Winston Solicitors privacy policy

Winston Solicitors (“We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By visiting www.winstonsolicitors.co.uk you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) the data controller is Winston Solicitors (UK) Limited (Company Number 12814390) of 112 Street Lane, Leeds LS8 2AL.

Information we collect from you

We will collect and process the following data about you:

Information you give us.

This is information about you that you give us by filling in forms on our site www.winstonsolicitors.co.uk or any other site managed or controlled by Winston Solicitors (our site) or by corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise. It includes information you provide when you search for a service, search for general information about us, make an enquiry via our site, enter a competition, promotion or survey or subscribe to our newsletter and when you report a problem with our site. The information you give us may include your name, address, other information about your property, e-mail address and phone number, financial and credit card information.

Information we collect about you.

With regard to each of your visits to our site we will automatically collect the following information:

  • technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform;
  • information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL), clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page, and any phone number used to call our customer service number. See our cookies policy for more information about this and the Log Data and other technical information we collect.

Information we receive from other sources.

We work with third parties including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, communication providers, marketing providers, analytics providers, search information providers and credit reference agencies. We will notify you when we receive information about you from them and the purposes for which we intend to use that information if we intend to use that information other than to carry out our obligations arising from any contract entered into between you and us.   
In order to confirm your identity, we may supply some of your personal information to third parties to process Identity Verification and Anti-Money Laundering checks such as credit risk and affordability checking, fraud prevention, anti-money laundering, identity verification and tracing.

Our obligations of confidentiality to our clients under the Solicitors Code of Conduct are not affected or prejudiced by GDPR or anything in this privacy policy.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our cookies policy. A list of links to third-party privacy policies can be found on the cookies policy page, detailing how any third party services may use your information.

Click here to view our cookie policy.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

  • Information you give to us, whether on-line or off-line.   
    We will use this information:
    • to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information and services that you request from us;
    • to provide you with information about other services we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about;
    • we will only contact you by electronic means (e-mail or SMS) with information about services similar to those which were the subject of a previous provision of services to you.;
    • to notify you about changes to our service;
    • to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
  • Information we collect about you.   
    We will use this information:
    • to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
    • to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
    • as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
    • to measure or understand the effectiveness of our advertising and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
    • to make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our site about goods or services that may interest you or them.
  • Information we receive from other sources.   
    We will combine this information with information you give to us and information we collect about you. We will use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above (depending on the types of information we receive) and to carry out our obligations arising from any contract entered into between you and us.

Disclosure of your information

You agree that we have the right to share your personal information with:

  • Any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006 or any business with whom we are in partnership.
  • Selected third parties including:
    • business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with you
    • our marketing providers and website agency to help our marketing providers reach the kind of audience we want to target;
    • analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site. For more information about this, see our cookies policy;
    • credit reference agencies for the purpose of assessing your credit score where this is a condition of us entering into a contract with you.

We will disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets who are also solicitors under obligations of confidentiality to us.
  • If Winston Solicitors or any subsidiary or holding company of Winston Solicitors or substantially all of its or their assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its clients will be one of the transferred assets if those clients consent to such transfer of personal data.
  • In connection with any audit of our accounts or in connection with obtaining legal or other professional advice from advisers who are under obligations of confidentiality to us.
  • If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or terms and conditions of supply and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Winston Solicitors, our clients, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection, compliance with money laundering rules and credit risk reduction.

Third Party Contractors and other Controllers

  • As mentioned above, we may appoint sub-contractor data processors as required to deliver the Services, such as, without limitation, document processing and translation services, confidential waste disposal, IT systems or software providers, IT Support service providers, document and information storage providers, who will process personal information on our behalf and at our direction. We conduct an appropriate level of due diligence and put in place contractual documentation in relation to any sub-contractor to ensure that they process personal information appropriately and according to our legal and regulatory obligations.
  • Further, we may appoint external data controllers where necessary to deliver the Services (for example, but without limitation, accountants, barristers or other third party experts including but without limitation Winston Solicitors (UK) Limited firms or entities). When doing so we will comply with our legal and regulatory obligations in relation to the personal information, including but without limitation, putting appropriate safeguards in place.
  • Our Case Management provider is In Touch and in providing our Case Management System In Touch may have limited access to your data as a consequence of the provision of services to us. We have appropriate contractual provisions in place to ensure that In Touch do not otherwise disclose or use any such data.
  • Telephone conversations to and from Winston Solicitors may be recorded. The caller consents to such recording taking place and any recording or transcript of that recording being admissible as evidence in any suit, action or proceeding relating to the Agreement or a Support Document.

Storage of your personal data

All information you provide to us is stored and processed on our secure servers provided by our service providers in the UK

We reserve the right to transfer the data that we collect from you or about you to be stored at a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA") where it will also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy and the GDPR.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

In order to comply with our tax obligations and our contractual obligations to our insurers we may retain some or all of the personal data we hold about you for up to seven years.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes.

You also have the right to

  • access the data we hold about you,
  • for any data we hold about you to be rectified,
  • in some circumstances for any data we hold about you to be erased,
  • to request that we limit the way in which we process the data we hold about you,
  • require us to transfer any data we hold about you to you.

You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can also exercise this right or any of your other rights at any time by contacting The Practice Manager, Winston Solicitors, 112 Street Lane, Leeds, LS8 2AL or @email.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to other websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

For further information on our preferred suppliers’ use of your personal information, please refer to their privacy policies.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

The information commissioner

Guidance about the GDPR and the rules about the collection, storage and use of personal data is provided on the website of the Information Commissioner at ico.org.uk who you can contact if you have any complaints about our website or our use of your personal data if we have not first been able to resolve any such complaint.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to The Practice Manager, Winston Solicitors of 112 Street Lane, Leeds, LS8 2AL or @email.

Cookie Policy

Winston Solicitors (UK) Limited may collate and use information about visitors to this website or any other site managed or controlled by Winston Solicitors (UK) Limited. Some of this information will include the use of cookies. Cookies, also known as browser cookies or tracking cookies, are small often encrypted text files located in browser directories. They are used by web developers to help users navigate their websites efficiently and perform certain functions. The cookies in use on these websites owned and managed by Winston Solicitors (UK) Limited gather information and statistics about visitors. Cookies make it easier for you to access our content pages and to log on to any user accounts which we create for you. We do not use or store personal data without express permission and use cookie related data on a collective basis to analyse traffic and website performance. We use this information to help us improve our websites.

You can change the settings on your web browser to refuse cookies, or you can enable the browser to see your consent for each cookie it detects. You can find out how to do this by clicking “help” on your browser menu.

We use a number of different cookies on our site. If you do not know what cookies are, or how to control or delete them, then we recommend you visit https://www.aboutcookies.org for detailed guidance.

The list below describe the cookies we use on this site and what we use them for. Currently we operate an ‘implied consent’ policy which means that we assume you are happy with this usage. If you are not happy, then you should either not use this site, or you should delete the cookies having visited the site, or you should browse the site using your browser’s anonymous usage setting (called “Incognito” in Chrome, “InPrivate” for Internet Explorer, “Private Browsing” in Firefox and Safari etc.)

First party cookies

These are cookies that are set by this website directly.

Drupal: Our website runs the popular Drupal CMS and cookies are used to store basic data on your interactions with Drupal, and whether you have logged into Drupal. We use a session cookie to remember your log-in for you if you are a registered user and we deem these as being strictly necessary to the working of the website. If these are disabled then various functionality on the site will be broken.

More information on session cookies and what they are used for at https://www.cookieyes.com/session-cookies/#What_are_s_0

Third party cookies

These are cookies set on your machine by external websites whose services are used on this site. 

We may use Google, Google Analytics, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Poptin, Tawk and Hotjar cookies, ads, and pixels on our website. Your interactions with these features will be governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it. The privacy policies of these other sites may be significantly different from this Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites and cannot guarantee the security of any of your Personal Information collected there.

For more information and available opt-out settings, please refer to their respective pages below:

Certain browsers like Chrome, Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari offer a “Do Not Track” or “DNT” option that sends a signal to websites visited by the user about the user’s browser DNT preference setting. Please click on each browser name or go directly to the provider’s webpages to obtain more information on the availability of such settings. We do not currently honor Do Not Track browser settings or signals. For information about Do Not Track, please visit: allaboutdnt.com/.

You should check the respective policies of each of these sites to see how exactly they use your information and to find out how to opt out, or delete, such information.