667 6868

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy statement and your duty to inform us of changes

The data protection law in the UK changed on 25 May 2018.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

2. The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together including but not limited to:

• Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.


• Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.


• Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences without your express consent.

3. How is your personal data collected?

Your personal data may be collected by us in a number of ways, including through:

• Direct interactions. This includes personal data you provide when you through our provision of legal services to you. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise.


• Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources when we collect publicly available information about you or your business including through electronic data sources and when we collect your personal data from third parties (for example our clients or other law firms.
  

4. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data in the manner the law prescribes.

Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• to provide you with, and to improve, our services;


• to contact you in the course of providing services to you;


• to provide you with information or updates about our services and any other information that you request from us;


• to comply with our legal and professional responsibilities; and


• for internal compliance and security purposes.

We set out below the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data:

• Where we need it to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you such as the performance of our services to you under our retainer letter and general terms of business;


• Where it is necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation;


• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and without prejudicing your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legal obligations or legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/Activity	Type of data	Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To provide you with, and to improve, our services	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial	(a) Performance of a contract with you; (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (in case of obligations related to our services such as collecting and processing certain personal information about you as required by our regulator to confirm or verify your identity, anti-money laundering and sanctions checks or registering a property purchase with HM Land Registry)
To contact you in the course of providing services to you	(a) Identity (b) Contact	(a) Performance of a contract with you; (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (in case of obligations related to our services as detailed above); (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated or preventing fraud)
To provide you with information or updates about our services and policies and any other information that you request from us	(a) Identity (b) Contact	a) Performance of a contract with you; (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (in case of changes in legislation affecting our services or general terms of business)
To comply with our legal and professional responsibilities	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial	(a) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (namely, our “know your customer” obligations); (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to ensure compliance with our responsibilities in the day-to-day running of our business)
For internal compliance and security purposes	(a) Identity (b) Contact	(a) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (namely, our “know your customer” obligations);
	(c) Financial	(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)

Third-party marketing

We do not send out marketing emails and we will seek your express consent before we share your personal data with any company outside of us for marketing purposes.

Opting out

You can ask third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by logging into the website and checking or unchecking relevant boxes to adjust your marketing preferences or by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you.

Cookies

Our website does not use browser cookies.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of the websites may become inaccessible or not function properly.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us .

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so or seek your express consent before doing so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above purposes and legal basis, where this is required or permitted by law.

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above.

• External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary; and


• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy statement.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6. International transfers

We may need to transfer your personal data to External Third Parties, including third parties based outside the European Economic Area (which includes countries in the European Union as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), for example (but not limited to) other legal advisors and accountants and third parties involved in your matters.

Where we transfer your personal data, we will do this in accordance with applicable data protection laws and will take appropriate safeguards to ensure that anyone to whom we pass it protects it adequately in the same way we would and in accordance with applicable laws.

7. Data security

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

8. Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

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.

Our usual policy is to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity and Financial Data) for up to six years after they cease being customers.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.

9. Your legal rights

On top of your right to be informed, under certain circumstances you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, as set out below:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"):
  
  This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.


• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you:
  
  This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.


• 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 successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.


• 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 ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.


• Request restriction of processing your personal data:
  
  This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.


• Request transfer of your personal data:
  
  Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.


• Right to withdraw consent:
  
  

  Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact Mark Gilchrist, his details are as set out in paragraph 1.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights set out above). 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.

What we may need from 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 set out above). 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.

Time limit to respond

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.

10. Glossary

LAWFUL BASIS

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. 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 against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

THIRD PARTIES

External Third Parties

• Service providers acting as processors based in the United Kingdom who provide identity and AML checks, IT, storage, accounting and system administration services.


• Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in the United Kingdom who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.


• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.