Legal services privacy notice

This privacy notice sits below our top level privacy notice and is intended to provide information about how personal data may be used by the Council’s Legal Service.

Please see the main privacy notice for details on your rights and who to contact about the use of personal data.

Why do we collect data?

The Legal Service provides legal advice and assistance to the Council as a whole.

We therefore collect information to enable us to provide this service.

What legally allows us to collect your data?

Depending upon the circumstances and the type of data we collect, we rely on the following as the legal basis to collect your data:

Article 6 processing

• processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with the data
  subject or to take steps to enter into a contract;
• necessary to comply with legal obligations to which we are subject;
• necessary for our legitimate interests;

Article 9 processing

• explicit consent is given by you;
• processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or where courts are acting in their judicial capacity

Data Protection Act (2018)

paragraph 1(5) of Schedule 2 – processing is exempt if required to be
disclosed by law or in connection with legal proceedings.

What data do we collect?

The data we collect will depend upon the particular instructions that we receive from other Directorates within the Council.

We may frequently collect:

• your personal contact details;
• information to enable us to check and verify your identity to comply with our legal obligations (e.g. your date of birth, passport details);

We may sometimes collect the following:

• details of your spouse / partner / dependents and / or other family members;
• criminal records data (where permitted by law and appropriate to do so) such
• as the existence of prior criminal offences when we are dealing with criminal proceedings;
• information relating to your (or those of your family members) education / health / medical records / religious or similar beliefs / housing information / significant events or dates / family background, cultural or identity information where these directly relate to our instructions

The lists above are not exhaustive, however the data we collect will always be proportionate to our instructions.

Why do we use your data?

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

• to communicate with you;
• to provide legal advice to other Directorates within the Council;
• to undertake civil or criminal litigation (including any statutory appeals) on behalf of the Council and to prepare litigation documents;
• to undertake property transactions on behalf of the Council;
• to enter into contracts on behalf of the Council;
• to prepare formal licence or other formal documents on behalf of the Council;
• to keep records of any financial transactions where you are a party to those transactions;
• to maintain our own financial accounts and records;
• to carry out identity, credit, anti-money laundering and fraud prevention checks where required to do so by law;
• to help us manage our practice and statutory returns to meet legal and regulatory requirements imposed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and / or Law Society;
• to enable us to instruct other professional advisers and expert witnesses in
  connection with the case;
• to respond to any complaint

Sharing your data

During the course of our work we may need to disclose some information to parties outside the Council. We are likely to provide information to:

• a court or tribunal including any organisation which deals with statutory appeals, such as the Planning Inspectorate;
• HM Land Registry;
• legal counsel (i.e. barristers), Solicitors or non-legal experts where they are acting either on your behalf or on behalf of the Council;
• other public authorities or agencies;
• government departments, such as HMRC
• translation agencies (if required);
• any bank or building society or other financial institution or person who acts as a mortgagee over your property;
• any disclosure required by law, in particular in relation to the prevention of
  financial crime of terrorism.

In addition, we use case management software to track and monitor progress on our cases. This software is provided by The Access Group. The data contained in our case management software is housed in data centres within the UK which comply with the requirements of ISO27001. All data is encrypted.

We only allow our service providers to handle your data where we are satisfied that they take appropriate measures to protect your data.

We will never sell your personal data.

How long do we keep your personal data?

We will retain the information in accordance with statutory retention periods and the Council’s retention schedule.

Your rights and your personal data

Please see our main privacy notice for more details of your rights:

• to be informed
• to access your personal data
• to rectify your personal data if it is incorrect
• to restrict our processing of your personal data