Privacy Policy
GDPR Privacy Notice: Your Personal Information
Purpose of This Notice
This notice describes how we collect and use personal data about you, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), the Data Protection Act 1998 and any other national implementing laws, regulations and secondary legislation, as amended or updated from time to time, in the UK (‘Data Protection Legislation’).
Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.
About us
Howard & Co Accountants LLP are an accountancy and tax advisory firm. We are registered in England and Wales as a limited liability partnership under number OC354211 and our registered office is at 6 Market Street, Birstall, West Yorkshire, WF17 9EN.
For the purpose of the Data Protection Legislation and this notice, we are the ‘data controller’. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal data about you.
How We May Collect
We obtain personal data about you, for example:
- When you request a proposal from us in respect of the services we provide;
- When you engage us to provide our services and also during the provision of those services;
- When you contact us in person, by email, telephone or post;
- From third parties and/or publicly available resources (for example, from your employer or from Companies House).
What we need
The information we hold about you may include the following:
- your personal details - including but not limited to - your name, contact details, marital status, date of birth, national insurance number and tax reference;
- information that we have collected in relation to the provision, or the proposed provision, of our services
- our correspondence and communications with you;
- information about any complaints and enquiries you make to us;
- Information we receive from other sources, such as publicly available information, information provided by your employer or other clients or information from professional colleagues.
Why we need it
We require this basic personal information in order to provide services and information to you in line with any contractual agreements that we have entered. We do not collect any personal information from you that we do not need to provide and manage this service to you.
If you refuse to provide us with certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you. Alternatively, we may be unable to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations.
What we do with it
We may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.
Situations in which we will use your personal data
We may use your personal data in order to:
- carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between you and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services);
- carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between our clients and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services) where you may be an employee, subcontractor, supplier or customer of our client;
- seek your thoughts and opinions on the services we provide;
- notify you about any changes to our services.
We may also process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in accordance with this notice, where we are legally required or permitted to do so.
We may process your personal data for the purposes of our own legitimate interests provided that those interests do not override any of your own interests, rights and freedoms which require the protection of personal data. This includes processing for marketing, business development, statistical and management purposes.
How we protect it
We recognise your rights concerning this information and take every possible measure to respect these rights and protect your personal data. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have put in place various physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information.
How long we keep your data
We will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it is collected.
When assessing what retention period is appropriate for your personal data, we take into consideration:
- the requirements of our business and the services provided;
- any statutory or legal obligations;
- the purposes for which we originally collected the personal data;
- the lawful grounds on which we based our processing;
- the types of personal data we have collected;
- the amount and categories of your personal data; and
- whether the purpose of the processing could reasonably be fulfilled by other means.
After the appropriate retention period personal data is securely destroyed.
What we would also like to do with your data
We will never sell, rent, share or disseminate any personal data to any third party, except where necessary in order to provide the services for which we have been contracted.
Your personal data may be transferred to appropriate third parties as follows:
- HMRC for the purpose of complying with statutory requirements, e.g. filing tax returns, VAT returns, CIS returns and real-time reporting
- Companies House for the purpose of statutory company reporting
- Your payroll pension provider
- To and from any of your cloud based systems such as accounting and invoicing platforms
- Mortgage companies and landlord reference check agencies but only with your consent
- Any other accountancy practice but only with your consent
We may occasionally need to transfer your personal data to one of our software providers, where the data has become damaged and needs to be repaired. In these circumstances we will always request permission from you and ensure that the data is transferred in a secure and encrypted form.
Your rights
As a citizen, you have a number of rights over your personal information, including:
- The right to access the data we hold on you.
- The right to correct or update this data.
- The right to have the data erased, once this contract is completed, and within the set retention period, unless you renew.
- The right to inform us if you feel your information is being used in an inappropriate way.
- The right to receive a file of the personal information we hold.
- If we are making automated decisions based on your information, or profiling you, you have the right to have an employee of Howard & Co Accountants LLP conduct a review.
- If you request that we cease to use your data, this may prevent us from providing the contracted services to you.
- If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact us to have the matter investigated. Please email marc@howardllp.co.uk
- If you are not satisfied with our response, or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office: https://ico.org.uk
If you would like to exercise any of the above rights please email marc@howardllp.co.uk with request made in writing.