www.king-gowdy.co.uk (our website) is provided by King & Gowdy, Solicitors (‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’). We are the controller of personal data obtained via our website, meaning we are the organisation legally responsible for deciding how and for what purposes it is used.
We 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 any information relating to you (your personal data) in connection with your use of our website. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or a relevant regulator in the event you have a complaint.
We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal data about you. When we do so we are subject to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).
This privacy policy is divided into the following sections:
This privacy policy relates to your use of our website only.
The personal data we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through our website. We may collect and use the following personal data about you:
We collect and use this personal data for the purposes described in the section ‘How and why we use your personal data’ below.
We collect personal data from you:
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, e.g.:
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your personal data, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.
The table below explains what we use your personal data for and why.
| What we use your personal data for | Our reasons |
| Providing services to you | To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract |
| Conducting checks to identify you and verify your identity or to help prevent and detect fraud against you or us | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations |
| Enforcing legal rights or defend or undertake legal proceedings | Depending on the circumstances: —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations —in other cases, for our legitimate interests, i.e. to protect our business, interests, and rights |
| Protecting the security of systems and data used to provide the services | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations We may also use your personal data to ensure the security of systems and data to a standard that goes beyond our legal obligations, and in those cases our reasons are for our legitimate interests, i.e. to protect systems and data and to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for you and/or us |
| Statistical analysis to help us understand our customer base | For our legitimate interests, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price |
| Updating and enhancing customer records | Depending on the circumstances: —to perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract —to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations —where neither of the above apply, for our legitimate interests, e.g. making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about existing orders and new products |
| Disclosures and other activities necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, e.g. to record and demonstrate evidence of your consents where relevant | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations |
See ‘Who we share your personal data with’ for further information on the steps we will take to protect your personal data where we need to share it with others.
We have a legitimate interest in using your personal data for marketing purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your personal data’). This means we do not need your consent to send you marketing information. If we change our marketing approach in the future so that consent is needed, we will ask for this separately and clearly.
You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by contacting us.
We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.
For more information on your right to object at any time to your personal data being used for marketing purposes, see ‘Your rights’ below.
We routinely share personal data with third parties we use to help deliver our services to you, e.g. payment service providers, barristers, and experts, but only if and after you enter into a contract for the provision of services by this firm.
If you would like more information about who we share our data with and why, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).
We will not keep your personal data for longer than we need it for the purpose for which it is used.
It may in rare cases be necessary for us to transfer your personal data to countries outside the UK. In those cases, we will comply with applicable laws designed to ensure the privacy of your personal data.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (e.g. computer, smartphone, or another electronic device) when you use our website. We use cookies on this website.
For further information on cookies, when we will request your consent before placing them and how to disable them, please contact us.
You generally have the following rights, which you can usually exercise free of charge:
| Access to a copy of your personal data | The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data |
| Correction (also known as rectification) | The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data |
| Erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten) | The right to require us to delete your personal data—in certain situations |
| Restriction of use | The right to require us to restrict use of your personal data in certain circumstances, e.g.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 to use | The right to object: —at any time to your personal data being used for direct marketing (including profiling) —in certain other situations to our continued use of your personal data, eg where we use your personal data for our legitimate interests unless there are compelling legitimate grounds for the processing to continue or the processing is required for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims |
| Not to be subject to decisions without human involvement | 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 We do not make any such decisions based on data collected by our website |
| The right to withdraw consents | If you have provided us with a consent to use your personal data you have a right to withdraw that consent easily at any time You may withdraw consents by contacting us Withdrawing a consent will not affect the lawfulness of our use of your personal data in reliance on that consent before it was withdrawn |
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they do and do not apply, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).
If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please email, call or write to us—see below: ‘How to contact us’. When contacting us please:
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 need to access it.
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.
Please contact us if you have any queries or concerns about our use of your personal data (see below ‘How to contact us’). We hope we will be able to resolve any issues you may have.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner. The [UK’s] Information Commissioner may be contacted using the details at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or by telephone: 0303 123 1113.
We may change this privacy policy from time to time—when we make significant changes, we will not take steps to highlight changes to users of the website. If you have any concerns, you should therefore review this policy periodically, or in the alternative, contact us.
You can contact us by post, email, or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you, to exercise a right under data protection law or to make a complaint.
Our contact details are shown below:
| Our contact details |
King & Gowdy, Solicitors, 298 Upper Newtownards Road, Belfast, BT4 3EJ |
