Privacy Policy, Cookies & Complaints Procedure

Alwena Jones & Bright takes the protection of your privacy very seriously. We will only use your personal information to deliver the products and services you have requested from us, and to meet our legal responsibilities.

Privacy policy

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you engage us to deliver our [products and/or] services and/or when you use our website, for example, when you contact us about our [products and/or] services.

What type of information do we collect from you?

The personal information we collect from you will vary depending on which services you engage us to deliver. The personal information we collect might include your name, address, telephone number, email address, your National Insurance number, bank account details, your IP address, which pages you may have visited on our website and when you accessed them.

How is your information used?

In general terms, and depending on which services you engage us to deliver, as part of providing our agreed services we may use your information to:

• contact you by post, email or telephone

• verify your identity where this is required

• understand your needs and how they may be met

• maintain our records in accordance with applicable legal and regulatory obligations

• process financial transactions

• prevent and detect crime, fraud or corruption

We are required by legislation, other regulatory requirements and our insurers to retain your data where we have ceased to act for you. The period of retention required varies with the applicable legislation but is typically five or six years. To ensure compliance with all such requirements it is the policy of the firm to retain all data for a period of six years from the end of the period concerned.

Who has access to your information?

• We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

• We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

• Any staff with access to your information have a duty of confidentiality under the ethical standards that this firm is required to follow.

Third party service providers working on our behalf

We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf, for example to process payroll or basic bookkeeping. However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own purposes.

Please be assured that we will not release your information to third parties unless you have requested that we do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention and detection of crime, fraud or corruption.

How you can access and update your information

Keeping your information up to date and accurate is important to us. We commit to regularly review and correct where necessary, the information that we hold about you. If any of your information changes, please email or write to us, or call us using the ‘Contact information’ noted below.

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information Alwena Jones & Bright holds about you.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

Whilst we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk.

Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given, or where you have chosen, a password which enables you to access information, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Your data will usually be processed in our offices in the UK. However, to allow us to operate efficient digital processes, we sometimes need to store information in servers located outside the UK, but within the European Economic Area (EEA). We take the security of your data seriously and so all our systems have appropriate security in place that complies with all applicable legislative and regulatory requirements.

Your choices

We may occasionally contact you by post / email / telephone with details of any changes in legal and regulatory requirements or other developments that may be relevant to your affairs and, where applicable, how we may assist you further. If you do not wish to receive such information from us, please let us know by contacting us as indicated under ‘Contact Information’ below.

Cookies

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

We use the Clicky Analytics service to see how well our website is performing and enable us to improve our website services. They state:

“We value the privacy of visitors to web sites monitored by our service. By default, we do not log any personal data, other than a tracking cookie containing a randomly generated Unique ID (“UID”); IP addresses are anonymized, and “Do Not Track” headers and global opt out cookies are honoured.”

Your rights

Access to your information: You have the right to request a copy of the personal information about you that we hold.

Correcting your information: We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date and you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.

Deletion of your information: You have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:
you consider that we no longer require the information for the purposes for which it was obtained you have validly objected to our use of your personal information – see ‘Objecting to how we may use your information’ below or use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations we are using your information with your consent and you have withdrawn your consent – see ‘withdrawing consent to use your information’ below.

Restricting how we may use your information: In some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information about you that we hold or assessing the validity of any objection you have made to our use of your information. The right might also apply where there is no longer a basis for using your personal information but you do not want us to delete the data. Where this right is validly exercised, we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

Objecting to how we may use your information: Where we use your personal information to perform tasks carried out in the public interest then, if you ask us to, we will stop using that personal information unless there are overriding legitimate grounds to continue.

Withdrawing consent to use your information: Where we use your personal information with your consent you may withdraw that consent at any time and we will stop using your personal information for the purpose(s) for which consent was given.

Please contact us if you wish to exercise any of these rights.

Complaints Procedure

We want to give you the best possible service. However, if at any point you are unhappy or concerned about any aspect of the service that we have provided, then you should inform us immediately so that we can do our best to resolve the problem. Making a complaint will not affect how we handle your case.

In accordance with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) we have a procedure for handling complaints in relation to the legal services we provide.

Initial Steps

1.    Reporting a Complaint: If you have a concern or complaint, we request that you initially bring it to the attention of the fee earner who is handling your case. In most cases, a discussion can resolve the issue immediately.

2.    Formal Complaint: If you are not satisfied with the initial response, please contact Hannah Dobson or Andre Bright who are responsible for ensuring complaints are dealt with promptly and effectively.

Contact details:

Address: Jubilee Buildings, Smithfield Street, Dolgellau, LL40 1AA

Email: hdobson@alwenajonesbright.co.uk (Hannah Dobson) or abright@alwenajonesbright.co.uk (Andre Bright)

Phone:  01341 423687 / 01341 281108

Acknowledgment and Investigation

Acknowledgment: We will acknowledge your written complaint within five working days of receipt. This acknowledgment will include the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint.

Investigation: Your complaint will be thoroughly investigated, and a full review of your file will be conducted.

The person investigating the complaint will speak to the member(s) of staff involved, may ask for additional details from you, and may also ask to have a meeting with you.

Timeframe: We aim to provide a full response within 28 days. If this is not possible due to the complexity of the matter or other extenuating circumstances, we will notify you with an updated timeline.

Response and Resolution

Formal Response: We will send you a detailed written response to your complaint, outlining our findings and the actions we will take to resolve the issue.

Further Steps: If you are not satisfied with our response, you can request a review by another Principal within the firm. This will be completed within 14 days.

We shall endeavour to resolve all formal complaints within 8 weeks from the receipt of your formal complaint.

External Bodies

1.    Legal Ombudsman: If you are still not satisfied after the final response from our firm, you have the right to refer the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman. Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within six months of our final response to your complaint. If you do not refer your complaint in time, the Ombudsman will only be able to consider your complaint in very limited circumstances.

In addition, your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must be:

·   No more than one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about; or

·   No more than one year from the date when you should reasonably have known that there was cause for complaint.

The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted at:

Address: PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ

Phone: 0300 555 0333

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

2.    Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA): In some cases, you may also have the right to complain to the SRA, the professional body that regulates our firm.

You can visit their website to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Record-Keeping:

All complaints and steps taken in their resolution will be recorded and filed securely.

Review:

This procedure will be reviewed annually to ensure its effectiveness. By following this procedure, Alwena Jones and Bright aims to resolve any complaints to your satisfaction. If we change the contents of this policy, those changes will become effective the moment we publish them on our website.

Further Help

If you require any further information or assistance in relation to the policy, please do contact us using the contact information noted above.

We seek to resolve directly all complaints about how we handle your personal information but you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone – 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745
Website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns