Data Protection Notice

Our policy and commitment

Linda George Family Law Limited is a controller of your information when we are acting in the delivery of our legal services to you. The personal data we process to provide these services relates to clients and other individuals as necessary, including staff and suppliers' staff.

This notice sets out our commitment to ensuring that any personal data, including special category personal data, which we process, is carried out in compliance with data protection law. We are committed to ensuring that all the personal data we process is handled in accordance with data protection law, and that good data protection practice is embedded in the culture of our staff and our organisation.

This notice applies to all the personal data we process and is part of our approach to compliance with data protection law. All of our staff are expected to comply, and failure to do so may lead to disciplinary action for misconduct, including dismissal.

Our policies and procedures

Our data protection policies and procedures include:

• Privacy notices (website, clients, employees)
• Data subject rights procedure
• Data retention policy
• Data protection impact assessment process
• Record of processing activities
• Personal data breach reporting process and a breach register

We ensure that all staff who handle personal data on our behalf are aware of their responsibilities under this policy and other relevant data protection and information security policies, and that they are adequately trained and supervised. Obtaining (including accessing) or disclosing personal data in breach of our data protection policies may also be a criminal offence.

Where your data is held

The information you provide to us will be held on our computers in the UK and may be accessed by or given to our staff, contractors, reporters and agents who act for us, for the purposes set out in this policy or for other purposes approved by you or as otherwise permitted by law. This may mean that your information is sent to computers outside the UK.

By submitting your information to us, you agree that it may be transferred outside the European Economic Area. Countries outside the European Economic Area do not always have strong data protection laws. However, wherever practicable we will take steps to ensure that your information is used by third parties in accordance with this policy.

We shall never sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes.

The principles of data protection

We comply with the data protection principles set out below. When processing personal data, we ensure that:

• It is processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner ('lawfulness, fairness and transparency')
• It is collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes ('purpose limitation')
• It is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which it is processed ('data minimisation')
• It is accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date, with reasonable steps taken to ensure that inaccurate data is erased or rectified without delay ('accuracy')
• It is kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary ('storage limitation')
• It is processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss, destruction or damage ('integrity and confidentiality')

We will facilitate a request from a data subject who wishes to exercise their rights under data protection law as appropriate, always communicating in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, and without undue delay.

Our processes and procedures

We will:

• Ensure that the legal basis for processing personal data is identified in advance and that all processing complies with the law
• Not do anything with your data that you would not expect given the content of this policy and the fair processing or privacy notice
• Ensure that appropriate privacy notices are in place advising staff and others how and why their data is being processed, and advising data subjects of their rights
• Only collect and process the personal data that we need for purposes we have identified in advance
• Ensure that, as far as possible, the personal data we hold is accurate, or that systems are in place to keep it up to date
• Only hold onto your personal data for as long as it is needed, after which we will securely erase or delete it
• Ensure appropriate security measures are in place so that personal data can only be accessed by those who need it, and that it is held and transferred securely

'Data Protection Law' includes the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and all relevant UK data protection legislation.

Your rights as a data subject

Under data protection law you have rights in respect of the personal data we hold and process about you. We have processes in place to ensure we can facilitate this.

For a full list of your rights and further information, please see our Subjects Rights Policy.

Choosing not to share your information

We need to process your personal information to meet our legal obligations and to provide the legal services on your behalf in terms of our contract. If you fail to provide the data when requested, it may delay or prevent us fulfilling our obligations, which may mean we are unable to represent you.

How we process and retain your data

We collect, store and process different types of personal information in the necessary course of our contractual obligations and the provision of legal services to you. All our data is backed up daily to a server within the UK. We do not sell or rent your personal information to anyone.

We may be required to disclose your personal information to third parties where required to do so by law, to comply with a regulatory obligation, or to assist in any investigation into alleged illegal or criminal behaviour.

For further information, please see our Processing and Retention Policy.

Automated decisions

We do not solely rely on automated decisions or processing of information for the purposes of fulfilling our legal obligations.

Our Data Protection Administrator

If you have any concerns or wish to exercise any of your rights under data protection law, you can contact our Data Protection Administrator:

Your right to complain

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioner's Office directly:

• Online: ico.org.uk/concerns
• Phone: 0303 123 1115
• Post: Information Commissioner's Office, 45 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7HL

Monitoring and review

This policy is regularly monitored and reviewed in accordance with prevailing guidelines and statutory requirements.