Citizens Advice Ashfield

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 commercial organisations

We collect and use the details you give us so we can help you. We have a ‘legitimate interest’ to do this under data protection law. This means it lets us carry out our aims and goals as an organisation. We’ll always explain how we use your information.

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.

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

How Citizens Advice Ashfield collect your data

The main reason we ask for your information is to help solve your problem. We only access your information for other reasons if we really need to - for example:

● for training and quality purposes

● to investigate complaints

● to get feedback from you about our services

● to help us improve our services

All advisers and staff accessing data have had data protection training to make sure your information is handled sensitively and securely.

If you attend our service in person we will obtain your permission to collect your data by asking you to fill out and sign one of our green client permission and consent forms. If you contact us by phone we will ask you for your consent verbally. On web-chats we will ask for your consent as part of the chat.

What Citizens Advice Ashfield ask for

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

How Citizens Advice Ashfield 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.

Examples of our main referral partners are:

Ashfield District Council

WAIS

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How Citizens Advice Ashfield store your information

Your information is stored securely on our own internal systems. All volunteers and staff who access your data have had data protection training to make sure your information is handled sensitively and securely.

How Citizens Advice Ashfield share your information

We will only share your information with funders with your consent. Most of the data is anonymised except the data we share with the Money Advice Service. We will gain your consent to share this data if relevant to your case.

Contact Citizens Advice Ashfield about your information

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

Telephone: 01623 784350 open Monday to Friday 9am-2pm

Email: admin@ashfieldca.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