Citizens Advice Taunton Privacy Notice

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

At times we might use or share your information without your permission. If we do, we’ll always make sure there’s a legal basis for it. This could include situations where we have to use or share your information:

• to comply with the law – for example, if a court orders us to share information. This is called ‘legal obligation’
• to protect someone’s life – for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a client was unwell at our office. This is called ‘vital interests’
• to carry out our legitimate aims and goals as a charity – for example, to create statistics for our national research. This is called ‘legitimate interests’
• for us to carry out a task where we’re meeting the aims of a public body in the public interest – for example, delivering a government or local authority service. This is called ‘public task’
• to carry out a contract we have with you – for example, if you’re an employee we might need to store your bank details so we can pay you. This is called ‘contract’
• to defend our legal rights – for example, sharing information with our legal advisors if there was a complaint that we gave the wrong advice

We handle and store your personal information in line with the law – including the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

You can check our main Citizens Advice policy for how we handle most of your personal information.

This page covers how we, as your local charity, handle your information locally in our offices.

How Citizens Advice Taunton collect your data

If you, or someone referring you, uses one of our enquiry forms on the website

If you use our online enquiry form no information is stored on our website at all.

The information on the form is sent to an advisor by email. As well as the record kept on our case management system, the email will be kept our email server for 12 months and then deleted. If you use our enquiry form you can tick a box to express your permission for you to store your data. If you are referred to us via a third party we will always discussing consent with you at our first opportunity.

If you contact us via Facebook or Twitter

We do not ask anyone to submit data via these platforms, but any information you chose to enter will be stored by them, and you should refer to their Privacy Policy (twitter.com/en/privacy | facebook.com/policy.php )

If you email us we will make every effort to ensure the security and integrity of emails on our systems. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100 per cent secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information after we’ve received it, Citizens Advice Taunton cannot ensure or guarantee the security of information when it is being transmitted.

All the other ways we collect your information are covered by our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

If you are a Pension Wise client.

Please refer to our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

What Citizens Advice Taunton ask for

To find out what information we ask for, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

How Citizens Advice Taunton use your information

To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

Working on your behalf

When you ask us to act on your behalf, for example to help you with a Universal Credit claim, we’ll need to share information with that third party. Parties we often share information with are;