Stronachs LLP is a provider of legal, estate agency and related services and is regulated by the Law Society of Scotland. In the course of these activities, we may collect, hold, and use your personal data. This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal data about you during and after your relationship with us. It applies to all individuals who are clients, representatives of clients (together “Clients”) and contacts of Stronachs LLP  (“Contacts”).
 
This notice does not form part of any contract to provide services. We may update this notice at any time but if we do so, we will make an updated version of this notice available to you as soon as reasonably practicable.
 
THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection, such as information about a person’s health or sexual orientation.

Where you are a Client or Contact we may collect, store, and use the following categories of personal data about you:

Contact Details

• Name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.

Biographical Details

• Identity documentation such as passports, driving licence, or other forms of ID.
• Evidence of residence/domicile, such as utilities bills and bank statements; and rights relative thereto, such as right to work documentation.
• Date of birth.
• Gender, marital status, family and dependants, next of kin and emergency contact information.
• Employment or engagements, business activities and interests.
• Records of your visits to our office premises/our visits to you and adjustments made for disabilities.
• Agreements, decrees, confirmation, deeds or any other documents constituting or evidencing rights

Billing and finance

• Bank account details, statements and other financial information.
• Tax and tax status information and National Insurance number.
• Earnings, sources of income or benefits.
• Assets and wealth.
• Credit and financial checks
• Source of funds and payment/card details.
• Loans and securities.

Other

• Marketing and communications preferences and related information

Sensitive Personal Information

We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information: race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious and political beliefs, trade union membership, health information, criminal convictions and offences.

HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?  

We collect personal information about Clients and Contacts directly from you.  We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including other Clients or Contacts or background check agencies.
 
We will collect additional personal information in the course of our relationship with you and in carrying out activities throughout the period of working and dealing with you.

HOW WE WILL USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

1. Where it is necessary to perform any contract we have entered into with you.
2. Where we have your given your consent for one or more specific purposes.
3. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
4. Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

1. Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
2. Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal data.

Situations in which we will use your personal data

We may need all the categories of information in the list above primarily to allow us to perform any contract we have with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases we may use your personal data to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. The situations in which we will process your personal data include those listed below.

• Entering into a contract with you (Clients) or commencing a business relationship with you (Contacts).
• Administering the contract we have entered into with you or communicating with you as part of our business relationship.
• Carrying out your instructions to provide legal, estate agency or related services.
• Business management and planning, including accounting and auditing.
• Dealing with legal disputes involving you.
• Complying with health and safety obligations.
• To prevent fraud or money laundering or other criminal activities.
• Marketing and Business Development purposes.
• Compliance with the requirements of  professional bodies and regulators. 

If you fail to provide personal information

Where you are a Client and you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform any contract we have entered into with you to provide legal, estate agency or related services or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations such as to prevent fraud or money-laundering activities.
 
Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
 
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

HOW WE USE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION

”Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

1. With your explicit consent for one or more specified purposes.
2. Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in connection with employment and social security and social protection law.
3. Where it is needed in relation to the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
4. Where it is needed for the purposes of preventative or occupational medicine, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care systems and services or pursuant to contract with a health professional and subject to appropriate conditions and safeguards.
5. Where it is needed in the public interest.
6. Where it is needed for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research or statistical purposes subject to appropriate safeguards.
7. Where you have already made the relevant personal data public.
8. Where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent.

 We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
 
• We will use information about your health to provide appropriate adjustments in the course of our business relationship with you.
• We will use information about your health, race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation only where it is relevant to the provision of legal or related services to you.

Do we need your consent?
We do not need your consent if we rely upon the grounds other than explicit consent specified above. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.

INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy.

We may also use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims.

AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING 

Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal data to make a decision without human intervention. You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making, unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you.
 
We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means, however we will notify you in writing if this position changes.

DATA SHARING

We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

Why might you share my personal data with third parties?
We will share your personal data with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary for the performance of the contract with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.
 
Which third-party service providers process my personal information?
”Third parties” includes third-party service providers (including contractors and designated agents) including accountants, business consultants, tax advisors, stockbrokers, investment managers, financial advisors, medical or other professional experts,  the Faculty of Advocates or barrister’s chambers including individual advocates or barristers and their clerks, banks, building societies, pension providers, insurers, utility providers or other commercial suppliers of good or services.

How secure is my personal data with third-party service providers?
We shall procure that our third-party service providers o take appropriate security measures to protect your personal data in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

What about other third parties?
We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law. This may include making returns to HMRC, Revenue Scotland, Companies House, Registers of Scotland, Office of the Public Guardian, Sheriff Courts, Court of Session or other courts or tribunals, local authorities or other public bodies or authorities.

Transferring information outside the UK
We may transfer your personal information outside the UK. If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal data and will ensure that at least one of the following safeguards is in place:

• We will only transfer your personal information to countries that the UK Government have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data; or
• We may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms which give personal information the same protection as it has in the UK.

If none of the above safeguards is available we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer.

DATA SECURITY

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your personal data.

Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a legitimate business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
 
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

DATA RETENTION

How long will you use my personal data for?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our retention policy which is available from the Compliance Partner. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
 
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION

Your duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your business relationship with us.
 
Your rights in connection with personal data
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
 
• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal data, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal data to another party, please contact the Compliance Partner in writing.
 
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
 
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal data for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Compliance Partner. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal data for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE 

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal data.

COMPLAINTS TO THE ICO

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information’s Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues. We would however welcome the opportunity to deal with any concerns you may have before you approach the ICO and we would request that you contact our Compliance Partner in the first instance.

QUESTIONS?

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or other query in relation to our processing of your personal data, please contact the Compliance Partner of Stronachs LLP, David Chalmers on david.chalmers@stronachs.com.