COOKIES & PRIVACY POLICY
We are committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, you can be assured that it will be used only in accordance with this privacy policy.
This policy will explain areas of this website that may affect your privacy and personal details, how we process, collect, manage and store those details and how your rights under the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the DPA (Data Protection Act) [pre GDPR enforcement] and the PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations).are adhered to.
We may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.
Privacy Policy
In the course of your legal transaction we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:
- Name, address, date of birth, contact information (telephone and email where appropriate) National Insurance number (where appropriate)
- Identity information and documentation
- Additional information in relation to your legal transaction to enable us to advise you and progress your case. This will depend on the type of legal work you instruct the firm to undertake
We use your personal information primarily to enable us to provide you with a legal service in accordance with your instructions. We also use your personal information for related purposes including identity verification, administration of files, updating existing records if you have instructed the firm previously, analysis to help improve the management of the firm, and legal and regulatory compliance. The information will be held in hard copy and/or electronic format.
You are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of all the personal data you supply to us, and we will not be held liable for any errors unless you have advised us previously of any changes in your personal data.
We will only take instructions from you or someone you authorise in writing.
Where you are acting as an agent or trustee, you agree to advise your principal or the beneficiary of the trust that their personal information will be dealt with on these terms.
If we are working on your matter in conjunction with other professionals who are advising you, including experts, barristers, banks, building societies, mortgage lenders, estate agents etc., we will assume, unless you notify us otherwise, that we may share and disclose relevant personal data and information about your matter to them, if we feel it is appropriate and necessary.
On occasions we ask other trusted companies to provide typing, costing, photocopying or other support work on our files to ensure that this work can be done promptly. We will always obtain a confidentiality agreement with these outsourced providers to ensure that they keep the information sent to them securely and confidentially. All routine typing, costing and photocopying is undertaken in-house.
We use a private, secure, computing service to assist us in processing and protecting your information and keeping it secure from the risks of cybercrime and fraud. All IT providers we use are subject to strict confidentiality agreements with this firm and we will ensure that they meet GDPR obligations in relation to the service they provide to us. All of the personal information you provide to us is kept in the UK; we will not transfer any of your personal data to another country outside the UK unless you specifically instruct us to do so.
There may be occasions when we are under a legal duty to share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities, including the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Information Commissioner. If we are required to disclose information to the National Crime Agency, we may not be able to tell you that a disclosure has been made. We may have to stop working for you for a period of time and may not be able to tell you why. We cannot be held liable for any loss you suffer due to delay or our failure to provide information in these circumstances.
Occasionally some of our client files may be audited strictly confidentially by external auditors or examiners to ensure we meet our legal, quality and financial management standards. Some information may be disclosed to our professional indemnity insurers and to our financial auditors if required. Unless you tell us otherwise we will assume you have no objection. You may object at any time and refusing your consent will not affect our work for you. We will not submit files for external audit or disclose personal information to directories where there is particularly sensitive material.
We will not share your personal information with any other third party and will not issue any publicity material or information to the media about our relationship and the work we are doing for you without your explicit consent.
We will hold your personal data including your name, address and contact details plus your file of papers for a period of time, depending on the nature of your case. We will confirm this to you at the end of your case. After this period of time, your file of papers including the electronic file, will be destroyed confidentially without further reference to you, unless we contact you to confirm other arrangements or you contact us to request your file of papers at an earlier date. Further details about safeguarding your file and our file storage and destruction arrangements are provided in the “Client Care Letter” leaflet.
In order to meet our regulatory requirements, we may be required to retain basic information about you to include your name, address and date of birth on our electronic database for a longer period of time.
We intend to rely on the following lawful bases to collect and use your personal or sensitive personal data:
(a) Your consent
(b) Contractual obligations
(c) Legal Obligations
(d) Public task
(e) Legitimate interests
Information about the firm and up-to-date articles which may be of interest to you are available on our website and social media accounts. We would encourage you to refer to this.
In relation to future marketing, we would like to keep in touch with you and let you know periodically about information that we think may be of specific interest to you or to tell you about events or developments in the firm. We ask you to provide your email address and give specific confirmation that you want to “opt in” to us sending you such information in the future. If you provide your consent, you may withdraw it at any time by contacting us to confirm that you no longer want us to contact you. If you provide your consent, we may use third party software and services to assist us in relation to the processing of our marketing communications, but we will ensure we have confidentiality agreements in place and will never disclose your information to third parties for them to use for their own marketing purposes.
If you are an existing client of the firm or we are holding documents for you, we may rely on legitimate interests as the reason for contacting you in future. We will only do this where we feel it would be of benefit to you or where we need to update you in relation to our terms and conditions.
Under GDPR you have a number of important rights, free of charge. Further information about these rights can be found on the Information Commissioners Website www.ico.org.uk/for-the-public/.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please:
• email, call or write to us at info@montecristollp.com
• let us have enough/accurate 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 your request relates, including any account or reference numbers, if you have them.
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, 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.
The GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at www.ico.org.uk/concerns/ or telephone 0303 1231113.
Cookies
his website uses cookies to better understand the users’ experience while visiting the website. Cookies are small files saved to the user’s computer’s hard drive that track, save and store information about the user’s interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server, to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website.
Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this website onto their computer’s hard drive they should take necessary steps within their web browser’s security settings to block all cookies from this website and its external serving vendors or use the cookie control system if available upon their first visit.
We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use this website. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.
Google Analytics stores information about:
the pages you visit
how long you spend on each page
how you got to the site
what you click on while you’re visiting the site
We don’t collect or store your personal information (for example your name or address) so this information can’t be used to identify who you are. We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data.
Google Analytics sets the following cookies in accordance with Google’s privacy policy
- _ga: This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you’ve visited before, it expires after 2 years
- _gid: This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you’ve visited before, it expires after 24 hours
- _gat: This is used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made, it expires after 10 minutes
- _utma: Like _ga, this lets us know if you’ve visited before, so we can count how many of our visitors are new to the site or to a certain page, it expires after 2 years
- _utmb: This works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time you spend on the site, it expires after 30 minutes
- _utmc: This works with _utmb to calculate when you close your browser, it expires when you close your browser
- _utmz: This tells us how you reached the site (for example from another website or a search engine), it expires after 6 months
We use telephone tracking numbers to link a user’s call to the marketing channel that they originated from. This is done using cookies – you can choose to decline cookies, as explained above, if you would prefer not to be tracked.
Any downloadable documents, files or media made available on this website are provided to users at their own risk. While all precautions have been undertaken to ensure only genuine downloads are available, users are advised to verify their authenticity using third party antivirus software or similar applications.
We accept no responsibility for third party downloads and downloads provided by external third-party websites and advise users to verify their authenticity using third party antivirus software or similar applications.
Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy policy. You should exercise caution and look at the appropriate privacy policy applicable to the relevant website being used.
While we may have official profiles on social media platforms, users are advised to verify authenticity of such profiles before engaging with, or sharing information with such profiles. We will never ask for user passwords or personal details on social media platforms. Users are advised to conduct themselves appropriately when engaging with us on social media.
There may be instances where our website features social sharing buttons, which help share web content directly from web pages to the respective social media platforms. You use social sharing buttons at your own discretion and accept that doing so may publish content to your social media profile feed or page. You can find further information about some social media privacy and usage policies in the resources section below.
