Morton Chater Solicitors take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal data. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.
When we use your personal data we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal data for the purposes of the GDPR. Our use of your personal data is subject to your instructions, the GDPR, other relevant UK and EU legislation and our professional duty of confidentiality.
Key terms
It would be helpful to start by explaining some key terms used in this policy:
We, us, our Morton Chater Solicitors
Personal data – Any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual
Special category personal data – Personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership
Genetic and biometric data – Data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation
Personal data we collect about you – The table below sets out the personal data we will or may collect in the course of advising and/or acting for you.
Personal data we will collect – Personal data we may collect depending on why you have instructed us
Your name, address and telephone number
Information to enable us to check and verify your identity, eg your date of birth or passport details
Electronic contact details, eg your email address and mobile phone number
Information relating to the matter in which you are seeking our advice or representation
Information to enable us to undertake a credit or other financial checks on you
Your financial details so far as relevant to your instructions, eg the source of your funds if you are instructing on a purchase transaction
Information about your use of our IT, communication and other systems, and other monitoring information, eg if using our secure online client portal
Your National Insurance and tax details
Your bank and/or building society details
Details of your professional online presence, eg LinkedIn profile
Details of your spouse/partner and dependants or other family members, eg if you instruct us on a family matter or a will
Your employment status and details including salary and benefits, eg if you instruct us on matter related to your employment or in which your employment status or income is relevant
Your nationality and immigration status and information from related documents, such as your passport or other identification, and immigration information, eg if you instruct us on an immigration matter
Details of your full financial circumstances and financial documents including pension details, eg if you instruct us on a pension matter or in relation to financial arrangements following breakdown of a relationship.
Your employment records including, where relevant, records relating to sickness and attendance, performance, disciplinary, conduct and grievances (including relevant special category personal data), eg if you instruct us on matter related to your employment or in which your employment records are relevant
Your racial or ethnic origin, gender and sexual orientation, religious or similar beliefs, eg if you instruct us on discrimination claim
Your trade union membership, eg if you instruct us on discrimination claim or your matter is funded by a trade union
Personal identifying information, such as your eye colour or your parents’ names, eg if you instruct us to incorporate a company for you
Your medical records, eg if we are acting for you in a personal injury claim or a family matter
Details of any drug, alcohol, abuse or mental health issues eg if you instruct us on a matter relating to family law.
Details/records of any police reports or criminal convictions etc you may have eg if we are acting for you in a criminal or a family law matter.
Details of all of your finances including property that you own, investments that you have, savings that you have, bank accounts, life policies, pension policies, mortgages, liabilities, national insurance details, HMRC details and all other information that will enable us to advise you in accordance with your instructions. We will also require identity documents and details of your bank accounts, and of beneficiaries’ bank accounts, to enable payments to be made to beneficiaries, eg if you are instructing us on a Wills/Probate matter.
This personal data is required to enable us to provide our service to you. If you do not provide personal data we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you.
How your personal data is collected
We collect most of this information from you direct or via our secure online client portal. However, we may also collect information:
from publicly accessible sources, eg Companies House or HM Land Registry;
directly from a third party, eg:
sanctions screening providers;
client due diligence providers;
under the terms of a court order
from a third party with your consent, eg:
your bank or building society, another financial institution or advisor;
consultants and other professionals we may engage in relation to your matter;
your employer and/or trade union, professional body or pension administrators;
your doctors, medical and occupational health professionals;
via our website—we use cookies on our website
via our information technology (IT) systems, eg:
case management, document management and time recording systems;
reception logs;
automated monitoring of our websites and other technical systems, such as our computer networks and connections, CCTV and access control systems, communications systems, email and instant messaging systems;
How and why we use your personal data
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason for doing so, eg:
to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
for our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or
where you have given consent.
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.
The table below explains what we use (process) your personal data for and our reasons for doing so. The table does not apply to special category personal data, which we will only process with your explicit consent, eg to obtain a medical authority.
What we use your personal data for
Our reasons
To provide legal services to you
For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract
Conducting checks to identify our clients and verify their identity
Screening for financial and other sanctions or embargoes
Other processing necessary to comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, eg under health and safety regulation or rules issued by our professional regulator
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Ensuring business policies are adhered to, eg policies covering security and internet use
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to make sure we are following our own internal procedures so we can deliver the best service to you
Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price
Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to protect our intellectual property and other commercially valuable information
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Statistical analysis to help us manage our practice, eg in relation to our financial performance, client base, work type or other efficiency measures
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price
Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for us and for you
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Updating and enhancing client records
For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, eg making sure that we can keep in touch with our clients about existing and new services
Statutory returns
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Ensuring safe working practices, staff administration and assessments
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, eg to make sure we are following our own internal procedures and working efficiently so we can deliver the best service to you
External audits and quality checks, eg our accountants and auditors, Solicitors Regulation Authority and Legal Aid Agency
For our legitimate interests or a those of a third party, ie to maintain our accreditations so we can demonstrate we operate at the highest standards
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Promotional communications
We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell OR share it with other organisations.
You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by contacting the person who has conduct of your matter or by our accounts department.
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if 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.
Who we share your personal data with
We routinely share personal data with:
professional advisers who we instruct on your behalf or refer you to, eg barristers, medical professionals, accountants, tax advisors or other experts;
other third parties where necessary to carry out your instructions, eg your mortgage provider or HM Land Registry in the case of a property transaction or Companies House;
our insurers and brokers;
external auditors, eg in relation to, Legal Aid Agency, our accountants, the Solicitors Regulation Authority;
our banks;
We only allow our service providers to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your personal data to provide services to us and to you.
We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
We may also need to share some personal data with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.
We will not share your personal data with any other third party.
Where your personal data is held
Information may be held at our offices, third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described above (see ‘Who we share your personal data with’).
How long your personal data will be kept
We will keep your personal data after we have finished advising or acting for you. We will do so for one of these reasons:
to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf;
to show that we treated you fairly;
to keep records required by law.
We will not retain your data for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of data. Further details on this are available in our Office Manual, within the File Management section (4).
When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal data, we will delete or anonymise it.
Our website
We have installed a code that anonymises form data automatically after 90 days. The process retains information such as the date of submission and the department responsible but removes all personal information such as name, email address and comments.
Your rights
You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:
Access
The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data
Rectification
The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data
To be forgotten
The right to require us to delete your personal data—in certain situations
Restriction of processing
The right to require us to restrict processing of your personal data—in certain circumstances, eg if you contest the accuracy of the data
Data portability
The right to receive the personal data you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations
To object
The right to object:
—at any time to your personal data being processed for direct marketing (including profiling);
—in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal data, eg processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests.
Not to be subject to automated individual decision-making
The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us or 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, call or write to us – see below: ‘How to contact us’; and
let us have enough information to identify you [(eg your full name, address and client or matter reference number)];
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 what right you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.
Keeping your personal data secure
We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to access 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.
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 we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your information.
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 policy
We may change this privacy policy from time to time, when we do we will inform you via letter.
How to contact us
Please contact us by post, email or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you.
Please send any requests to
Martin Chater, Morton Chater Solicitors Suite B, Grove House 76 High Street North, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, LU6 1JF
Telephone number: 01582501240 Email address: office@mortonchater.com
Do you need extra help?
If you would like this policy in another format (for example audio, large print, braille) please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ above).
Our Use of Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to monitor how our website is being used so we can make improvements. Our use of Google Analytics requires us to pass to Google your IP address (but no other information) – Google uses this information to prepare site usage reports for us, but Google may also share this information with other Google services. In particular, Google may use the data collected to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network. Related information:
Google’s privacy policy
How Google uses this information