Please read this Data Privacy Notice carefully to understand why data is collected and what we do with the data once it is in our possession. The website covered by this Notice is ‘www.hewittandgilpin.co.uk’. The Notice does not apply to any websites that may have a link to ours.

WHO WE ARE:

Hewitt & Gilpin Solicitors Limited is a registered company in Northern Ireland under company number NI073262. 

Our registered office address is Thomas House, 14/16 James Street South, Belfast, BT2 7GA.

We are authorised and regulated by the Law Society of Northern Ireland.

Our Data Protection Lead is Edith Campbell. She is based at our Thomas House office and can be contacted by e-mail (ecampbell@hewittandgilpin.co.uk) or telephone (90573573).

YOUR PERSONAL DATA:

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. This Data Privacy Notice is intended for clients and prospective clients only. Applicants for employment and employees have their own Data Privacy Notices.

Typically we will need your full name, address, date of birth, e-mail and telephone numbers and if a transaction is involved, your banking details may be needed too. In other cases we may need to ask you about medical or other information of a sensitive nature if this is required to carry out your work.

To comply with our legal obligations to verify your identity we are likely to require you to provide copies of certain documents and to respond to any queries we may have. If a transaction is involved we will be asking about the source of funds and requesting supporting documents. As part of this process we will carry out on- line searches to assist us in verifying your identity. Whilst we appreciate that such requests can be intrusive, we are unable to proceed with your work until these checks have been completed.

We always keep requests for information to the minimum level required to carry out your work.

In the majority of cases this personal data will be restricted to basic information such as name, address, contact details and information needed to complete ID checks. However, some of the work we do may require us to ask for more sensitive personal data, including:

racial or ethnic origin;

political opinions;

religious beliefs or philosophical beliefs;

trade union membership;

physical or mental health or condition;

sex life and sexual orientation;

genetic data; or

biometric data used to uniquely identify an individual

In certain cases we may need to share this information with third parties, such as medical professionals if you have had an accident. This is only done when there are safeguards in place to ensure that the information remains confidential and secure. We assume that unless you state otherwise we may disclose confidential and personal data about you to others such as experts and Counsel. If you should become concerned at any time about the disclosure if your data please raise this with us immediately.

RETENTION OF YOUR DATA:

It is our policy to retain litigation and employment files for a period of 5 years and probate, family, charity and property files for a period of 10 years after which time the files (excluding original documents such as deeds) will be destroyed.   Unless you advise us otherwise, your deeds, wills etc. will be stored in one of our secure, locked strong rooms at either our Thomas House or Holywood Road office. Some of our Deeds are also stored securley off-site with Morgans Document Security. 

 
SOURCES OF INFORMATION

We may obtain information about you from a number of sources:

You may volunteer the information. This could be done verbally, in writing (for example, by letter, e- mail or fax) or input through our websites. You must have the authority to disclose personal data if it relates to someone else and all data disclosed should be complete, accurate and up to date.
Information may be passed to us by third parties in order that we can carry out our legal work on your behalf. Typically these organisations may be:

Banks or building societies
Panel providers who allocate legal work to law firms
Organisations that have referred work to us
Other professional service firms such as accountants or independent financial advisors

Because of the nature of our work, data is never received from publically accessible sources.

 
USE OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA:

The primary reason for asking you to provide personal data is to allow us to carry out your requests, for example, to provide a quote or to carry out your legal work.

Your information may be used for:

Verifying your identity and to establish the funding of any transaction you have asked us to carry out on your behalf. In a limited number of cases, were funding is being provided by family member or third party, we may need to ask you to obtain information from them and personal information provided to us will also be subject to the terms of this Data Privacy Notice;

The detection of fraud;
Communicating with you during the matter;
Providing you with advice, to carry out litigation on your behalf or on behalf of any organisation you represent, prepare documents  or to complete transactions on yours or your organisation’s behalf;
Keeping financial records of your transactions and the transactions we make on your behalf. We do not store payment card information;
Seeking advice from third parties in connection with your matter;
Assisting you with the funding of your matter if it involves Legal Aid;
Responding to any complaint or allegation of negligence against us;
Internal management and planning, which includes:

Resource management;
Planning of tasks or meetings;
Keeping records of sources of work and new enquiries; and
Storage and archiving of files and documents.

Providing you with information about further legal work or services that could benefit you, whilst we are carrying out your work.

We do not use your information for automated decision making.

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA:

During the course of carrying out your legal work we are likely to need to disclose some information to parties outside Hewitt & Gilpin, but these disclosures are only made when required by your work.

Examples might include providing your information to:

Land and Property Services to register a property;
HM Revenue and Customs  for your Stamp Duty Land Tax liability;
A court or tribunal;
The solicitors acting on the other side of your matter;
Legal counsel or non-legal experts to obtain advice or assistance on your matter (e.g. financial advisors or property surveyors);
The bank or building society or other lender providing mortgage finance;
Consultants providing us with independent quality checks of your files;
Solicitors Accounts Regulations auditors (RSM Northern Ireland (UK) Limited) as part of their regulatory checking on behalf of the Law Society of Northern Ireland;
Solicitors representing our interests in the event of a claim against us by you;
A prospective purchaser (or their advisors) of this business under a binding non-disclosure agreement;
The providers of identity verification and assurance tools in order to confirm that we can take you on as a client; and
Any disclosure required by law in particular in relation to the prevention of financial crime and terrorism.

There are some uses of personal data that require your specific consent. We will be contacting you to explain what they are and to ask for your consent, which you are free to withdraw at any time.

DATA TRANSFERRED OUTSIDE THE EEA

Where possible your personal information will be processed within the EEA. However, for reasons described above we may need to disclose your data to companies physically located outside the EEA, for example in the United States. Should this be necessary, the same high level of security precautions will be employed to keep your personal information safe.

 

YOUR RIGHTS:

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have a number of specific rights afforded to you. Such rights include: 

1.       The right to correct and update inaccurate information

If you think any information we hold about you is incorrect or incomplete or has been changed since you first told us, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can update our records.

2.       The right to access to your personal information

You have the right to make a request to establish what data we hold on you. If you wish to make a subject access request, please contact Edith Campbell or write to Hewitt & Gilpin Solicitors, Thomas House, 14/16 James Street South, Belfast, BT2 7GA or contact the person dealing with your matter.

A subject access request entitles you to a copy of the personal data we hold on you. The focus of the information we have to provide is you and will include such things as records of your name, address, contact details, date of birth etc. This means that a subject access request will not normally result in you getting a copy of a file because the focus of the documents it contains are likely to be the transaction or legal matter rather than your personal information. We shall endeavor to respond to your request as soon as possible and in any event within on month of receipt as is required by law. 

3.The right to be forgotten, the right to object to and the right to restrict processing:

The General Data Protection Regulations provide you with three rights, the right to object to specific types of processing, the rights to be forgotten and the right to restrict processing.

Depending on the nature of the request, we will comply with it to the fullest extent possible, but in some cases, this could mean that we are unable to continue with your matter, in which case work would cease at the earliest opportunity, but you would remain liable for the fees and disbursements incurred to date.

If you have opted into marketing but subsequently withdraw your consent we will act on your request immediately it is received.

In certain situations you may be able to ask for restrictions to be placed on the processing of your data or to exercise your right to be forgotten.

A restriction has the effect of freezing data so we would continue to store your personal information but could not do anything with it. This might be relevant to you if you had any query or concern over the way your data was handled. A right to be forgotten would usually apply if data is processed unlawfully or otherwise fails to satisfy the requirement of the general Data Protection Regulations.

 

COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE USE OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA:

 

Please contact our Practice Director/Edith Campbell if you have any complaint or concern over how your data will be used. He/she will acknowledge your complaint and reply to your concerns. If you are not satisfied with the response, the UK regulator on data protection issues is the Information Commissioner’s Office. Their telephone number is 0303 123 1113 and website which is www.ico.org.uk.

 

CHANGES TO THIS DATA PRIVACY NOTICE:

The current data privacy notice will always be available on our websites. Any material changes will be advised to you.

 

JURISDICTION AND APPLICABLE LAW:

The courts of Northern Ireland will have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim arising from or related to a visit to our Websites or a data breach.

However, we retain the right to bring proceedings against you for breach of these Website conditions in your country of residence or any other relevant country. The law of Northern Ireland governs these terms.