Privacy and cookies policy

This policy explains the data processing practices of Ward Gethin Archer

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.

Who we are

Ward Gethin Archer (“We” “Us” “Our”) is a trading name of Ward Gethin Archer Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (registered number 07869806). We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as “controller” of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

Key terms

Personal data – Any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.

Special category personal data – Personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership; Genetic and biometric data; Data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation.

The personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us – In the course of the legal services we provide to you, we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

Personal data we collect

  • 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.
  • Information about your use of our IT, communication and other systems.

Personal data we collect depending on why you have instructed us

  • Your financial details so far as relevant to your instructions, e.g. the source of funds if you are instructing on a purchase transaction.
  • Your National Insurance and tax details
  • Your bank and/or building society details
  • Details of your professional online presence, e.g. LinkedIn profile
  • Details of your spouse/partner and dependents or other family members, e.g. if you instruct us on a family matter or a will
  • Your employment status and details including your salary and benefits, e.g. if you instruct us on a matter related to your employment or in which your employment status or income is relevant.
  • Details of your pension arrangements, e.g. if you instruct us in relation to financial arrangements following the breakdown of a relationship
  • Your employment status and details including your 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.
  • Details of your pension arrangements, e.g. if you instruct us in relation to financial arrangements following breakdown of a relationship
  • 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 a matter related to your employment or in which employment records are relevant.
  • Your racial or ethnic origin, gender and sexual orientation, religious or similar beliefs, e.g. if you instruct us on a discrimination claim.
  • Your trade union membership, e.g. if you instruct us on a discrimination claim.
  • Personal identifying information, such as hair or eye colour or your parents’ names, e.g. if you instruct us to incorporate a company for you.
  • Your medical records, e.g. if we are acting for you in a personal injury claim.

The personal data is required to enable us to provide our service to you. If you do not provide personal data we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you.

Information collected from other sources – 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. client due diligence providers.
  • from a third party with your consent, e.g.
    • your bank or building society, another financial institution or advisor
    • consultants and other professionals we may engage in relation to your matter
    • your employer and/or trade union, professional body or pension administrators
    • your doctors, medical and occupational health professionals
  • via our website – we use cookies on our website (for more information on cookies, please see below for our cookies policy)
  • via our information technology (IT) systems, e.g.:
    • case management, document management and time recording systems
    • automated monitoring of our website and other technical systems, such as our computer networks and connections, communications systems, email and instant messaging systems.

How and why we use your personal information

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason for doing so, e.g.:

  • to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
  • for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
  • for our legitimate interests of 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.

The table below explains what we use your personal data for and our reasons for doing so:

 

What we use your personal data for Our Reasons
To provide legal services to you For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract.
Conducting checks to identify our clients and verify their identity

Screening for financial and other sanctions or embargoes

Other processing necessary to comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, e.g. under health and safety regulations or rules issued by our professional regulator
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Ensuring business policies are adhered to, e.g. policies covering security and internet use For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to make sure we are following our own internal procedures so we can deliver the best service for you.
Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control For our legitimate interest or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price.
Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive behaviour For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect our intellectual property and other commercially valuable information.

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Statistical analysis to help us manage our practice, e.g. in relation to our financial performance, client base, work type, or other efficiency measures. For our legitimate interest or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price.
Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging to us and for you.

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
Updating client records 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 interest or those of a third party, e.g. making sure we can keep in touch with our clients about existing and new services.
Statutory returns To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Ensuring safe working practices, staff administration and assessments To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, e.g. to make sure we are following our own internal procedures and working efficiently so we can deliver the best service to you.
Marketing our services to existing and former clients, and third parties who have previously expressed an interest in our services. For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to promote our business to existing and former clients.
Credit reference checks via external credit reference agencies For our legitimate interest or those of a third party, i.e. for credit control
External audits and quality checks, e.g. for Lexcel and ISO and audit of our accounts. For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to maintain our accreditations so we can demonstrate we operate at the highest standards.

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

The above table does not apply to special category personal data, which we will only process with explicit consent.

Promotional Communications

We may use your personal data to send you updates (by email or post) about legal developments that might be of interest to you and/or information about our services.

We have a legitimate interest in processing your 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 your promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.

We will always treat your data with the utmost respect and never sell it to other organisations for marketing purposes.

You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by:

  • contacting us. You can email marketing@wardgethinarcher.co.uk
  • using the “unsubscribe” link in emails.

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.

Who we share your personal information with

We routinely share personal data with:

  • professional advisors who we instruct on your behalf or refer you to, e.g. barristers, medical professionals, accountants, tax advisers or other experts.
  • other third parties where necessary to carry out your instructions, e.g. your mortgage provider, estate agent or HM Land Registry in the case of a property transaction or Companies House or HM Revenue and Customs.
  • credit reference agencies
  • our insurers and brokers
  • external auditors, e.g. in relation to Lexcel and ISO accreditations and the audit of our accounts.
  • our banks
  • external service suppliers, representatives and agents that we use to make our business more efficient, e.g. typing services, marketing agencies, document collation or analysis suppliers

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.

How long your personal information will be kept

We will keep your personal data after we have finished advising or acting for you. We will do so for one of these reasons:

  • to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf.
  • to show we treated you fairly.
  • To keep records required by law.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have a number of important rights free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

  • fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your personal information
  • access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Notice is already designed to address
  • require us to correct mistakes in your information which we hold
  • require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
  • receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations.
  • object at any time to the processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing.
  • object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you.
  • object in certain situations to our continued processing of personal information.
  • otherwise, restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

  • email, call or write to Chris Dewey, Ward Gethin Archer, 10 Tuesday Market Place, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, PE30 1JT, telephone number (01553) 660033, email chris.dewey@wardgethinarcher.co.uk.  Chris Dewey is one of the Directors responsible for data protection within the firm.
  • let us have enough information to identify you
  • let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill), and
  • let us know the information to which you request relates, including any account or reference numbers, if you have them.

If you would like to unsubscribe from any email newsletter, you can also click on the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the email newsletter. It may take up to fourteen days for this to take place.

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.

If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.

How to complain

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or telephone: 0303 1231113.

Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was published on 22nd August 2019.

We may change this privacy notice from time to time. When we do any changes will be published on our website.

Use of cookies

The law relating to cookies recently changed. Ward Gethin Archer is committed to complying with all relevant legislation. Please see our updated policy below.

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

This website makes use of cookies to monitor visitor sessions. No personal information is stored in the cookie that is issued by the site. The value stored in the cookie is an anonymous identifier, which is not linked to any other personal information you may give us during your visit.

If you do not wish to receive these cookies you can disable them in your browser, though doing so may affect the functionality of our website. Most web browsers allow some control of cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org

We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website. Google Analytics generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies, which are stored on users' computers. The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of the website. Google will store this information. Google's privacy policy is available at: https://policies.google.com/privacy you have any comments or concerns regarding this policy please contact Ward Gethin Archer online or in writing by clicking here.

Copyright

The contents of these pages (including pictures, designs, logos, photographs, text, written and other materials) are the copyright and/or trademark of Ward Gethin Archer or its content and technology providers or their respective owners. All rights reserved. The copying, modification, distribution, reproduction or incorporation into any other work of part or all of the material available on this website in any form is prohibited save that you may copy print or download extracts of the material on this website for the sole purpose of your personal non-commercial use of this website. You may not distribute, copy or store for any commercial purpose any part of this website.

The website has been prepared for general interest and it is important to obtain professional advice on specific issues. While all possible care is taken in the preparation of the website, no responsibility for loss occasioned by any person acting or refraining from acting as a result of the material contained herein can be accepted by the firm or the authors.

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