Privacy Policy

Burnetts Solicitors LLP Privacy Policy

Burnetts Solicitors LLP

Please read the following information carefully. This privacy notice contains information about what data we collect and store about you and why. It also tells you about those with whom we share this information, the security mechanisms we have put in place to protect your data, and how to contact us if you have a complaint.

Who we are

Burnetts Solicitors LLP t/a Burnetts are a northern law firm in England. We have offices in Carlisle, Newcastle, Cockermouth, Hexham, and Kendal. Please see Our Locations on our website to find out the contact details for each of these offices. Burnetts collects, uses and is responsible for personal information about you. When we do this, we are the ‘controller’ of this information for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation and other applicable data protection laws.

Our Data Protection Officer

Nick Gutteridge is our Data Protection Officer. He can be contacted by email at hello@burnetts.co.uk and by telephone on 01228 552222.

How we collect your personal data

We collect personal data in the following ways:

Direct Interactions – Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you. You may provide personal data when you correspond with us (by post, phone, or email), complete an online form through our website, sign up to receive our newsletters, or join our mailing list.

Automated Technology – we automatically collect personal data (technical and usage) when you browse or interact with our website, by using cookies, server logs, and other similar technologies including Facebook tags. We may also receive technical data about you if you visit other websites which use our cookies or interact with our services (for example Facebook and LinkedIn). Please see our cookie notice for further details.

Publicly Available Sources – we may collect personal data from publicly availably sources.

Third Parties – we may receive data from analytics providers based inside and outside the EU (such as Google) and our suppliers, which include website support and maintenance providers.

Information we collect about you

When carrying out legal work for you we may collect the following personal information about you:

  • Information that you provide by filling in forms on our website including name, contact details, any information you provide for recruitment purposes.
  • Information that you provide to us when corresponding with us via email, phone, or in person. This can include your name, job title, contact details, information regarding the subject of your query, or your CV or application form.
  • Information that you provide to us when you ask for a quote for our services.
  • Information that you provide as our client. This includes contact details, ID, address, bank information, and any other information pertinent to the legal work you have instructed us to complete.
  • Technical details of your visits to our website. This includes IP address, browser type and version, traffic data, time zone setting and location, weblogs and other cookies and communication data about the pages and resources that you access.
  • If you are not a client of Burnetts Solicitors LLP but are involved with any matters on which we are instructed, we may also be processing your personal data if it is provided by our client, or a third party.

Special Category Data

Special category data is any personal information that is deemed more sensitive. This can include racial data, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union memberships, sexual orientation, or health, genetic, and biometric data.

We may collect and hold special category data about you if you choose to provide it to allow us to make any accommodations or changes whilst you are visiting our offices, such as health or dietary information.

We may collect and hold biometric data, as part of our client due diligence throughout legal matters.

We may collect data regarding trade union memberships, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or health data only if we are acting on matters where this information is relevant.

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 need to perform the contract we are about to enter or have entered 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.
  • Where there are recognised legitimate interests and the processing is necessary for one of the preapproved purposes.
  • Where it is a legitimate interest to be expected as part of the running or structuring of our business.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us on 01228 552222 or hello@burnetts.co.uk.

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.

Purpose/Activity

Type of data

Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest

To follow up any enquiries taken via our website ‘contact us’ page, email or telephone

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

Performance of a contract with you

To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Technical

(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)

(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

To use data analytics to improve our products/services, website, marketing, customer relationships and experiences

(a) Technical

(b) Usage

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)

Where you are our client, a representative, employee, or you are involved with a legal matter in which we have been instructed to act

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Biometric

(d) Special category data

Necessary for the performance of our contract with you

To manage our relationship with you and to notify you about changes to our Terms or Privacy Notice

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Marketing and communications

Necessary to perform our contract with you or to comply with our legal obligation.

Failure to provide personal data

If we are required by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, to collect your personal data and if you fail to provide it, we may not be able to enter into any contract with you or perform the contract with you and we may have to restrict your access to any online service. This will be notified to you if relevant.

With whom will we share your personal information?

We have relationships with several third parties with whom we routinely share personal data. We will share your personal data to enable us to act on your legal matter. If you would like more details on who we may share your personal details with, please contact our Data Protection Officer.

Transfer of your information outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

Occasionally, it may be necessary to transfer your personal information outside the European Economic Area or to an international organisation. We use several suppliers for the operation of our business who may have access to the personal information we process. This could be an IT supplier providing software support to us.

Where we do use suppliers in different jurisdiction, we will take the necessary steps to ensure that your information is secure and that adequate safeguards are in place in accordance with applicable law.

If you would like any further information, please contact our Data Protection Officer.

AI and personal data

Where AI tools that process personal or special category data are used, you will be informed and, where necessary, explicit consent will be obtained.

AI will not be used to provide legal advice or opinions without direct and meaningful oversight or a qualified solicitor. AI will not be used to make final decisions in legal matters.

Data Security

The security of your data is a priority at Burnetts. We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We also limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need to know and they can only process your personal data on our instructions and will be subject to a duty of confidentiality. In addition, we have procedures in place 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.

For how long will we store your personal data?

We will store your data after collection. The length of storage can be found here. Our storage periods take into account how long we need to keep data in the event of any claims or litigation; compliance with legal obligations; guidance from our regulator and the nature of the data we hold.

Subject to our statutory and regulatory obligations and where you have provided consent for us to send you communications, we will store your information until you tell us that you do not want to receive any further communications, including unsubscribing from our marketing emails.

We may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes. We can use this data indefinitely without further notice to you.

Cookies

Detailed information on our use of cookies can be found here.

Your Rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have a number of important rights that you can exercise free of charge. In summary, these rights are to:

  • Be informed about how we are processing your data
  • Access to your personal information and other supplementary information
  • Require us to correct any mistakes or complete missing information we hold on you
  • Require us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances
  • Receive a copy of the personal information you have provided to us or have this information be sent to a third party. We will do this by providing the information to you or the third party in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format
  • Object at any time to processing of your personal information for direct marketing
  • Object in certain other situations to the continued processing of your personal information
  • Restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
  • Request not to be subject to automated decision making which produce legal effects that concern you or affect you in a significantly similar way
  • Withdraw your consent.

If you want to exercise any of these rights, please:

  • Email, call, or write to us
  • Let us have proof of your identity and address
  • State the right or rights that you wish to exercise

You can contact us at hello@burnetts.co.uk or by telephone on 01228 552222.

We will respond to you within one month from when we receive your request.

How to change your marketing preferences

Please note if you wish to unsubscribe from any email, you can do so by following the link provided in your next email or by sending an email to hello@burnetts.co.uk with the word “unsubscribe” in the subject header. It may take up to 14 days for this to become effective.

How to make a data subject access request (DSAR)

You have the right to ask for a report of all your personal data that we hold. You can do this by making a DSAR. To do this you must request a copy of the data that we hold regarding you specifying which information you would like, we will ask for you to verify your identity before we proceed with the request.

The firm has 30 days from the date that the request is received to provide what you have asked for. The deadline can be extended if the request is complex or more than one is made, we will contact you to keep you informed if it will take longer to fulfil your request.

How to make a complaint

We hope that you are happy with our service and that our Data Protection Officer can resolve any issues or complaints that arise. Please get in touch if you have any concerns.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The UK supervisory authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office who can be contacted the following ways:

Web: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

Telephone: 0303 123 1113

Address: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

Future Processing

We will contact you following legal work undertaken for you to give us feedback by way of a survey. We do not intend to process your personal information for any reason other than stated within this privacy notice.

Changes to this privacy notice

We constantly review our internal privacy practices and may change this policy from time to time. Any updates we make will be posted on this page and we may notify you by email.

Get in touch

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you, please contact us:

By phone: 01228 552222

By email: hello@burnetts.co.uk

By post: Burnetts Solicitors LLP, Victoria House, Wavell Drive, Rosehill, Carlisle, CA1 2ST

Alternative formats

If it would be helpful to have this notice provided in another format (for example; in another language, audio, braille) please contact us (see ‘Get in touch’ above).