Privacy Policy

DSC PRIVACY INFORMATION NOTICE

This Privacy Information Notice describes how DSC will collect, use and protect your personal information. It applies to any website, applications and products or services offered by DSC and referred to in this Privacy Information Notice.

1) Who we are.

DSC Accountants Limited and DSC Accountancy Limited of Tattersall House, East Parade, Harrogate HG1 5LT and Suite B2, Joseph’s Well, Hanover Walk, Westgate, Leeds, LS3 1AB are the data controllers.

The Data Protection Officer (DPO) for DSC is John Campbell j.campbell@dscca.com or tel 01423 560547.

Definitions

Agent
A person or organisation who you have appointed to act on your behalf in relation to a product or services offered by DSC.

Data Controller
The person (or business) who determines the purpose and means of processing personal information.

Data Processor
A person (or business) responsible for processing personal data on behalf of a data controller.

EEA
European Economic Area which is made up of EU countries plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

We
DSC

2) Why we need to collect, use and process personal information.

We collect personal information from you in order to perform our contractual obligations for you as determined in our engagement letters.

3) The information we collect, hold and process about you

• Title
• Full name
• Permanent residential address and previous address (if you have lived there less than three years)
• Telephone contact number
• Email address
• Date of birth
• National Insurance Number
• Tax Reference numbers
• Nationality
• Country of residence
• Expected retirement age
• Whether you are married or in a registered civil partnership
• Spouse’s or registered civil partner’s date of birth
• Employment status
• Employer’s name and address
• Details of any pension protection and contribution restrictions
• Financial information about you
• Your personal bank details
• Agent details
• Supporting information to verify your identity and address
• Outcome of identity searches and anti-money laundering due diligence
• All communications to and from you by telephone, email, post or otherwise

4) How we use your personal information

• For the preparation of financial statements
• For the preparation of all required tax returns
• For the purpose of payroll preparation
• To comply with legal or regulatory requirements
• For the detection, prevention and investigation of illegal or prohibited criminal activities and in the protection of our legal rights.
• To notify you about changes to our services
• To administer the website and secure portals and to carry out internal systems monitoring
• Market research statistical analysis and development of our services.
• To send you details by post, email, telephone or other electronic means of services we supply which we believe may be of interest to you but only if you have given us prior consent.

5) How we collect information

You may give us information by filling in forms (in paper or on our website) or by corresponding with us by:

• Phone
• Email
• Post or
• By any other electronic means

This includes information you provide when you:

• Search our website
• Apply for services, or
• Any other interaction with our website

We may also receive personal information from third parties who we work closely with and who are entitled to share that information eg banks, solicitors, financial advisers, other related service providers, but in each case as permitted by applicable law.

Each time you visit the DSC websites the following information may be automatically collected:

• Technical information, including the Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, your log in information, browser type and version, time zone settings, browser plug-in types and versions, operating systems and platforms, etc and

• information about your visit including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) of the internet sites you came through to our websites and which pages you visited including date and time; page response times; downloaders; length of visit to certain pages; page interaction information; methods used to browse away from the page.

6) Disclosure of your information

We may share your personal data (including storage and transfer of data) with:

• Members of the DSC companies for the purposes set out in this Privacy Information Notice
• Agents selected by you and for whom you have given prior consent for us to share personal information
• Any third party in order to meet our legal and regulatory obligations (including statutory or regulatory bodies, law enforcement agencies and credit reference agencies).
• Our service providers and agents (including their sub-contractors) or third parties who process information on our behalf in relation to, for example, banks for processing payments, printing services, bulk communication purposes and internet services.
• Any third party in the context of actual or threatened legal proceedings provided we can do so lawfully.

7) Data retention

We may retain information about you:

• At the end of your engagement with ourselves

This information will only be held for as long as is necessary to meet any legal, regulatory or fraud prevention requirements and for our lawful business processing. We regularly review our records to ensure that we only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Information Notice.

Where we no longer need your personal information we will dispose of it in a secure manner (without further notice to you).

8) Automated Decisions

We may use your personal data to undertake automated online identity checks and in the detection, prevention and investigation of illegal or prohibited criminal activities.

9) Mobile Data

We may obtain information through mobile applications that we may offer and you or your agents use to access our websites, applications and services. Mobile applications for this purpose may be provided by us or third parties.

Where mobile applications are provided by a third party you must read that third parties own privacy information notice in relation to that application. We are not responsible for third party mobile applications and their use of your personal information.

10) Marketing

From time to time where you have provided consent we may use your personal information to contact you by telephone, post, email or by any other electronic means with details about our services which we feel may be of interest to you.

11) Transfers outside of the European Economic Area

The data that we collect from you will not be transferred to and stored at a destination outside the EEA without your consent.

12) Security and storage of information

The personal information that we collect from you is stored by us on secure servers protected through a combination of physical and electronic access controls, firewall technology and other security measures. We have put in place measures to guard against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage.

Although we use market standard security software to protect your personal information we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted by you or your agent to our websites, secure portals, applications or services; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information we will use strict procedures and security features to try and prevent unauthorised access.

13) Cookies (small text files)

DSC websites do not use cookies.

14) Your information and your rights

You have the following rights:

• To be informed about how we obtain and use your information
• To ask for a copy of the information that we hold about you
• To have your information rectified
• To request us to restrict processing of your personal data
• To request to have your information erased (Right to be forgotten)
• To object to the processing of your information (eg for direct marketing purposes)
• To have the information you provided to us returned to you or sent directly to another company in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format where technically feasible (Data Portability).
• Where the processing of your information is based on your consent, the right at any time to withdraw that consent
• To object to any decisions based on the automated processing of your personal data, including profiling and
• To lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) the supervisory authority responsible for data protection matters.

You cannot opt out of receiving regulatory or legal information or updates (eg information about a change to our engagement terms).

If you withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal information or you ask for your information to be erased we may not be able to provide you with access to all or parts of our website, applications or services.

If you would like to use any of your rights please contact info@dscca.com or the Data Protection Officer, j.campbell@dscca.com.

15) Other sites and social media

If you follow a link from our websites, applications or services to another site or service, this privacy information will no longer apply. We are not responsible for the information handling practices of third party sites or services.

16) Electronic mail containing personal information

You and your agents may from time to time send personal information to us electronically. We are not responsible for the way in which you or your agent handles personal information. Where possible we insist that you or your agent communicate using either secure/encrypted email through a secure portal or using encrypted files. Please refer to Clause 12 of this Privacy Information Notice regarding the security of information not sent via secure means.

17) Changes to our Privacy Information Notice

We may change, modify or adjust this Privacy Information Notice from time to time; however we will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Information Notice.

Any changes we may make to our Privacy Information Notice in the future will be found on our website www.dscca.com.

18) Contact us

We take your privacy and protection of your personal information very seriously. If you have any questions, comments or queries about the way we are collecting or using your personal information please contact the Data Protection Officer at DSC, Tattersall House, East Parade, Harrogate, HG1 5LT or email us at info@dscca.com.

If you have a concern about the way in which we are collecting or using your personal information you may also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office directly at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.