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The Legal Bit ..
Legal Information
1. PURPOSE OF THIS NOTICE
This announcement explains the ways in which we gather and utilize personal information about you, in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (which supersedes the Data Protection Act 1998) and all other national implementing laws, regulations, and secondary legislation, as modified or revised occasionally, in the UK (‘Data Protection Legislation’).
Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.
2. ABOUT US
Browns Accountancy and Taxation Services Limited ("we", "us", "our" and "ours") delivers accountancy, business, and tax consulting services. We are registered in England and Wales as a limited liability company under number: 15981433 and our registered office is located at Orchard End, Chartham, Canterbury, CT4 7JY.
For the purposes of the Data Protection Legislation and this notice, we are the 'data controller'. This signifies that we are accountable for determining how we maintain and utilize personal data about you. We are obligated under the Data Protection Legislation to inform you of the information included in this privacy notice.
We have designated a Data Protection Manager. Our Data Protection Manager serves as our Data Protection Point of Contact and is responsible for addressing queries regarding this privacy notice or our handling of your personal data. Should you wish to reach out to our Data Protection Manager, you can do so using the contact information provided in paragraph 12 (Contact Us) below.
3. HOW WE MAY COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We collect personal data about you, for example, when:
• you request a proposal from us regarding the services we offer; • you, your employer, or our clients engage us to provide our services and during the delivery of those services; • you share this information with our designated members or you get in touch with us via email, phone, mail, or social media (for example, when you have an inquiry about our services); • from third parties and/or publicly accessible resources (for instance, from your employer or Companies House); • you utilize our website, request our newsletter, or seek to receive marketing information.
4. THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU
The information we maintain about you may encompass the following:
• your personal details (such as your name and/or address);
• records of interactions we have had with you concerning the provision or proposed provision of our services;
• details of any services you have received from us;
• information provided by your employer or our clients enabling us to offer any of our services; • our correspondence and communications with you;
• information regarding any complaints and queries you present to us;
• information from research, surveys, and marketing initiatives;
• information we obtain from other sources like publicly available data.
5. HOW WE USE PERSONAL DATA WE HOLD ABOUT YOU
We may process your personal data for purposes essential for fulfilling our contract with you, your employer, or our clients and to adhere to our legal responsibilities. We may process your personal data for the purposes necessary for executing our contract with our clients. This might involve processing your personal data if you are an employee, subcontractor, supplier, or customer of our client. We may process your personal data for our own legitimate interests, provided that those interests do not overshadow any of your interests, rights, and freedoms that warrant the protection of personal data. This includes processing for marketing, business growth, statistical, and management purposes.
We may process your personal data for certain additional objectives with your consent, and in these limited scenarios where your consent is essential for processing your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent to processing for such specified purposes.
Please be aware that we may process your personal data based on multiple lawful grounds depending on the specific intention for which we are utilizing your data.
-Situations in which we will use your personal data
We may use your personal data to:
• fulfill our obligations arising from any agreements made between you, your employer, or our clients and us (which will most typically be for the provision of our services);
• fulfill our obligations arising from any agreements made between our clients and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services) where you may be a subcontractor, supplier, or customer of our client;
• provide you with information related to our services and events and activities that you request from us or that we believe may interest you; and
• notify you of any changes to our services.
In certain instances, we may anonymize or pseudonymize the personal data so that it can no longer be linked to you, in which case we may use it without further notice to you.
If you decline to provide us with certain information when requested, we may be unable to perform the contract we have established with you. Alternatively, we may be unable to fulfill our legal or regulatory obligations.
We may also process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in accordance with this notice, where we are legally required or allowed to do so.
Data retention
We will only keep your personal data as long as necessary to accomplish the purposes for which it is gathered.
In determining the appropriate retention duration for your personal data, we consider:
the demands of our business and the services rendered;
any statutory or legal requirements;
the objectives for which we initially gathered the personal data;
the lawful basis on which we conducted our processing;
the types of personal data we have obtained;
the volume and categories of your personal data; and
whether the processing purpose could reasonably be achieved through alternative means.
Cookies
A cookie is a small file that requests permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive. Once you consent, the file gets added, and the cookie assists in analyzing web traffic or notifying you when you visit a specific site. Cookies enable web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can adjust its operations to meet your requirements, preferences, and dislikes by gathering and recalling information about your choices.
We utilize traffic log cookies to identify which pages are accessed. This aids us in analyzing data regarding web page traffic and enhancing our website to tailor it to customer needs. We solely use this information for statistical analysis purposes, after which the data is removed from the system.
Overall, cookies assist us in providing you with a better website by allowing us to track which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie does not give us access to your computer or any personal information about you, aside from the data you choose to share with us.
You can decide to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually adjust your browser settings to refuse cookies if you prefer. This may impede you from fully enjoying the website.
Links to third-party websites
Our website may contain links to enable you to visit other websites of interest effortlessly. However, once you utilize these links to leave our site, please be aware that we have no control over that other website. As a result, we cannot be held accountable for the protection and privacy of any information you provide while visiting such sites, which are not governed by this notice. You should exercise caution and review the privacy notice associated with the relevant website.
Change of purpose
If we need to utilize your personal data for a different reason than the one for which we collected it, we will only proceed where that reason is compatible with the original purpose.
If it becomes necessary to use your personal data for a new purpose, we will inform you and convey the legal basis that permits us to do so before initiating any new processing.
6. DATA SHARING
Why might you share my personal data with third parties?
We will share your personal data with third parties when required by law, when it is essential to manage the relationship between us, or when we have another legitimate interest in doing so.
Which third-party service providers process my personal data?
"Third parties" refers to third-party service providers or other members of our firm’s network. The following activities are performed by third-party service providers: IT and cloud services, professional advisory services, administrative services, marketing services, and banking services.
All our third-party service providers are required to implement commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to safeguard your personal data. We only allow our third-party service providers to process your personal data for specified purposes and in line with our directives.
What about other third parties?
We may share your personal data with additional third parties, for example, in the context of a potential sale or restructuring of the business. We may also need to share your personal data with a regulator or to comply with legal obligations.
7. TRANSFERRING PERSONAL DATA OUTSIDE THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA (EEA)
There may be instances where personal data is transferred to, and processed in, countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), such as to certain IT and cloud service providers.
When your data is transferred outside of the EEA, we will ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to protect your data. This will include incorporating the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses in agreements with third parties or, for transfers to US-based third parties, ensuring the entity is Privacy Shield certified.
8. DATA SECURITY
We have implemented commercially reasonable and suitable security protocols to avert your personal data from being unintentionally lost, misused, or accessed in an unauthorized manner, modified, or disclosed. Additionally, we restrict access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a professional necessity to know. They will only process your personal data under our direction, and they are obliged to maintain confidentiality.
We have established procedures to address any suspected data security incidents and will inform you and any relevant regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally obligated to do so.
9. RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION
Your obligation to inform us of modifications
It is crucial that the personal data we possess about you is precise and up-to-date. If your personal information changes, please inform us of any modifications that we need to be aware of by contacting us using the contact information provided below.
Your rights related to personal data
Under specific conditions, by law you have the right to:
Request access to your personal data. This allows you to receive details of the personal data we have about you and to verify that we are processing it lawfully.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold regarding you.
Request erasure of your personal data. This allows you to request that we delete or eliminate personal data when there is no valid reason for us to continue processing it. You also have the right to request deletion or elimination of your personal data if you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
Object to processing of your personal data when we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your specific situation that makes you want to object to processing on this basis. You also have the right to object if 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 pause the processing of personal data about you, for instance, if you want us to verify its accuracy or the rationale for processing it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or another data controller if the processing is based on consent, performed by automated means and is technically feasible.
If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, please email our data protection point of contact: hello@brownsaccounting.uk
You will not be charged a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may impose a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request under such circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to assist us in confirming your identity and ensuring your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to anyone who does not have the right to receive it.
10. RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT
In the limited situations where you may have given your consent to the collection, processing, and transfer of your personal data for a specific purpose (for example, regarding direct marketing that you indicated you would like to receive from us), you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please email our data protection point of contact: hello@brownsaccounting.uk
Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will cease processing your personal information (personal data) for the purpose or purposes you initially agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so legally.
11. CHANGES TO THIS NOTICE
Any modifications we may make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted on our website and we will make every effort to bring this to your attention.
This privacy notice was last updated on 29th September 2024.
CONTACT US
If you have any inquiries regarding this notice or if you would like to discuss how we process your personal data, please email our data protection point of contact: hello@brownsaccounting.uk
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection matters, at any time. The ICO’s contact details are as follows:
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
Copyright © 2024 Browns Accountancy & Taxation Ltd - All Rights Reserved.
Company Registration 15981433
ACCA Member, MAAT England and Wales
In compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering Act 2020