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Privacy notice for ECL Howard Watson Smith LLP
ECL Howard Watson Smith LLP takes the protection of your privacy very seriously. We will only use your personal information to deliver the services you have requested from us, and to meet our legal responsibilities.
How do we collect information from you?
We obtain information about you when you engage us to deliver our services and/or when you use our website, for example, when you contact us about our services.
What type of information do we collect from you?
The personal information we collect from you will vary depending on which services you engage us to deliver. The personal information we collect might include your name, address, telephone number, email address, your Unique Tax Reference (UTR) number, your National Insurance number, bank account details, your IP address, which pages you may have visited on our website and when you accessed them.
How is your information used?
In general terms, and depending on which services you engage us to deliver, as part of providing our agreed services we may use your information to:
- contact you by post, email or telephone
- verify your identity where this is required
- understand your needs and how they may be met
- maintain our records in accordance with applicable legal and regulatory obligations
- process financial transactions
- prevent and detect crime, fraud or corruption
Who has access to your information?
We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.
We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
Any staff with access to your information have a duty of confidentiality under the ethical standards that this firm is required to follow.
Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf
We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf. However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own purposes.
Please be assured that we will not release your information to third parties unless you have requested that we do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention and detection of crime, fraud or corruption.
Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information
Whilst we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk.
Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given, or where you have chosen, a password which enables you to access information, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.
Your data will usually be processed in our offices in the UK. However, to allow us to operate efficient digital processes, we sometimes need to store information in servers located outside the UK, but within the European Economic Area (EEA). We take the security of your data seriously and so all our systems have appropriate security in place that complies with all applicable legislative and regulatory requirements.
Your choices
We may occasionally contact you by post / email / telephone with details of any changes in legal and regulatory requirements or other developments that may be relevant to your affairs and, where applicable, how we may assist you further. If you do not wish to receive such information from us, please let us know by contacting us as indicated under ‘Contact information’ below.
Retention of personal data
We will retain your personal data on our systems only for as long as we need it, given the purposes for which it was collected, or as required to do so by operation of law or regulation.
Your rights
Access to your information: You have the right to request a copy of the personal information about you that we hold.
Correcting your information: We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date and you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.
Deletion of your information: You have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:
- you consider that we no longer require the information for the purposes for which it was obtained
- you have validly objected to our use of your personal information - see ‘Objecting to how we may use your information’ below
- our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations
- we are using your information with your consent and you withdraw your consent - see ‘Right to withdraw consent’ below.
Restricting how we may use your information: 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.
Objecting to how we may use your information: 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 basis. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
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 (for example, in relation to direct marketing that you have indicated you would like to receive from us), you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time.
Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
Changes to our privacy notice
We keep this privacy notice under regular review and will place any updates on www.eclhws.com. Paper copies of the privacy notice may also be obtained from the address shown in our contact information below.
This privacy notice was last updated on 11 March 2019.
Contact information
Address: ECL House, Lake Street, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 1RT
Telephone: 01525 374439
Email: mail@eclhws.com
Complaints
We seek to resolve directly all complaints about how we handle your personal information but you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone - 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745
Website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns