Simpson Millar Privacy Policy
We take your privacy very seriously and we ask that you read this privacy policy 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.
Who we are
Simpson Millar LLP Solicitors (SM) is a data controller bound by the requirements of the General Data Protection
Regulations (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. Our registered office is 21-27 St Paul’s Street, Leeds West Yorkshire LS1 2JG.
Please address any questions, comments or requests regarding how we process your information to our Data Protection
Officer (DPO) Paul Bradley, Direct Dial telephone number: 0113 306 2835 Email: paul.bradley@simpsonmillar.co.uk.
The personal information we collect and use
Information we will or may collect
In the course of conducting SM legal services we may collect the following personal information:
Personal data we will collect
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Personal data we may collect depending
on why you have instructed us |
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Your name, address and telephone
number
Information to enable us to check
and verify your identity, e.g. your date of birth or passport details
Electronic contact details, e.g.
your email address and mobile phone number
Information relating to the matter
in which you are seeking our advice or representation
Your financial details so far as
relevant to your instructions, e.g. the source of your funds if you are
instructing on a purchase transaction
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Your National Insurance and tax
details
Your bank and/or building society
details
Details of your spouse/partner,
marital status and dependants or other family members, e.g. if you instruct
us on a family matter or a will
Your employment status and details
including salary and benefits, e.g. if you instruct us on matter related to
your employment or in which your employment status or income is relevant
Your medical history or records,
e.g. if we are acting for you in a personal injury claim
Details of disabilities you have if
relevant to your case
Information to enable us to
undertake a credit or other financial checks on you
Your nationality and immigration
status and information from related documents, such as your passport or other
identification, and immigration information
Your employment records including,
where relevant, records relating to sickness and attendance, performance,
disciplinary, conduct and grievances (including relevant special category
personal data), e.g. if you instruct us on matter related to your employment
or in which your employment records are relevant
Your racial or ethnic origin,
gender and sexual orientation, religious or similar beliefs, e.g. if you
instruct us on discrimination claim
Your trade union membership, e.g.
if you instruct us on discrimination claim or your matter is funded by a
trade union
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How your personal data is collected
We collect most of this information from you direct. However, we may also collect information:
- from publicly accessible sources, e.g. Companies House or HM Land Registry;
- directly from a third party, e.g. insurance providers, estate agents, trade unions or other introducers, credit
reference agencies, client due diligence providers;
- from a third party with your consent, e.g. your bank or building society, another financial institution or
advisor, insurance companies, consultants and other professionals we may engage in relation to your matter, your
employer, professional body or pension administrators, your doctors, medical and occupational health
professionals;
- via our website — we use cookies on our website.
How we use your personal information
We will only use your personal data if we have a proper reason for doing so. The information that you provide to SM
will be used to provide services you request from us and also to enable us to deal with your enquiry. We will
therefore need to process that information either:
- for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
- to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
- for our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or
- where you have given consent.
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.
If we need to process your sensitive information, for instance we need to see your health records or trade union information to proceed with your case, we will do so on the basis that processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of your legal claim.
You acknowledge that we are entitled to obtain, use, process and disclose your personal information to enable us to discharge
the services which we have agreed to provide, and for other related purposes including updating client records, analysis for management purposes, crime prevention and legal and regulatory compliance.
As stated above we will need to process your personal data in order to conduct your claim or matter under our retainer. If
you do not provide us with this data we will not be in a position to assist you with your matter.
We will not use your personal data to carry out automated decisions about you i.e. to use technology alone to make any processing
decisions that carry legal effect.
Sharing your information
Whilst acting for you, in order to assist with your case we may share your personal information including your name, contact
details, personal circumstances and relevant information about your case with selected third party suppliers to enable us to discharge the services which we have agreed to provide. We routinely share personal data with:
- professional advisers who we instruct on your behalf or refer you to, e.g. barristers, medical professionals and agencies, accountants, tax advisors or other experts;
- other third parties where necessary to carry out your instructions, e.g. your mortgage provider estate agent HM Land Registry and HMRC in the case of a property transaction or Companies House, a court, tribunal, third party insurers or defendant solicitor on a litigated matter;
- to the person or organisation that referred you to us such as a trade union or claims management company;
- to any insurance company that is providing financial assistance for your claim such as a provider of legal expenses insurance or other third party funders;
- our insurers and brokers;
- external auditors, e.g. Law Society to verify the quality of service provided by us under independent accreditations like Lexcel and the audit of our accounts;
- our bank;
- external service suppliers, representatives and agents that we use to make our business more efficient, e.g. legal costs draftsman, typing services, PR/marketing agencies, document collation or analysis suppliers;
- to the Legal Aid Agency if you are publicly funded;
- to property search companies on conveyancing transactions;
- to online ID checking services in order to verify your identity under the Money Laundering Regulations or to meet
other regulatory requirements.
We only allow our service providers to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take
appropriate measures to protect your personal data. We also impose contractual
obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your personal
data to provide services to us and to you.
We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
We will not transfer, store and process the data that we collect from you at a destination outside the European Economic Area
(“EEA”) without your express consent.
Promotional communications
We may use your personal data to send you updates by email, text message, telephone or post about legal developments that might be
of interest to you and/or information about our services, including exclusive offers, promotions or new services or products.
We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data for promotional purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your
personal data’). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.
We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations for
marketing purposes.
You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by:
- contacting us by calling 0345 357 9977;
- using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails in any communication we may send you.
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if
there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
How long will we hold your information
Where we have acted for you or your information relates to a matter we have acted in we will usually keep paper records for 7
years and electronic records for 15 years. Exceptions to this include property transactions, commercial litigation, wills, clients who are minors or who may lack capacity. Where we have not acted in a matter we will usually keep
electronic and written records for 2 years.
Your rights
You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:
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Access
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The right to be provided with a
copy of your personal data
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Rectification
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The right to require us to correct
any mistakes in your personal data
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To be forgotten
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The right to require us to delete your personal data—in certain situations
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Restriction of processing
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The right to require us to restrict
processing of your personal data—in certain circumstances, e.g. if you
contest the accuracy of the data
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Data portability
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The right to receive the personal
data you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable
format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations
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To object
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The right to object:
–at any time to your personal data
being processed for direct marketing (including profiling);
–in certain other situations to our
continued processing of your personal data, e.g. processing carried out for
the purpose of our legitimate interests.
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Not to be subject to automated
individual decision-making
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The right not to be subject to a
decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that
produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you
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If you would like to see the information we hold or
enforce any of the other above rights please contact our DPO.
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures in place to
prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed
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 do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of
confidentiality.
We also 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.
How to complain
We hope that our Data Protection Officer can
resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.
If you have a complaint about how we process your personal data or our compliance with the GDPR you can contact the Information
Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who are independent and impartial and who have official powers to resolve complaints. Details of how to contact the ICO appear below:
Website: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/
Email: casework@ico.org.uk
Helpline no: 0303 123 1113
Changes to this privacy policy
This privacy policy was published on 25th May 2018 and last updated on the same date.
We may change this privacy policy from time to time. You should check this policy occasionally to ensure you are aware of the most recent version.
Cookies
In order that we can provide you with a better user experience we sometimes place small data files on a user’s computer, or device known as cookies. These data files do not store personal information about you, but merely about the choices you make when navigating our website and are used purely for analytical purposes.
More information about cookies in general can be found here: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/
The way we use cookies on our websites:
1. Analytics — e.g.how visitors use our website
We use Google Analytics to store information about how visitors use our website in order that we may make improvements and provide visitors with a better user experience.
Google Analytics is a third party information storage system that records information about the pages you visit, the length of time you were on specific pages and the website in general, how you arrived at the site and what you clicked on when you were there. These cookies do not store any personal information about you eg name, address etc and we do not share the data. You can view their privacy policy below:
2. Internet based Advertising:
We use Google Analytics tracking code to support Google Display Advertising features such as Re-marketing to inform, optimise, and serve ads based on your past visits to our website or on our adverts.
You can opt-out of the Google Analytics Advertising Features you use, through Ad Settings, Ad Settings for mobile apps, or any other available means (for example, the NAI’s consumer opt-out). Google Analytics’ opt-outs for the web.
Examples of cookies set:
Google Analytics
- Cookie Name: _utma; Typical content: This cookie is typically written to the browser upon the first visit to your site from that web browser. If the cookie has been deleted by the browser operator, and the browser subsequently visits your site, a new __utma cookie is written with a different unique ID. This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to your site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure.; Expires: 2 years
- Cookie Name: _utmb; Typical content: This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session with your site. When a user views a page on your site, the Google Analytics code attempts to update this cookie. If it does not find the cookie, a new one is written and a new session is established. Each time a user visits a different page on your site, this cookie is updated to expire in 30 minutes, thus continuing a single session for as long as user activity continues within 30-minute intervals
- Cookie Name: _utmc; Typical content: this cookie operated in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user; Expires as soon as you exit your browser
- Cookie Name: _utmz; Typical content: This cookie stores the type of referral used by the visitor to reach your site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within your own site. The cookie is updated with each page view to your site and expires after 6 months
General Session Cookie set by our website:
- Name: Asp.net_sessionid; Typical content: randomly generated text that is session based and expires as soon as you close your browser
IP addresses
- An IP or Internet Protocol Address is a unique numerical address assigned to a computer as it logs on to the internet. Simpson Millar LLP do not have access to any personal identifiable information and we would never seek this information. Your IP address is logged when visiting our site, but our analytic software only uses this information to track how many visitors we have from particular regions.
Giving or removing consent using your browser
You are completely in control of cookies stored on your device and can view/delete them at any time using settings in your browser.
Note: Obstructing all cookies could, however, have an adverse impact upon the usability of this website and many others on the internet.