Your data and privacy
Ceredigion Citizens Advice privacy policy
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
We handle and store your personal information in line with data protection law.
You can find out more about your data rights on the Information Commissioner's website.
Who's responsible for keeping your personal information safe
The national Citizens Advice charity and local Citizens Advice are both responsible for keeping your personal information safe and making sure we follow data protection law. This means we're a 'joint data controller' for your personal information.
Ceredigion Citizens Advice is an independent charity and a member of the national Citizens Advice charity.
Ceredigion Citizens Advice will record your personal information on a national computer system. Staff from a different local Citizens Advice can only access your personal information if they have a good reason - for example if you go to them for advice or call our national phone line. We have rules and controls 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.
Using Ceredigion Citizens Advice
Our Citizens Advice privacy policy will tell you most of what you need to know about what happens to your personal information.
If you’ve given your personal information to us, you should check the national privacy policy too as there might be some extra information around how your data is stored or shared.
What we do with your information when you contact us for advice
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.
What information we ask for
We'll only ask for information that's relevant to your problem. Depending on what you want help with, this might include:
- your name and contact details - so we can keep in touch with you about your case
- personal information - for example about family, work, or financial circumstances, or if you're vulnerable or at risk of harm
- details about services you get that are causing you problems - like energy or post
- details of items or services you've bought and traders you've dealt with
- information like your gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation
We occasionally ask for details about someone else like a neighbour or your partner so we can deal with an enquiry. We'll only do this if we have a legitimate interest in the information, or we need it to protect someone's life.
If you don't want to give us certain information, you don't have to. For example, if you want to stay anonymous we'll only record information about your problem and make sure you're not identified.
You can withdraw your permission for us to store your information at any time. Contact us and tell us what personal information you don't want us to store - we'll delete it.
We might ask your permission to contact you later with an online survey about your experience getting help from us. This is called the ‘Client Experience’ survey.
How we use your information
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. Data protection law lets us do this as long as we have a lawful basis. For example we have a lawful basis on which to access your data:
- 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.
Call recording
When you contact us by telephone, we record calls for quality, training and accountability purposes. Recording calls helps us monitor and improve our service, support staff and volunteers, investigate complaints, and ensure we provide accurate advice to our clients.
Call recordings are treated as confidential and are only accessible to authorised members of our team where there is a legitimate business need to do so.
Understanding people's problems
We use some information to create statistics about who we're helping and what problems are the most common. We might use the information you’ve told us and your answers to the Client Experience survey. This information is always anonymised - you can't be identified.
We share these with funders, regulators, government departments and publicly on our blogs, reports, social media and press releases. The statistics also inform our policy research, campaigns, or media work.
We might use a research company to help us analyse the information. We have an agreement with them to make sure they store data securely and follow data protection laws. We’re still responsible for keeping your personal information safe and making sure we follow data protection law. This means we're the ‘data controller' for your information.
When we share your information with other organisations
With your permission, we might share your information with other organisations so 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 quickly to another organisation for more advice or support, if relevant
- help you access certain services - for example food banks or Trading Standards
- monitor the quality of our services
Organisations we share your data with must store and use your data in line with data protection law. They'll have their own privacy policies for how they handle your information and keep it safe.
There might be specific organisations we share your information with, depending on what service you access.
We sometimes use a system called Refernet if we need to refer you to another organisation- or to receive a referral if another organisation refers you to us. If you’re referred through Refernet, your information will be stored securely on the Refernet system. We keep your information on Refernet for a year from the date you’re referred. After a year, your information is deleted.
If we're concerned about your or someone else's safety
If something you've told us makes us think you or someone you know might be at serious risk of harm, we could tell the police or social services - for example if we think you might hurt yourself or someone else.
Storing your information
Whether you get advice face to face, over the phone, by email, text, WhatsApp or Messenger, our adviser will log all your information, correspondence, and notes about your problem into our secure case management systems. 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.
Some of your information might also be kept within our secure email and IT systems.
If an adviser needs to see your documents, they might tell you how to upload copies of the documents to a secure online system. The adviser will then move the documents from the online system to our case management system.
We keep your information for 6 years. If your case has been subject to a serious complaint, insurance claim or other dispute we keep the data for 16 years.
Recordings are stored securely and handled in accordance with data protection legislation and our information security procedures. We do not sell, share or use call recordings for marketing purposes.
Our case management systems are hosted within the European Economic Area (EEA) and wherever possible, the UK. Most of our trusted partners store their data securely within the EEA in line with data protection law.
Call recordings are stored within the operating system provided by our trusted 3rd party telephony provider. The recordings are retained for 3 months, only accessed and used in line with the above usage policy. They are then securely deleted, unless they are required for an ongoing complaint, legal matter, safeguarding concern or other legitimate purpose.
There might be other places we store your information, depending on how you accessed our advice. If you are concerned about how we manage your data security, you should contact us.
Referrals
We require external organisations to obtain their client's consent before we will accept a client referral. If your data has been shared with us by referral from an external organisations, our data policy applies to your data. You will also need to refer to the referral organisation's privacy policy for information on how they use your information and keep it safe.
For detailed information about our digital referral system’s IT security, please refer to: https://www.hutfortytwo.co.uk/work/referral-system/security/
How we use cookies
When you use our website, we add cookies to your device to:
- make sure the website works well for you (e.g. remembering your preferences, stopping the cookie notice showing all the time, making our online forms work)
- find out how you’re using our website so we can improve it
By using our website, we assume you agree to us adding cookies to your device. If you want to disable, block or remove cookies, you can do this at any time.
Finding out how you use our website
We use tools called Google Analytics to help us understand how you’re using our website.
It collects information by putting cookies on your device. Analytics shares that data with us and we use it to improve our website – for example, making popular pages easier to find.
Google Analytics collects information about:
- which links you click on
- where you move the mouse or cursor across the page
- how much you scroll up and down on the page
- your browser, device and operating system
- the language you’re using
- your screen’s resolution
- the length of time you’re on our website
- your ISP and approximate ISP Location (City, Region, Country)
- how you got to our website
The data collected through cookies is all anonymous – you can’t be identified by it.
Read more about how Google Analytics uses cookies.
This cookies policy only covers www.cabceredigion.org and its subdomains. Websites we link to should have their own cookies policy.
Contact us about your information
You can contact us by any of our usual advice channels and ask us:
- what information we've stored about you
- to change or update your details
- to delete your details from our records
You can also contact the national body if you think your data may have been stored by a national Citizens Advice service or a local Citizens Advice other than Ceredigion Citizens Advice.
How to contact us
You can contact Ceredigion Citizens Advice by any of the following:
- Email - ask@cabceredigion.org
- Phone - 01239 621974 / 01970 612817
- Text or WhatsApp - 07971 802 060 (this is a message-only service, we can’t take calls on this number)
- Messenger – go to our facebook page
- Post - Ceredigion Citizens Advice, PO Box 76, Lampeter SA48 9BY.
You can contact national Citizens Advice Client Services team by:
- Phone - 03000 231 900
- Email - feedback@citizensadvice.org.uk