PRIVACY NOTICE

Introduction

The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set out clearly the responsibilities of Data Controllers and the rights of Data Subjects. As a Data Controller, we take our responsibilities under the GDPR seriously. We are committed to processing your personal data in a transparent, lawful, and secure manner.

This Privacy Notice applies to customers (current and previous), new business prospects, and suppliers as well as users of www.bcacic.uk. It also applies to our employees and anyone wishing to apply to work with us.

This Privacy Notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data to provide accounting services to you, when you use our site www.bcacic.uk It also explains how we comply with the GDPR in using your personal data for marketing purposes.

Who we are and how to get in touch

We are Bristol Community Accountants CIC

Our company registration number is 11836955 and we are registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) with the registration number ZA507256.

Our registered address is The Park, Daventry Road, Knowle, Bristol, BS4 1DQ.

Please contact Joanne Trowbridge on 0117 3773388 or email at jo ‘at’ bcacic.uk should you have any queries relating to our processing of your personal information, or if you wish us to update the personal information we hold about you.

We may amend this privacy notice from time to time. The current version of this Privacy Notice will always be available for you to refer to on our website www.bcacic.uk

Where we act as a data processor on behalf of a data controller (for example, when processing payroll), we provide an additional letter of engagement setting out the required information as part of that agreement. That additional letter of engagement should be read in conjunction with this privacy notice.

The purposes for which we intend to process personal data

We intend to process personal data for the following purposes:

  • To enable us to supply professional services to you as our client.

  • To fulfil our obligations under relevant laws in force from time to time (e.g. the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (“MLR 2017”)).

  • To comply with professional obligations to which we are subject as a member of the Association of Accounting Technicians.

  • To use in the investigation and/or defence of potential complaints, disciplinary proceedings, and legal proceedings.

  • To enable us to invoice you for our services and investigate/address any attendant fee disputes that may have arisen.

The legal bases for our intended processing of personal data

Our intended processing of personal data has the following legal bases:

  • At the time you instructed us to act, or when you renewed your contract with us, you gave consent to our processing your personal data for the purposes of delivering accounting and (or) payroll services to you.

  • The processing is necessary for the performance of our contract with you.

  • The processing is necessary for compliance with legal obligations to which we are subject (e.g. MLR 2017).

If you do not provide the information that we request, we may not be able to provide professional services to you. If this is the case, we will not be able to commence acting or will need to cease to act.

What personal data do we process?

Personal Data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.

The personal data we hold may include some of the following:

  • your name

  • title

  • business email address– unless you consent to us using your private email address.

  • office address – or correspondence address which you have specified that we use.

  • phone number – office and mobile or private phone number you have specified that we use.

For customers and employees, so that we can file information with or engage with authorities including HMRC and Companies House on your behalf, the personal data we need you to share includes but not limited to:

  • Personal data about employees and directors.

  • Account Information (such as names, age, contact address, phone number (office/mobile), email address, Unique Tax Reference Number (UTR), National Insurance Number, tax codes, date of birth, Pension related information).

  • HMRC requires this personal data to correctly identify you if we need to talk with them on your behalf.

  • HMRC also requires we check your identity and therefore we hold on file a copy of photo identification and proof of your address.

  • When filing your self-assessment, the personal data again identifies you and ensures your account with HMRC is correctly updated.

  • Administrative Information (such as personal data you have provided to us, for example in correspondence).

For Suppliers, we may also hold your banking details to pay for your services for the duration of our contract.

We may process the following categories of personal data about you:

  • Communication Data: includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting, or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record-keeping and the establishment, pursuance, or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records, and to establish, pursue, or defend legal claims.

  • Customer Data: includes data relating to any purchases of services such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details, and your card details. We process this data to supply the services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract.

We do not collect or process any Sensitive Personal Data about you, or data about criminal convictions and offences. We will not share your Personal Data with any third parties for their own marketing purposes.

How we collect personal data

As a customer, we will ask you for the data including personal data we will need you to consent to give us to deliver services to you. The same applies to employees and those wishing to work with us.

Besides, we may collect personal data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our site, landing pages, or by sending us emails). By using our website and providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age.

Persons/organisations with whom we may share personal data:

  • HMRC and Companies House

  • Any third parties with whom you require or permit us to correspond.

  • Our subcontractors – who will only access data they need to, and in a professional, confidential manner.

  • An alternate appointed by us in the event of incapacity or death.

  • Tax insurance providers.

  • Professional indemnity insurers.

  • Our professional body the Association of Accounting Technicians and/or the Office of Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervisors (OPBAS) in relation to practice assurance and/or the requirements of MLR 2017 (or any similar legislation).

  • Service providers or application service providers compliant with the GDPR including cloud storage (like Dropbox, Airtable, and Microsoft); cloud accounting solutions (like Quickbooks, Sage, Taxcalc, and Xero); pension services (NEST); business email (Protonmail and Microsoft); or service providers who provide IT and system administration services.

  • Third parties to whom we may sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets.

If the law allows or requires us to do so, we may share your personal data with:

  • the police and law enforcement agencies.

  • courts and tribunals.

  • the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”).

We may need to share your personal data with the third parties identified above in order to comply with our legal obligations, including our legal obligations to you. If you ask us not to share your personal data with such third parties we may need to cease to act.

Transfers of personal data outside the EEA

In providing services to you, or in the execution of our marketing and business activities, some of the systems, applications, and cloud services we use require that data is transferred outside of the European Economic Area. In such cases, we only do so to countries where adequate data protection agreements and schemes are in place so that we remain compliant with the GDPR.

Where we transfer your data to these third parties outside of the EEA, we will ensure that certain safeguards are in place to ensure a similar degree of security for your personal data. As such:

  • We may transfer your personal data to countries that are approved as adequate under the GDPR; or

  • If we use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place; or

  • Where we use certain service providers who are established outside of the EEA, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the GDPR which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK and Europe.

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

Retention of personal data

When acting as a data controller and in accordance with recognised good practice within the tax and accountancy sector we will retain all of our records relating to you as follows:

  • where tax returns have been prepared it is our policy to retain information for 7 years from the end of the tax year to which the information relates.

  • where ad hoc advisory work has been undertaken it is our policy to retain information for 2 years from the date the business relationship ceased.

  • where we have an ongoing client relationship, data which is needed for more than one year’s tax compliance (e.g. capital gains base costs and claims and elections submitted to HMRC) is retained throughout the period of the relationship but will be deleted 2 years after the end of the business relationship unless you as our client ask us to retain it for a longer period.

Our contractual terms provide for the destruction of documents after 2 years and therefore agreement to the contractual terms is taken as agreement to the retention of records for this period, and to their destruction thereafter.

You are responsible for retaining information that we send to you (including details of capital gains base costs and claims and elections submitted) and this will be supplied in the form agreed between us. Documents and records relevant to your tax affairs are required by law to be retained by you as follows:

Individuals, trustees, and partnerships

  • with trading or rental income: five years and 10 months after the end of the tax year;

  • otherwise: 22 months after the end of the tax year.

Companies, LLPs and other corporate entities

  • six years from the end of the accounting period.

Where we act as a data processor as defined in DPA 2018, we will delete or return all personal data to the data controller as agreed with the controller at the termination of the contract.

Data Security

We continue to take all reasonable steps to protect and process your data securely. We have security measures in place to prevent, to the best extent we can, your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. We also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they must keep it confidential.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to.

Requesting personal data we hold about you (subject access requests)

You have a right to request access to your personal data that we hold. Such requests are known as ‘subject access requests’ (“SARs”).

Please provide all SARs in writing marked for the attention of Joanne Trowbridge at jo ‘at’ bcacic.uk

To help us provide the information you want and deal with your request more quickly, you should include enough details to enable us to verify your identity and locate the relevant information. For example, you should tell us:

  1. your date of birth.

  2. previous or other name(s) you have used.

  3. your previous addresses in the past five years.

  4. personal reference number(s) that we may have given you, for example, your national insurance number, your tax reference number or your VAT registration number.

  5. what type of information you want to know.

If you do not have a national insurance number, instead please send a copy of:

  • the back page of your passport or a copy of your driving licence; and

  • a recent utility bill.

We will comply with a SAR promptly and in any event within one month of receipt. There are, however, some circumstances in which the law allows us to refuse to provide access to personal data in response to a SAR (e.g. if you have previously made a similar request and there has been little or no change to the data since we complied with the original request).

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

You can ask someone else to request information on your behalf – for example, a friend, relative, or solicitor. We must have your authority to respond to a SAR made on your behalf. You can provide such authority by signing a letter that states that you authorise the person concerned to write to us for information about you, and/or receive our reply.

Where you are a data controller and we act for you as a data processor (e.g. by processing payroll), we will assist you with SARs on the same basis as is set out above.

Putting things right (the right to rectification)

You have a right to obtain the rectification of any inaccurate personal data concerning you that we hold. You also have a right to have any incomplete personal data that we hold about you completed. Should you become aware that any personal data that we hold about you is inaccurate and/or incomplete, please inform us immediately so we can correct and/or complete it.

Deleting your records (the right to erasure)

In certain circumstances, you have a right to have the personal data that we hold about you erased. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). If you would like your personal data to be erased, please inform us immediately and we will consider your request. In certain circumstances, we have the right to refuse to comply with a request for erasure. If applicable, we will supply you with the reasons for refusing your request.

The right to restrict processing and the right to object

In certain circumstances, you have the right to ‘block’ or suppress the processing of personal data or to object to the processing of that information. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). Please inform us immediately if you want us to cease to process your information or you object to processing so that we can consider what action, if any, is appropriate.

Obtaining and reusing personal data (the right to data portability)

In certain circumstances, you have the right to be provided with the personal data that we hold about you in a machine-readable format, e.g. so that the data can easily be provided to a new professional adviser. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk).

The right to data portability only applies:

  • to personal data an individual has provided to a controller;

  • where the processing is based on the individual’s consent or for the performance of a contract; and

  • when processing is carried out by automated means.

We will respond to any data portability requests made to us without undue delay and within one month. We may extend the period by a further two months where the request is complex or a number of requests are received but we will inform you within one month of the receipt of the request and explain why the extension is necessary.

Withdrawal of consent

Where you have consented to our processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Please inform us immediately if you wish to withdraw your consent by contacting Joanne Trowbridge at jo ‘at’ bcacic.uk.

Please note:

  • the withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing.

  • if you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to continue to provide services to you.

  • even if you withdraw your consent, it may remain lawful for us to process your data on another legal basis (e.g. because we have a legal obligation to continue to process your data).

Automated decision-making

We do not intend to use automated decision-making in relation to your personal data.

Third-Party Links

Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

Cookies

You can set your brower to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully access some of the features of our website.

Complaints

If you have requested details of the information we hold about you and you are not happy with our response, or you think we have not complied with the GDPR or DPA 2018 in some other way, you can complain to us by contacting Joanne Trowbridge at jo ‘at’ bcacic.uk

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve any issues for you.

updated: 24th June 2021