Policies

A. Privacy Policy

There are rules about what we do with personal information we have about you. 

This notice is to let you know your rights, our requirements, and what you can do in the unlikely situation where things go wrong.

You have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation, and these include:

• The right to be informed of what information we hold about you. However, it is obviously likely that you will have provided us with such information and/or instructed us to advise and represent you in which case we will have requested and gained access to the prosecution evidence and any relevant previous convictions. The Firm regards its main legal basis for collecting and processing client data as one of ‘contract’. This governs the processing of data necessary to undertake legal work on behalf of most of our clients.
• The right to rectification. If you believe that the information, we hold is wrong or out of date, please let us know and we will update it. The persons in this firm responsible for data protection management are the Directors Andy Floyd and Sukie Dhonota.
• The right to access. You have a right to view your own personal data as well as to request a copy of your papers and such a request should ideally be made in writing. You are likely to be requested to provide proof of ID. Such requests subject to any complexities will be dealt with in 30 days from the date of receipt of the request.
• The right to withdraw consent. You can, subject to having the ability to do so, withdraw previously giv-en consent to the processing of your data. This would mean that we would stop the processing of your personal data that was carried out on your earlier provided consent. This may also mean that we will not be able to continue to represent or defend you in relation to any current criminal proceedings in such circumstances.
• The right to object. This mean that you can object to the processing of your personal data and this would normally be the same as your right to withdraw consent, if consent was properly requested and there is a legitimate purpose for the processing of your personal data.
• The right to object to automated processing. You have the right to object to a decision based on auto-mated processing.
• The right to erasure. You also have the right request the deletion of your data in order to be forgotten once there is no need for us to have your information (please refer to Storage of Documents) for our professional obligations below and hence this is not an absolute right).
• The right for data portability. You have the right to ask for the transfer of your personal data. As part of such a request, you may ask for the personal data to be returned to you or sent to another control-ler such as another legal firm. When this is undertaken, it must be provided in a machine-readable electronic format where applicable.

The Legal Basis of Processing your Data

We will process your data on the following basis:

• Contractual obligations in collecting and processing data in order to undertake legal work on your be-half
• Consent given by you so that we can process your data when you request that we advise and/or represent you at court and/or the police station or for any other criminal matters that you are involved in
• Legitimate purpose because there is an appropriate relationship between the Firm and the client. This purpose can also be used for the purpose of fraud prevention.
• The nature of the relationship means that the processing of data is unlikely to be unexpected or un-wanted

Summary

We need certain information about you to help you with your case. We will ask you for this information and may also be given information from other people or organizations whilst we are preparing your case. We will need to keep this information whilst we are helping you with your case.

Whilst we may need to keep some information about you once we have finished helping you, it will only be what is necessary to comply with the law and our professional obligations.

We will destroy and/or delete any information we hold about you when we no longer need it.

Finally, you have the right to know what information we have about you.

Information about you

When we are dealing with your case, we need information about you so that we can help you properly. We will only collect information we think is relevant and necessary to help you with your case in the best way.

This will include:

• Your name, date of birth, address and contact details. These are necessary in all cases so that we can identify you and contact you.

It may also include:

• Your marital status, partner’s details and financial details. These will be needed if we are making an application for legal aid, and may also help us in preparing your case;
• Details of health issues which might help us to help you.

Other people or organizations may also provide us with information about you.

This may include:

• The police giving us details of any allegation against you;
• The prosecution, usually the Crown Prosecution Service, giving us case papers including any previous convictions;
• Your doctor or other health care professional giving us details of any health issues. Please note that we will need your specific consent for this and so will ask you if you are willing to provide that consent if we think it would help your case.

There may be other information we need. We are always happy to tell you why any information is needed if it is not clear why we

are asking for it, and encourage you to ask if you are unsure why you are providing the information.

Sharing of information

It may be necessary to share information about you so that we can prepare your case properly.

This could be to tell a barrister about you so that she or he can represent you at a hearing, or information a witness gives us about you. It might be information we send to the police or prosecution to let them know information which might help your case.

We will only share information with people or organizations which we think need that information to be able to help your case.

Destruction and deletion of information

At the end of your case we will keep details for 6 years. We are required to keep information for this long by our professional body (The Law Society) as we need to be able to check these records if there is a problem with your case.

After the 6-year period, we will destroy any physical records (documents and other items such as DVDs of evidence) and will delete any computer records which might identify you.

How to obtain a copy of the information we hold about you

You have the right to ask what information we hold about you. This is called a “Subject Access Request”. We are always happy to tell you what information we have, but if you want to apply formally to find out what information we have, please write to us to ask for the information.

Please be specific as to the information you require so that we can deal with your request as fully as possible. There will be no charge for supplying this information to you. We will have 30 days to provide you with the information.

If you are not happy with the response you get to the Subject Access Request, please contact us again to explain why you consider we have not dealt satisfactorily with the request.

We hope and expect that you will be satisfied with our response, however if you consider that we have not complied, you can contact the Information Commissioners Office at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/personal-information/ or call 0303 123 1113.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, please contact us and we will be happy to talk about it.

B. Complaints

We want to give you the best possible service. However, if at any point you become unhappy or concerned about the service, we have  provided then you should inform us immediately, so that we can do our best to resolve the problem.

In the first instance it may be helpful to contact the person who is working on your case to discuss your concerns and we will do our best to resolve any issues. If you would like to make a formal complaint, then you can read our full complaints procedure [see below]. Making a complaint will not affect how we handle your case.

What to do if we cannot resolve your complaint

The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves. They will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case.

Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. If you have, then you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

• Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint

and

• No more than six years from the date of act/omission; or
• No more than three years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, please contact them.

Contact details

Visit: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Call: 0300 555 0333 between 9.00 to 17.00.

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ

What to do if you are unhappy with our behavior

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behavior. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.

Visit their website to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The Firm’s Procedure

Victor Clifford Solicitors Ltd is committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all its clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to maintain and improve our standards.

Our  complaints procedure

If you have a complaint, please contact us with the details. If we have to change any of the timescales set out below, we will let you know.

What will happen next?

1. Within five days we will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details. We may suggest that we meet to clarify any details.
2. We will then record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint and investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps.

• If we acted for you, we will consider your complaint again. We will then send you our detailed reply or invite you to a meeting to discuss the matter.
• If someone else acted for you, we will ask them to give me their reply to your complaint. We will then examine their reply and the information in your complaint file. We may also speak to the person who acted for you.
• We may ask another independent local solicitor to investigate your complaint and report to us.
• We will then write inviting you to meet me and discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint.

3. At this stage we would welcome the opportunity to meet with you. We would aim to be in a position to be able to meet with you within 14 days of first receiving your complaint. If you would prefer not to meet, or if we cannot arrange this within an agreeable timescale, we will write fully to you setting out our views on the situation and any redress.
4. Within five days of our meeting we will aim to write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions we have agreed with you. In appropriate cases we could offer an apology, a reduction of any bill or a repayment in relation to any payment received.
5. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, please contact us again. We will then arrange to review any decision within the next 14-21 days if we review the decision internally.
6. Alternatively, we will arrange for someone who is not connected with the complaint to review our decision.

We may ask our local law society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint. This may take longer than 10 days in which case we will let you know how long this process will take but, in any event, it is hoped to be no later than 8 weeks. We will let you know the result of the review within five days of the end of the review. At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining my reasons. We will also give you the name and address of the Legal Ombudsman to contact in relation to the complaint if you are still not satisfied but we very much hope that this will not be necessary.