Privacy Policy

Citizens Advice Leighton Linslade Privacy Policy

At Citizens Advice Leighton Linslade (also known as CALL), we collect and use your personal information to help solve your problems, improve our services and tackle wider issues in society that affect people’s lives.

This privacy policy explains how we use your information and what your rights are. We handle and store your personal information in line with data protection law and our confidentiality policy. The following pages tell you more about how we use your information in more detail.

Our network

Citizens Advice is a membership organisation made up of the national Citizens Advice charity and many local offices across England and Wales, including CALL.  CALL is an independent charity and a member of the national Citizens Advice charity.

All members of the Citizens Advice network are responsible for keeping your personal information safe and making sure data protection law is followed. 

Members of the network also run some jointly designed services and use some of the same systems to process your personal data. In these instances, we are joint data controllers for these activities.

Jointly controlled data

All offices in the Citizens Advice network use some joint systems to carry out our activities. These include joint case management systems, telephony platforms and more. 

Staff from a different local Citizens Advice can only access your personal information in a joint system if they have a good reason. For example, when:

• you go to a different office to seek advice
• more than one office is working together in partnership
• they need to investigate a complaint or incident

We have rules and controls in place to stop people accessing or using your information when they shouldn’t.

Tell an adviser if you’re worried about your details being on a national system. We’ll work with you to take extra steps to protect your information – for example by recording your problem without using your name.

National Citizens Advice has a privacy notice available on their website that covers general advice and nationally managed systems, including our case management systems. This policy covers the processing we carry out in our office.

How we use your data for advice

This section covers how we use your data to provide you with advice.

For general advice and nationally funded advice programmes please see the national Citizens Advice privacy notice.

How we collect your information

We may collect your personal data:

• in person on a registration form, we will ask you to provide written consent at your initial visit and then at intervals thereafter.
• in a web-form on our website when you request email advice, in which case we will ask for your permission before the form is submitted.
• over the telephone if you call us for advice, we will request your permission verbally to record your information on our case management system, Casebook.

What information we collect

To find out what information we ask for, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy.

What we use your information for

For further details as to what we use your information for, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy.

Our confidentiality policy

At Citizens Advice we have a confidentiality policy which states that anything you tell us as part of advice will not be shared outside of the Citizens Advice network unless you provide your permission for us to do so.

There are some exceptions to this such as needing to share:

• to prevent an immediate risk of harm to an individual
• In select circumstances if it is in the best interests of the client
• where we are compelled to do so by law (e.g. a court order or meeting statutory disclosures)
• where there is an overriding public interest such as to prevent harm against someone or to investigate a crime
• to defend against a complaint or legal claim
• to protect our name and reputation for example to provide our side of a story reported in the press

Who we share your information with

When you give us authority to do so, we may share your personal information with our partner organisations. Our partner organisations include but are not limited to:

• Central Bedfordshire Council
• Local Housing Associations
• DWP
• HMRC

We may occasionally share client information with funders for reporting purposes although this will either be with your specific consent or the data will be anonymised.

Our lawful basis for using your information

We only ask for the information we need. We always let you decide what you’re comfortable telling us, explain why we need it and treat it as confidential.

When we record and use your personal information we:

• only access it when we have a good reason
• only share what is necessary and relevant
• don’t sell it to anyone

We handle and store your personal information in line with the law – including the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

At times we might use or share your information without your permission. If we do, we’ll always make sure there’s a legal basis for it. This could include situations where we must use or share your information:

• to follow the law, called ‘legal obligation’ – for example, if a court orders us to share information
• to protect someone’s life, called ‘vital interests’ – for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a client was unwell at our office
• to carry out our aims and goals as an organisation, called ‘legitimate interests’ – for example, to create anonymous case studies and statistics for our national research
• for us to carry out a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law, called ‘public task’ – for example the Consumer Service
• to carry out a contract we have with you, called ‘contract’ – for example, if you’re an employee we might need to store your bank details so we can pay you
• to defend our legal rights – for example, to resolve a complaint that we gave the wrong advice

Contact Citizens Advice Leighton Linslade about your information

If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact our office.

Telephone: 01525 373878, open Monday to Friday 10 am-1pm and Monday to Thursday 2pm – 4pm

Email: admin@leightonlinsladecab.org.uk

You can contact us to:

• find out what personal information we hold about you
• correct your information if it’s wrong, out of date or incomplete
• request we delete your information
• ask us to limit what we do with your data – for example, ask us not to share it if you haven’t asked us already
• ask us to give you a copy of the data we hold in a format you can use to transfer it to another service
• ask us stop using your information

Who is responsible for looking after your personal information

The national Citizens Advice charity and your local Citizens Advice operate a system called Casebook to keep your personal information safe. This means they’re a ‘joint data controller’ for your personal information that’s stored in our Casebook system.

Each local Citizens Advice is an independent charity, and a member of the national Citizens Advice charity. The Citizens Advice membership agreement also requires that the use of your information complies with data protection law.

You can find out more about your data rights on the Information Commissioner’s website.

Cookie Policy

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You can find more information on how we use cookies on our National Citizens Advice website here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/information/how-we-use-cookies/