Welcome To Bridport And District Citizens Advice

Privacy Policy

February 2025

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 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.

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 UK 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.

Our data collection procedures are the same as the national Citizens Advice policy procedures.

We need to record information about clients to help with their enquiry. We have a legitimate interest to do this. In relation to special category personal data such has health and ethnicity, we rely on ‘substantial public interest’ where this relates to the provision of advice or diversity monitoring. Further details can be found in the appendix at the bottom of this document.

What Citizens Advice Bridport and District ask for ‘To find out what information we ask for when you see an adviser, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

How Citizens Advice Bridport and District use your information ‘To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy’

Working on your behalf

When you give us authority 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.

We may need to share information with organisations such as the Department of Work and Pensions, Dorset Council, housing providers such as Magna Housing Association, utility companies and creditors in order to resolve a problem if acting on your behalf but we will ask for your authorisation first.

How Citizens Advice Bridport and District store your information

Bridport and District Citizens Advice stores information using national Citizens Advice secure case management systems. In addition, we may store information in our local IT and email systems:

· Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based systems

· Office 365 or Google Mail

· Paper based office storage systems

· Secure local digital file store

Appropriate organisational and technical measures will be used to keep personal data safe including password protection and encryption of electronic documents and secure storage of paper records. We will not retain data longer than is necessary.

How Citizens Advice Bridport and District share your information

We may share clients’ personal data with third parties, partner organisations and funders for the services we deliver. These include our Specialist Energy, Debt and Welfare Benefits Projects, Wessex Water assistance scheme project, local food banks, Shelter/National Homelessness Advice Service, National Citizens Advice Expert Advice Team and our Local Area Partnership.

We will obtain clients’ explicit written or verbal consent to do this when they consult us about a problem.

We may share anonymised statistical data and case studies with third parties such as funders for project reporting purposes.

Contact Citizens Advice Bridport and District about your information

If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact our office.

Citizens Advice Bridport and District
45 South Street
DT6 3NY
Telephone: 01308 456594
Email: advice@bridport-cab.org.uk

You can contact us to:

● find out what personal information we hold about you

● correct your information if it’s wrong, out of date or incomplete

● request we delete your information

● ask us to limit what we do with your data - for example, ask us not to share it if you haven’t asked us already

● ask us to give you a copy of the data we hold in a format you can use to transfer it to another service

● ask us stop using your information

Who’s responsible for looking after your personal information

The national Citizens Advice charity and your local Citizens Advice operate a system called Casebook to keep your personal information safe. This means they’re a ‘joint data controller’ for your personal information that’s stored in our Casebook system.

Each local Citizens Advice is an independent charity, and a member of the national Citizens Advice charity. The Citizens Advice membership agreement also requires that the use of your information complies with data protection law.

You can find out more about your data rights on the Information Commissioner’s website