Privacy Policy

This notice explains how, why and when we collect personal information about you. It also details how we keep that information secure.

We take data privacy very seriously. For clients of this firm, you should read this notice alongside our general terms and conditions which provide further information on confidentiality, data privacy etc.

Data is collected, processed and stored by Blanchards Law Ltd and we are what is known as the ‘data controller’ of the personal information you provide to us. Blanchards Law is a limited company registered in England and Wales with the registered number 07830331. The company is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (no. 565657).

What we need

The exact information we will request from you will depend on what you have asked us to do or what we are contracted to do for you.

There are two types of personal data (personal information) that you may provide to us:

• • Personal data: is the general information that you supply about yourself – such as your name, address, gender, date of birth, contact details, financial information etc.
  • Sensitive personal data: is, by its nature, more sensitive information and may include your racial or ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, political opinions, health data, trade union membership, philosophical views, biometric and genetic data.

Sources of information

Information about you may be obtained from a number of sources; including:

• You may volunteer the information about yourself
• You may provide information relating to someone else if you have the authority to do so
• We may receive information from third parties in order to undertake your legal work. These are organisations such as:
  • Banks or building societies
  • Panel providers who allocate legal work to law firms
  • Organisations that have referred work to us
  • Medical or financial institutions

Information collected from this site

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service Privacy Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

If you fill out your details in our contact form, we will use this information to contact you in line with our policies. You are free to opt out of being contacted at any time. You may make this request to info@blanchards.co.uk.

Why we need it

The primary reasons for asking for your personal data is to allow us to carry out our contacted services and your requests. This information is used to represent you and carry out your legal work.

Information may be used for other legitimate reasons, which include but are not limited to:

• Contacting and responding to you
• Verifying your identity
• Verifying your source of funds
• To carry out recruitment processes
• To establish funding for you matter
• Maintaining financial records of financial transactions that we make on your behalf
• Seeking advice from third parties such as experts
• to carry out, monitor and analyse our business or website operations
• to personalise your visit and use of our Internet Services and to assist you while you use those services
• Responding to complaints against us

Who has access to it

We do not sell or rent your personal data to third parties or share it for the purpose of marketing. We have strict data protection processes in place to ensure the effective processing of personal information. The majority of information is only used within Blanchards Law to carry out our services to you. However, in some circumstances we will need to disclose certain information to third parties. These parties include, but are not limited to:

• HM Land Registry in matters relating to property registration.
• HM Revenues and Customs
• Court or Tribunal
• Solicitors acting on the other side of a matter
• An independent Barrister or Counsel
• Non legal experts
• Translation Agencies
• Contracted Suppliers
• External Auditors or Regulators
• Banks or other financial institutions
• Insurance companies
• Any disclosure required by law, such as prevention of fraud or terrorism.

Where we share your information with one of the relevant parties, we ensure that they comply with our policy and instructions. They will be required to maintain data protections consistent with reasonable and appropriate obligations of data processors, including, where applicable, European Union’s data protection laws and regulations.

There may be some uses of personal data that may require your specific consent. If this is the case we will contact you separately to ask for your consent which you are free to withdraw at any time.

How do we protect your personal data

We recognise that your information is valuable, and we take all reasonable measures to protect it. Consistent with our professional obligations, we take the upmost care to exercise discretion regarding client information.

We utilise technology and operational security to protect personal information from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. We have a high threshold of confidentiality.

We maintain reasonable and appropriate, albeit not infallible, physical, electronic and procedural safeguards intended to maintain the confidentiality of Personal Information, including that provided by a visitor to this website and provided while using other Internet Services. We use computer safeguards such as firewalls and data encryption and annual penetration testing; and we enforce, where possible, physical access controls to our buildings and files to keep data safe. We do not guarantee that our safeguards will always work.

How long will we keep it for

We may retain information provided by you for as long as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, or as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which the information was collected. We retain information for a minimum of 7 years from the conclusion or closure of your legal work; in case you, or we, need to re-open your case for the purpose of defending complaints or claims against us. For information about data retention for other purposes, or if you would like more details about our information practices, please contact us at info@blanchards.co.uk.

What are your rights?

Under GDPR, you are entitled to access your personal data which is a ‘right of access.’ This means that you are entitled to a copy of the data we hold on you. It does not mean that you are entitled to the documents that contain this data. In some circumstances, you are entitled to ‘access your data.’ This includes:

1. The right to be informed: which is fulfilled by way of this privacy notice.
2. The right to rectification: you are entitled to have personal data rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete
3. The right to erasure / ‘right to be forgotten’: you have the right to request the deletion or removal of your personal data where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing. This right only applies in the following specific circumstances:

• Where the personal data is no longer necessary in regards to the purpose for which it was originally collected
• Where consent is relied upon as the lawful basis for holding your data and you withdraw your consent
• Where you object to the processing and there is no overriding legitimate interest for continuing the processing
• The personal data was unlawfully processed
• Where you object to the processing for direct marketing purposes

4. The right to object: you have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests; and direct marketing. This right only applies in the following circumstances:

• An objection to stop processing personal data for direct marketing purposes is absolute – there are no exemptions or grounds to refuse – we must stop processing in this context
• You must have an objection on grounds relating to your particular situation
• We must stop processing your personal data unless:
  • We can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms; or
  • The processing is for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

5. The right to restrict processing: you have the right to request the restriction or suppression of your data. When processing is restricted, we can store the data but not use it. This right only applies in the following circumstances:

• Where you contest the accuracy of the personal data – we should restrict the processing until we have verified the accuracy of that data
• Where you object to the processing (where it was necessary for the performance of a public interest or purpose of legitimate interests), and we are considering whether our organisation’s legitimate grounds override your right
• Where processing is unlawful and you request restriction
• If we no longer need the personal data but you require the data to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim

If you wish to make a request, please make it in writing to info@blanchards.co.uk. You have the right to object to this processing. Should you wish to do so please email info@blanchards.co.uk.

Complaints about the use of personal data

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact us at info@blanchards.co.uk with the subject of the request being PERSONAL DATA COMPLAINT.

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Marketing data

We may contact you for the purpose of direct marketing. This means that we may use your personal data that we have collected in accordance with this privacy policy to contact you about our products or services, events etc. which we feel may interest you. The direct marketing communications may be provided to you by social media channels, email or post. We will never send marketing communications via SMS or call you without your specific consent; nor do we ever pass on or sell your details to a third party.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

How we collect personal data

The following are examples, although not exhaustive, of how we collect your personal information:

• Sign-up to receive one of our newsletters
• Submitting an online enquiry or filling an online form
• Following/liking/subscribing to our social media channels
• Agree to fill in a questionnaire or survey on our website
• Ask us a question or submit any queries or concerns you have via email or on social media channels
• Post information to our website or social media channels
• When you leave a review about us on Trustpilot.com or Google Reviews

Whenever we collect your personal data, you will be provided the opportunity to ‘opt in’ to receiving marketing communications from us. We hope you will provide this information so you find our communications useful but if you choose not to this will have no effect on accessing our legal services.

How we may use your details

The following are examples, although not exhaustive, of how we may use your personal information for our legitimate business interests:

• fraud prevention
• direct marketing
• network and information systems security
• data /analytics /enhancing, modifying or improving our services
• identifying usage trends
• determining the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising.

We may use your personal information for legitimate interests such as direct marketing or under reasonable expectation to provide you with information you would expect to receive or that would benefit and enhance our relationship. This information will help us review and improve our products, services and offers.

How we protect your personal information

We will only ever use non sensitive personal information to target individuals with marketing materials; such as name, address, telephone, email, job description and previous buying behaviours. Sensitive information or specific details will never be used to target marketing communications. We may use personalisation to collect analytics to inform marketing and produce relevant content for the marketing strategy to enable it to enhance and personalise the “consumer experience”.

If you do not wish us to continue to contact you in this way, you can either follow the unsubscribe instructions on any of our communications to you or contact us by emailing info@blanchards.co.uk with your name and email address. Your details will be removed immediately. Once unsubscribed, you may still receive transactional emails from us regarding your legal case.

Any questions regarding this notice and our privacy practices should be sent by email to info@blanchards.co.uk