Privacy Policy

We ask that you read this privacy notice carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.

Who we are

Longden Walker and Renney (Solicitors) Limited trading as Longden Walker & Renney Solicitors collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

The personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of our business practices, including providing legal advice and services, we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

• Contact information such as your name, postal and email addresses
• Information specific to the legal service being provided, which may include information concerning your medical history, National Insurance Number, date of birth and age, financial details, employment history, welfare benefits history and demographic information, such as your ethnicity.
• Information necessary to check your identity, such as passport or driving licence information
• Other information relevant to the service and/ or advice provided.

Information collected from other sources

We also obtain personal information from other sources as follows:

• Where you have instructed us to do so, we may seek information from a variety of organisations.  For example, we may seek information from NHS Trusts, Private Hospitals and GPs, for example, concerning your medical history.
• We may also obtain information, at your request, from Mortgage Lenders, Estate Agents, the Land Registry, the Probate Registry, Court Service or other government entities, such as the DWP.
• From our Agents, such as Patient Claim Line and Quick Dox, where necessary, we may obtain information that you provided to them relevant to the service that you require, including your contact details, details of your medical and employment history, Insurance Number, date of birth, age, and financial details.
• In the course of providing legal services, other firms of solicitors and/ or insurers, who may also act or have acted on your behalf or who act on behalf of another who is involved in a transaction with you.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

• Enable us to provide you with legal advice and services
• Exercise our rights and obligations arising from your instructions
• For our internal record keeping.
• Improve our products and services.
• Assist us with our marketing decisions; i.e. we may use website browsing information for remarketing purposes with Google Analytics to advertise online. If you don’t want your data to be used in this way you can opt out.

Who we share your personal information with

Subject to your instructions, we routinely share personal data with others so that we can provide you with legal services.  We may provide your personal information to:

• HM Tribunal and Court Service, HM’ Land Registry and the Probate Registry – where necessary to provide you with legal services
• Mortgage Lenders and Estate Agents, where necessary to provide you with legal services
• NHS Trusts, Private Hospitals, GPs, NHS Resolution, other firms of solicitors and insurers –  where necessary to provide you with legal services
• Our agents, including Independent Experts and Nurses
• Insurance Companies, Trade Unions and Providers of Legal Expenses Cover (or their representatives) – where necessary to provide, or investigate the possibility of providing, you with legal services

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

We will not share your personal information with any other third party, without your permission.

Whether information has to be provided by you, and if so why

The provision of contact details and other personal information, dependant on the circumstances, is required from you to enable us to provide legal services.   Without your contact details and, depending on the nature of your instructions, other personal information, we may be unable to advise you or provide a service.

We will inform you at the point of collecting information from you, whether you are required to provide the information to us.

How long your personal information will be kept

We will hold your personal data only for as long as there is need to do so.  We are obliged to hold some personal data for set periods by law. Currently, we retain files for the following periods:

• Conveyancing (acting for Purchaser)- 15 years
• Conveyancing (acting for Vendor on sale of the whole title) – 7 years
• Conveyancing (re-mortgage) – 15 years
• Conveyancing (acting for Vendor who retains part of the title) – Indefinitely
• Common Law – 7 years
• Probate and Administration where whole estate is wound up and distributed – 10 years
• Trusts, Trusts, Wills, Probate and administration on death of first spouse – Indefinitely
• Matrimonial matters where no continuing obligation exists or from determination of such obligations – 7 years
• Company formation or similar matters  –  15 years
• Infant Cases – 7 years from 18th birthday
• Other matters – 7 years
• Financial Services Act records – 3 years, subject to the  provisions of the Financial Services Act 1986

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We rely on contract as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal data to provide you with legal services.  It is necessary for us to obtain personal data in order to provide you with the legal advice and services for which you contacted us.

We rely on legitimate interests as the lawful basis on which we collect data associated with the use of our website.  It is important to us, for marketing reasons, to monitor the extent to which our website is accessed and doing so may involve the identification of IP addresses.

We rely on legitimate interests as the lawful basis on which we retain data after completion of work on your behalf.  It is important and necessary for to us to retain data relating to legal advice and services that we have provided as this is a requirement of our indemnity insurance.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

• Fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your use personal information
• Access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Notice is already designed to address
• Require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
• Require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
• Receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
• Object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing
• Object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you
• Object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information
• Otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
• Claim compensation for damages caused by our breach of any data protection laws

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

• email law@longdens.co.uk , call 0191 566 6 500 or write to us at LWR, 14 John Street, Sunderland, SR1 1HZ
• let us have enough information to identify you, e.g, your name, address and our file reference
• let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill), and
• let us know the information to which your request relates

Our Data Protection Officer is Alixandra Cadden-Young and she can be contacted by email at acadden-young@longdens.co.uk or by telephone on 0191 566 6 500.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

We make use of Egress Switch in order to protect your personal information when we communicate by email.

If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.

How to complain

We hope that wecan resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.  If you are concerned about the response that you initially receive to such a request we encourage you to contact the firm’s client care director, Dermot Kirkwood.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or telephone: [0303 123 1113].

Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was published and last updated on on 13 February 2020.

We may change this privacy notice from time to time, when we do we will inform you by updating this webpage and, if the update is of a significant nature by email or post.

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you.

If you wish to contact us, please email law@longdens.co.uk , call 0191 566 6 500 or write to us at LWR, 14 John Street, Sunderland, SR1 1HZ

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

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