Privacy Notice
Please read the following information carefully. This privacy notice contains information about what data we collect and store about you and why. It also tells you who we share this information with, the security mechanisms we have put in place to protect your data and how to contact us if you have a complaint.
Who we are?
John Morse Solicitors collects, uses and is responsible for personal information about you. When we do this, we are the ‘controller’ of this information for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation and other applicable data protection laws.
Our Data Protection representative is Andrew Sivertsen a director of the firm. John Morse Solicitors is the trading name of Morse Law Ltd incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 0791724 whose office registered office is at 156 St Helens Road, Swansea, SA1 4DG. The business is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and its SRA ID number is 569494.
What do we do with your information?
Information collected by us
When carrying out legal work we collect the following personal information that you provide to us:
- Your name and contact details
- Documents relating to your identification such as passport, driving licence, bank statement and utility bill etc. and the information shown on those documents
- Personal and financial information relating to your legal matter
- Special categories of personal data, where relevant to your legal matter
Information collected from other sources
We collect the following information from other sources:
- Public Records such as Land Registry where relevant to your matter;
- Information relating to your identity (e.g. where electronic identification searches are undertaken)
- Other parties you instruct us to contact (e.g. doctors, employers, estate agents, accountants, banks, surveyors, medical professionals, courts, regulatory bodies and other advisors and specialists relating to your matter).
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information for the following purposes:
- To verify your identity
- To identify you and provide you with the legal services you have requested;
- To provide you with information you have requested about services we offer;
- To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us;
- To notify you about changes to our services;
- To deal with your feedback, query or complaint;
- To comply with our legal obligations;
Whether information has to be provided by you, and why?
This personal information, name and contact details must be provided by you to us, to enable us to contact you to provide you with information on the services we offer. When we collect information from you, we will inform you whether you are required to provide this information to us.
Legal reasons we collect and use your personal information
Under the Data Protection act 2018, we are allowed to use personal information only if we have a proper and lawful reason to do so. This includes sharing it with others outside the firm e.g. an auditor of a relevant quality standard.
The Law says we must have one or more of these reasons:
- Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for us to provide services and to comply with the law.
- Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information.
- Consent: the individual has given clear consent for us to process their personal data for a specific purpose e.g. to send out marketing information.
Who will we share your personal information with?
We may need to share your personal data with other professionals who we instruct on your behalf (e.g. barristers and doctors), third parties who are vital to a transaction (e.g. mortgage providers, the courts), providers of services that are necessary to progress a legal matter (e.g. to perform our client due diligence checks on you), and people who you ask us to share your personal data with (such as estate agents, family members and other representatives).
We have relationships with a number of third parties that we routinely share data with to enable us to conduct your matter and manage our database effectively. For a list of these third parties please contact Andrew Sivertsen – See get in touch below.
We will share personal information with law enforcement agencies, our regulators and insurers if required by law.
We will not share your personal information with any other third parties without your consent.
How long will we store your personal data?
We are required by our insurers and regulators to keep your file and personal data for minimum periods. We are not however permitted to keep your personal data indefinitely or for longer than is necessary.
We will store your matter related data in a secure storage area/computer system for 8 years from the date of the final invoice, after which they we securely destroyed/deleted. Documents we have agreed that we will store for you in safe custody with us will not, of course, be destroyed. For more information on our retention periods, please contact Andrew Sivertsen for a copy of our data retention policy.
Your Rights
Under the Data Protection Act 2018, you have a right that you can exercise free of charge. In summary, these rights are:
- You can ask us to confirm what personal information we hold about you and to provide you with a copy of that information.
- You can ask us to correct any personal information about you that is inaccurate
- You can ask us to delete your personal information where there is not legal basis for us to continue to hold that information.
- You can ask us to stop using your personal information temporarily if you are objecting to our right to use it.
- You can object to our using your personal information unless we can demonstrate a valid reason why we need to continue to hold that data.
- You can object to our using your personal information for marketing purposes.
- If we are processing your personal information on the basis of your consent or necessity for a contract, you can ask us to provide you with personal information that you have provided to us, in a structured and commonly-used electronic format, or to transmit that information directly to another company if that is technically feasible.
- You have the right to complain to a supervisory authority if you are not happy with how we have handled your personal information to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). https://ico.org.uk/
If you want to exercise any of these rights, please:
- Email, call or write to us (see the ‘Get in Touch’ below);
- Provide proof of your identity and address;
- State the right or rights that you wish to exercise;
We will respond to you within one month from when we receive your request.
How to make a complaint?
We hope that you are happy with our service and that our Data Protection representative, Andrew Sivertsen can resolve any issues or complaints that arise. Please get in touch if you have any concerns (see ‘Get in touch’ below).
The Data Protection Act 2018 also gives you the 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 the alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The UK supervisory authority if the Information Commissioner’s Office who can be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.
Our Security
Please contact us for a copy of our security policy.
Future Processing
We do not intend to process your personal information for any reason other than stated within this privacy notice. If this changes, we will inform you in writing.
Changes to this privacy notice
This privacy was published on 15th November 2018.
We constantly review our internal privacy practices and may change this policy from time to time. When we do we will inform you in by publishing our privacy notice on our website.
Get in touch
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you, please contact Andrew Sivertsen, our Data Protection representative on 01792 648111 or andrew@johnmorse.co.uk. Alternatively you can write to us at John Morse Solicitors, St Helens House, 156 St Helens Rd, Swansea, SA1 4DG.
Alternative formats
If it would be helpful to have this notice provided in another format (for example: in another language, audio, braille) please contact us (see ‘Get in touch’ above).
