Privacy Policy

We are Clarkes LLP, Solicitors, with offices at Telford Centre, Newport, Shrewsbury and Wellington in the county of Shropshire. Our principal contact address is Hazledine House, Telford Centre, Telford, Shropshire TF3 4JL

We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and relevant UK law. We comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulations with respect to information held about you. We use the information you provide primarily for the provision of legal services to you and for related purposes including the updating and enhancing of client records, analysis to help us manage our practice, statutory returns and legal and regulatory compliance.

This Privacy Policy sets out what personally identifiable data we hold for clients, how we manage it, how you can correct any discrepancies and how to contact us. If you have any data concerns not already covered here, please get in touch with us.  The Privacy Policy also covers access to our website.

Who we are

Clarkes are a firm of Solicitors engaged in providing professional legal services to its clients and, as such, is classified as a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.  Where we act as a data controller, we are required under data protection legislation to notify anyone who provides personal data to us, either directly or through a third party, of the information contained in this Privacy Policy.

Clarkes is the trading name of Clarkes LLP (company number OC 039114 and registered address is Hazledine House, Telford Centre, Telford, Shropshire TF3 4JL), so when we mention “Clarkes”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy, we are referring to this firm which is responsible for processing your data.

Our Contact Details

Telephone: 01952 291666

Email address: info@clarkeslaw.co.uk

Postal address: Clarkes Solicitors, Hazledine House, Telford Centre, Telford, Shropshire TF3 4JL.

What is personal data?

Personal data is any information about an individual from which that individual can be identified. Your name, address, phone number and bank account number are examples of personal data.  It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

GDPR Principles

We comply with UK data protection law and GDPR. This says that any data we hold about you must be:

  • Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
  • Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any other way.
  • Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
  • Accurate and kept up to date.
  • Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
  • Kept securely. These principles apply to data about you, from which you can be identified. It does not include data where your identity has been removed (anonymous data).

Data Collected

We keep the following data:

  1. Customer Contact Details. This includes customer names, email addresses and telephone numbers. This information is necessary for us to provide our service to you, including delivering searches and services that you order, sending queries and updates, sending instruction confirmations and Invoices. We may also send you information regarding relevant products and services that we feel you would be interested in such as price increases, service issues, product changes or new products and services.
  2. Names and addresses of customers and additional data such as date of birth and passport numbers used for anti-money laundering searches.

How we collect Data

We collect Data in the following ways:

  1. Data is given to us by you; and
  2. Data that may collected automatically such as via our website.

Website

If you access our website it will be on the following terms:

  1. To the extent that you access our website, we reserve the right to collect your data automatically.
  2. We may automatically collect some information about your visit to our website. This information helps us to make improvements to the website content and navigation and includes your IP address, the date, times and frequency with which you access our Website and the way you use and interact with its content.
  3. Sometimes it is useful for the website to remember you when you come back to our site. The way we do this is by storing a small file on your computer, known as a “cookie” which can only be seen by the website and will not expose you to any security risk. A cookie is perfectly safe and does not affect the performance of your computer in any way but it does mean that if you are using the same computer we can recognise you when you come back to our website.
  4. We do not use cookies to store personal data nor do we link non-personal information stored in cookies with personal data about specific individuals.

Links to other websites

Our website may, from time to time, provide links to other websites. We have no control over such websites and are not responsible for the content of these websites. This Privacy Policy does not extend to your use of such websites.  You are advised to read the privacy policy statement of other website prior to using them.

Our Use of Data

Data is held until we decide to destroy it or until such time as you request its erasure. This is so that we can provide access to you to our service for the retrieval of old documents in respect of work done, advice given, invoices and search reports as well as being able to continue to use our services should you wish to.

Our use of your data is covered under the following legal bases:

  1. Legitimate Interest – We will use your data in ways that you would reasonably expect and which have a minimal privacy impact. The use of your data will be proportionate and will be necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), and where your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. These interests include; informing you of product developments and changes, informing you of new products or services, price changes, legislative changes or other reasons that are relevant to you. These legitimate interests have been documented in our Legitimate Interests Assessment (LIA).
  2. Legal Obligation – Where we are required to provide information to law enforcement or for regulatory authorities.
  3. Contract – Where it is necessary to deliver the goods or service you have requested.

Data Sharing

We will only share your personal information with third parties where required by law or to provide you with requested products and services, where it is necessary to carry out our working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

If you request services from us online, we will retain your name, email address and telephone number in order to deliver their services to you.

Third parties will only process your data on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the data confidentially and to keep it secure. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes.  We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Currently none of your data is transferred outside the European Economic Area (EEA). If this changes, we will notify you and you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your data.

Data Security

All personal data is stored securely in accordance with the principles of the GDPR and UK Law. We have put in place security measures to prevent your data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way.

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.

Your Rights

You have the right to request us to erase and restrict your data. Even if we delete your data it may persist on backup or archival media for legal, tax or regulatory purposes.

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.

For more information regarding this, including requests to object to our processing of your data, erase your data or restrict the processing of your data, please send your request to your caseworker or to Clarkes at the email address above.