1. INTRODUCTION

Pardoes respects your privacy rights and is committed to protecting personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we, South West Advocates Limited (“Pardoes”) and any subsidiaries, look after personal data when you deal with us, receive our services, or visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from). It also tells you about the privacy rights and how the law protects individuals.
 
This privacy policy is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below. Please also use the Glossary to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy policy.

Contents

 2. Important information and who we are
 3. The data we collect about you
 4. How is your personal data collected
 5. How we use your personal data
 6. Disclosures of your personal data
 7. International transfers
 8. Data security
 9. Data retention
 10. Your legal rights
 11. Glossary

2. IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT WHO WE ARE

Purpose of this privacy policy

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how Pardoes collects and processes personal data relating to you, which includes and is not limited to:

Private individual clients and individuals within client organisations.
Prospective clients – private individuals and individuals within prospective client organisations.
Website visitors.
All of which we collectively refer to as “you”:
When you enquire about our services.
When we are provided with your details by others.
When you are a client or prospective client.
When we deal with suppliers, or other business contacts such as referrers.
When you visit our website, including any data you may provide through this website.

Our services, and our website, are not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children unless this is a necessary part of our services to you.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, individuals within your organisation, or individuals that you represent, so that how and why we are using your data is completely clear.

Controller

This privacy policy is issued on behalf of South West Advocates Limited and any subsidiaries so when we mention "Pardoes, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy, we are referring to the relevant company in the Pardoes Solicitors Group responsible for processing your personal data as a controller.

When we communicate with you about our services, or you become a client of Pardoes, we will let you know which entity will be the controller for your data when we first communicate with you.

There may be scenarios where we will act as a data processor and when doing so will comply with European Data Protection Legislation.

Pardoes Solicitors is responsible for this website and is the controller for any personal data collected via this website.

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the DPO using the details set out below.

Contact details - Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: South West Advocates Limited

Name and title of DPO: Michael Miller  – Chief Operating Officer – Data Protection Officer

Email address: michael.miller@pardoes.co.uk

Postal address: The Exchange, Express Park, Bristol Road, Bridgwater, TA6 4RR

Telephone number: 01278 457891

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of any changes

This version was last updated on 24th March  2023. Previous versions can be obtained by contacting us.

It is important that the personal data we hold is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications for your convenience and information. If you use these links, you will leave this website. When you access a third-party owned site, please note that we do not control the content and are not responsible or liable for how they process your personal data. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit. These other sites may send their own cookies to users, collect data, or solicit personal data from you.


3. THE DATA WE COLLECT 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 it is not possible to identify the individual (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data which we have grouped together as follows:

 a) Identity Data includes: name(s), maiden name, last name, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
 b) Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers, and the content of your communications (except where it falls within advice data below).
 c) Advice Data includes personal data that you provide to us, or which we collect, in connection with our services, such as; our communications with you or about you, our advice where it relates to you or any individual referred to in our advice, information about your claim, dealings with third parties about you, your personal or business circumstances or history. If you are not our client we will also process your personal data as set out in section 4 below.
 d) Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
 e) Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us.
 f) Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. We may also receive personal data as part of a membership or shared event to which you have subscribed or attended.

Depending on the nature of the services which we provide to you we may need to collect Special Categories of Personal Data about you. This includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic data. We may also need to collect information about actual or alleged criminal convictions and offences. This is usually when we provide you with private client services such as family, employment, children’s law, mental health, medical negligence, immigration, crime or welfare, but may be required for other services we provide.

Personal data collected via our website

On our website you can order services, make information requests, apply for jobs, subscribe to and view marketing or support materials, or register yourself to receive information and updates.

We may collect and process the following data about you:

information you provide to us on these pages, which may include name, address, telephone, e-mail address, user ids and passwords, billing information, employment history, transaction, credit card information and contact preferences; and
if you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence
information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type.
You can browse our website without disclosing your personal data.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with advice or services). In this case, we may have to cancel the advice or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.


4. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

a) Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact, Advice and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
b) Discuss our services with us, whether as a prospective client;
c) Deal with us as part of our services;
d) Engage us to provide services;
e) Subscribe to our newsletters or publications;
f) Request marketing to be sent to you;
g) Complete a survey;
h) Make a complaint; or
i) Give us some feedback.
j) Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
k) Advice Data, for example where we are dealing with other parties or organisation as part of your advice.
l) Marketing and Communications Data. We may on occasion use professional social media sites, such as LinkedIn, to contact you via that platform or share your content.
m) Technical Data from the following parties:
n) analytics providers such as Google based outside the EU and A1 Webstats; and
o) search information providers based inside the EU.
p) Identity and Contact Data from data brokers or aggregators such as Creditsafe, GB Group and Accuity based inside the EU.
q) Data from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the EU.


5. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

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

Where we are entering into, or have entered into a contract for services with you.
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.
Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

See the table below to find out more about the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data.

Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending direct marketing communications to you via email. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by using the "unsubscribe" link in our emails or Contacting us.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please Contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Marketing and Communications Data to send you updates (by email, telephone or post) about us or legal developments that might be of interest to you and/or information about our services.

Where consent is needed (for example to send you electronic communications), we will ask for this consent separately and clearly. The limited exception for existing customers known as "soft opt in" allows us to send marketing texts or emails if we have obtained contact details in the course of a sale to you, we are marketing similar products or services, and we gave you an opportunity to opt out of marketing when first collecting the details and in every subsequent message.

We will always ensure that your personal data is treated with respect and we will never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences over time, such as when you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

Opting out

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the unsubscribe links on any marketing message sent to you or by  at any time.

Cookies

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. We do not use cookies for collecting personal data, meaning we do not use cookies to identify you personally.

Our website does not automatically store or capture personal data other than logging your IP address and other technical IT information. This information is retained after you have logged off for up to three months. We do not link information automatically logged by other means with personal data about specific individuals but we may link the automatically logged information with business information for business intelligence purposes.

The cookies used on this website help us to improve our website and to deliver a better and more responsive service.

For more details on the cookies used on this site please see our Cookies policy.

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 you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please Contact us<.

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.

6. DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 5 above.

 a) Internal Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
 b) External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
 c) Specific third parties listed in the table in paragraph 5 above.
 d) Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.
 e) Website management providers if we transfer ownership or management of our website to a third party.
 f) We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

7. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

There may be occasions where it will be necessary to transfer your Personal Data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

For example:

With service providers who process data outside of the EEA.
If you, or any of your staff or advisers, are based outside of the EEA.
Where there is an international or cross border aspect to your instructions.
If our lawyers supporting you need to remotely access your information whilst they are outside of the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission.
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe.
Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US.
Please Contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.

8. DATA SECURITY

We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to prevent your personal data 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 business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. Where we are legally required to do so, we will notify the ICO of the breach.

Website security

We do not give visitors to our website the option of using a secure transmission method to send us their personal data, unless otherwise indicated. Accordingly, your attention is drawn to the fact that any information carried over the Internet is not secure; information can be intercepted, lost, redirected, changed and read by other people. If you need to send us Personal Data securely then please contact us.

However, Pardoes acknowledges your trust and is committed to protecting the information you provide to us. To prevent unauthorised access, maintain accuracy, and ensure proper use of information, we have employed physical, electronic, and managerial processes to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

We use leading technologies and encryption software to safeguard your data, and set strict security standards to prevent any unauthorised access to it.

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the processing of your payment details.

If you would like to know more about our data security measures please Contact us.

9. 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.

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.

By law we have to keep basic information about our clients (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after our business relationship ends for tax purposes.

Regulation 40 of the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 requires that we retain records and information obtained to complete due diligence for a period of five years after the end of our business relationship.

We are also required under our contract with you to keep Advice Data so that we, and our professional indemnity insurers, may to refer to it in the event that you bring a claim against us. We will therefore retain such information for seven years from the date of the closure of your matter.

Longer retention periods may apply to specific types of work as follows (all retention periods run from the data of the closure of your matter):

Property Developer site acquisition and set up files will be retained for 12 years;
Advice that affects a minor will be retained for 24 years;
Secured Lending, Option/Strategic Land Agreement and Islamic Finance Conveyancing files will be retained for 25 years;
Pensions Advice or Pension Sharing Orders have been discussed or arranged will be retained for 50 years;
Prenuptial or Postnuptial advice files will be retained for 50 years;
Advice where our client lacks capacity will be retained for 100 years;
Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney, Codicils, Trusts, Personal Tax planning and Deeds will be retained for 100 years (where relevant both document and files will be retained);
We will also retain any important original documents or unique electronic copies for the duration of our business relationship.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see 9'3. Request erasure of your personal data' below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

10. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Please click on the links below to find out more about these rights:

1. Request access to your personal data
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. We must also provide you with information including the period the data will be stored where possible, or the criteria used to determine it where not, the existence of rights to rectification, erasure and restriction & the right to complain to the supervisory authority, recipients or categories of recipients located in third countries, details of transfers to any third countries, and the existence of automated decision-making and the logic involved. We are not obliged to provide full copies of documents and may provided personal data extracted from original documents and presented as part of a new document or provide a copy in its original format with any other information redacted where this is not the individual’s personal data.
2. Request correction of your personal data
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected without delay, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
3. Request erasure of your personal data
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 successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request. Please see paragraph 9 for details of when we will retain your data.
4. Object to processing of your personal data
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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms