Geo & Jas Oliver WS Ltd, Solicitors and Estate Agents, a company incorporated under the Companies Acts and having their registered office at 13 High Street, Hawick, TD9 9DH (Company Number: SC412849) (hereinafter referred to as “the Company”) will, unless otherwise stated in this privacy notice, be a “controller” of the personal information that you provide to us when you instruct us to act on your behalf and where we disclose such personal information to a third party that third party will also become a controller of that disclosed personal information.
Individual clients’ personal data:
When you become a client of the Company, we will collect, store and use the personal information that you provide to us in your instructions and during the course of our solicitor / client relationship. We may ask you for additional personal information during the course of our client / solicitor relationship, which shall be collected, stored and used in accordance with this privacy notice.
In some instances, we will also collect, store and use the following personal information relating to you when you become our client from credit reference agencies who provide us with secure anti- money laundering, identity and compliance checks. The following categories of personal information will be searched against by the credit reference agencies and then provided to the Company in the form of personal data:- date of birth, share records, Politically Exposed Persons databases, HM Treasury Financial Sanctions List, Bankruptcies, Administration Orders or Insolvencies, Postcode Address File, County Court Judgements, HALO deceased register or the General Register Office (GRO) deceased register, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Specially Designated Nationals Database and Adverse Media. Personal information from your passport and driving license will also be collected, stored and used by us.
We need to collect our clients’ personal information so that we can perform our service agreement with you. We will use our clients’ personal information to:
If you do not provide us with all of the personal information that we need to collect then this may affect our ability to provide you with legal advice in the matter for which we have been instructed.
Why we need your personal information – legitimate purposes
We also process our clients’ personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests to:
Where we process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to us using your personal information for the above purposes. If you wish to object to any of the above processing, please contact us in writing at 13 High Street, Hawick, TD9 9DH or by email to holiver@gandjoliver.co.uk or joliver@gandjoliver.co.uk. If we comply with your objection, this may affect our ability to undertake the tasks above for the benefit of you as a client.
Why we need your personal information – legal obligations
We are under a legal obligation to process certain personal information relating to our clients for the purposes of complying with our obligations under:
We may ask you if we can process your personal information for additional purposes. Where we do so, we will provide you with an additional privacy notice with information on how we will use your information for these additional purposes.
Who we share your personal information with
We may be required to share personal information with statutory or regulatory authorities and private organisations in order to implement our obligations to you under our service agreement and to comply with statutory rules and regulations. Such authorities and organisations include but are not limited to lenders, banks, contractors, architects or other experts and more specifically The Law Society of Scotland, HMRC, Revenue Scotland, The Office of Public Guardian, Local Authorities and The Registers of Scotland.
We may also share personal data with our professional advisors for the purposes of taking advice.
The Company employs third party suppliers to provide services, including practise management software. These suppliers may process personal data on our behalf as “processors” and are subject to written contractual conditions to only process that personal data under our instructions and protect it.
In the event that we do share personal data with external third parties, we will only share such personal data strictly required for the specific purposes and take reasonable steps to ensure that recipients shall only process the disclosed personal data in accordance with those purposes.
How we protect your personal information
Your personal information is stored on our electronic and paper-based filing system and our servers based in the UK and is accessed by our staff for the purposes set out above.
Where your personal information is transferred outwith the EU, we will provide you with information regarding the safeguards that we have put in place with the recipient country to protect your personal information.
How long we keep your personal information
We keep our clients’ personal data for only as long as it is necessary and in compliance with guidance provided by The Law Society of Scotland. This will be determined by the nature and type of work carried out on your behalf.
We use guidance provided by the Law Society of Scotland that sets out the out the periods for retaining and reviewing all information that we hold. This can be accessed using the following link:- https://www.lawscot.org.uk/members/rules-and-guidance/rules-and-guidance/section-e/division-b/guidance/the-ownership-and-destruction-of-files/.
Your rights
You can exercise any of the following rights by writing to us at Geo & Jas Oliver WS Ltd, 13 High Street, Hawick, TD9 9DH or by email to holiver@gandjoliver.co.uk or joliver@gandjoliver.co.uk.
Your rights in relation to your personal information are:
Any requests received by the Company will be considered under applicable data protection legislation. If you remain dissatisfied, you have a right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk.
This Notice was last reviewed by the Company in May 2018. The content of the policy may be reviewed and changed without prior notice. Please visit the notice on our website for any changes. We may update the terms of the privacy notice at any time, so please check periodically if you wish to do so.
