Privacy Policy

Disclaimer

Citizens Advice South Warwickshire has tried to ensure that the information on this website is accurate. However, Citizens Advice South Warwickshire will not accept liability for any loss, damage or inconvenience arising as a consequence of any use of or the inability to use any information on this website. Citizens Advice South Warwickshire endeavours to provide a service of the highest quality. However, we cannot guarantee that our service will be uninterrupted or error-free. We are not responsible for claims brought by third parties arising from your use of this website.

Citizens Advice South Warwickshire assumes no responsibility for the contents of linked websites. The inclusion of any link should not be taken as endorsement of any kind by Citizens Advice South Warwickshire, of the linked website or any association with its operators. Further, we have no control over the availability of the linked pages.

Copyright

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Privacy policy and data protection

At Citizens Advice 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.

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

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 have to use or share your information:

to comply with the law – for example, if a court orders us to share information. This is called ‘legal obligation’
to protect someone’s life – for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a client was unwell at our office. This is called ‘vital interests’
to carry out our legitimate aims and goals as a charity – for example, to create statistics for our national research. This is called ‘legitimate interests’
for us to carry out a task where we’re meeting the aims of a public body in the public interest – for example, delivering a government or local authority service. This is called ‘public task’
to carry out a contract we have with you – for example, if you’re an employee we might need to store your bank details so we can pay you. This is called ‘contract’.
to defend our legal rights – for example, sharing information with our legal advisors if there was a complaint that we gave the wrong advice

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

You can check our main Citizens Advice policy for how we handle most of your personal information.

This page covers how we, as your local charity, handle your information locally in our offices.

How Citizens Advice South Warwickshire collects your data

In order to help you we will collect personal information from you.

Referrals

If you come to us through another agency, they will have to ensure they have your permission to hold your data and share it with us to make a referral. We will gain consent from you to hold your information and hold your information until we have been able to contact you to follow up the referral. If we can’t get in touch we will permanently erase the information we have received.

Face to Face

If you attend one of our offices or outreach venues for advice, we will ask you to complete a ‘client profile form’ which will ask for personal details such as your name, date of birth and address. It will also ask for information that we may need to advise you or monitor our effectiveness such as employment status and housing tenure.

Phone

If you contact us by phone, we will ask for the same information as if you came to a face to face interview but we will do this over the telephone and gain your consent verbally.

Website and Email

If you contact us via our website, we will ask for contact information and details of your enquiry so that we can respond to you.

Letter

If you contact us by letter we will ask you for consent to hold details of your enquiry either by sending you a consent form to sign and return or contacting you by phone and asking for verbal consent.

However you contact us, in order to provide information and advice, we may need to ask you questions about the issue you have presented to us.

We will always ask for your consent to store and process any information we collect from you and explain why and how we will use it.

What Citizens Advice South Warwickshire ask for

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

How Citizens Advice South Warwickshire use your information

To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

Working on your behalf

When you give us authority to act on your behalf, for example to help you with a Universal Credit claim, we’ll need to share information with that third party.

For example, we commonly share information with Orbit Housing Association, Warwick District Council, Warwickshire County Council, Stratford District Council, Department of Works and Pensions, HM Revenues and Customs, Jobcentre Plus, Warwickshire Employment Rights Service, Bedworth, Rugby and Nuneaton Citizens Advice.

We would only do so when it is relevant to your enquiry and with your written or verbal authorisation.

How Citizens Advice South Warwickshire store your information

We store most of our electronic client information on Casebook, our case management system. This is backed up by National Citizens Advice. Any other electronic information is stored either securely on Google Drive or our server and these locations are backed up regularly by our IT department.

Paper information such as consent forms and documents you have provided us to carry out case work are stored in folders in filing cabinets which are locked at night at either our Leamington or Stratford Upon Avon sites. Both sites are secure with key code entry or locks on external and some internal doors. We also store some of our archived files off-site at a secure storage facility at Pillerton Priors.

How Citizens Advice South Warwickshire share your information

With your consent, we might share your information with other organisations so that we can:

Help solve your problem – for example, if you ask us to contact your creditors we might need to share your name, address and financial details with them.
Refer you to another organisation for more advice and support, if relevant
monitor the quality of our services

Organisations we share your data with must store and use your data in line with data protection law.

There might be specific organisations we share your information with, depending on what service you access. These organisation are most commonly the ones listed above.

Projects

Cases that are funded by the Money Advice Service, may be selected to be audited as part of quality monitoring. Your permission will be sought separately for this.

Contact Citizens Advice Citizens Advice South Warwickshire about your information

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

Write to:

Citizens Advice South Warwickshire
10 Hamilton Terrace
Leamington Spa
CV32 4LY

Phone: 01926 457907

Email: william.solomon@casouthwarwickshire.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’s 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.

Email privacy and confidentiality information

CASW is covered by the Data Protection Act. CASW is a member of Citizens Advice which electronically processes the personal information. Citizens Advice will treat your personal information as confidential. Your personal details will not be given to anyone else without your prior consent or sold to anyone. Citizens Advice will keep your email electronically for reference and audit purposes. Your email may be used for anonymous statistical reports to funders with the aim of improving the service provided to all clients by Citizens Advice. Internet email is a way of making general enquiries but it is not a secure way to send personal information. Citizens Advice makes every effort to ensure the security and integrity of emails on our systems. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information after we’ve received it, Citizens Advice cannot ensure or guarantee the security of information when it is being transmitted. Citizens Advice will return information to the email address of the sender only.

If an email from Citizens Advice contains sensitive personal data about you, Citizens Advice will only send with your consent and will protect it by encrypting it. It is the sole responsibility of the sender to secure the privacy of this correspondence. Emails from Citizens Advice may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom they are addressed.

If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. If you are concerned about confidentiality then please contact us by phone or in person. Under the Data Protection Act 1998, we need your consent to store your personal details. By using our email advice service, you agree to the following statement: “I give my consent for the Citizens Advice service to process and use my personal information. I understand that this information will be kept confidential to the Citizens Advice service”.