PRIVACY AND DATA PROTECTION
Your privacy is taken very seriously. At no point will confidential or legally-privileged information be shared with other parties unless authorised by you. Your data will only ever be used during activities relating to the service provided to you. Your data is never shared with parties not involved in an official capacity with your case unless specifically authorised by you and even then only when it is necessary to share such data in furtherance of the service provided to you. Your data will never be 'sold’ or passed on for any commerical gain. If your data is shared, for example, with another provider of legal services, it will only be with your express approval.
We will only hold your information for as long as necessary to provide you with legal services and then for only so long as we are required either contractually or under our regulatory obligations. As a general rule, we retain your data for at least six (6) years after the end of your matter. When a file is reviewed, it might be that it needs to be retained for a further period for legal or regulatory purposes. For example, where you or a named party are currently under the age of eighteen (18), we may decide that we are required and/or it is proper and appropriate to keep your data for longer than this period, but we will notify you if we believe that your case falls into this category.
You have rights as a Data Subject under the General Data Protection Regulation as incorporated into the law of the United Kingdom by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (and known as the UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Your rights include the right to be informed of the information we hold about you. You can obtain this information by submitting a 'data subject access request’. Any information that we hold, however, is likely to have been provided directly by you or through officially papers served upon us, papers that will also be served upon you.
You have a right of rectification and, in particular, to request that information is corrected if it is inaccurate.
There are also other rights available to you, but these may be limited to a certain extent should you become a client as we may have overriding regulatory duties with respect to handling of your data for the purposes of providing services to you.
In particular, you may have a right of erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten). In certain circumstances, this allows you to request that we erase your personal data. This is not an absolute right, however, and, once you become a client of our firm, we will be required by our regulators and for legal purposes to retain some of your personal data and other information within casefiles.
If you are concerned about our handling of your personal data, there are also other rights available to you: a right to restrict processing; a right to data portability; a right to object and to request we stop processing your personal data; and a right in relation to automated decision making and profiling.
Importantly, you also have rights to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you feel that your data is not being handled properly.
For information on how your information is used, how we maintain the security of our information, and/or to exercise any of your data rights as explained above, please contact us. Similarly, if you wish to make a complaint in relation to our handling of your data, such as any potential data breach, then please contact us at the earliest opportunity.
Further Information about your data rights and how to exercise them are also available by visiting the Information Commissioner’s Office’s website at https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/.
Please mark your enquiry, request, or complaint for the attention of Jonathan Lynch, who is our Data Protection Officer, and the person in this firm responsible for data protection. All enquiries and requests can be sent by emailing JonathanLynch@LynchLaw.co.uk or in writing to Manor Farm, CDL Business Park, Lower Road, Erlestoke, Devizes, SN10 5UE.
