GENERAL PRIVACY NOTICE

The General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) seeks to protect and enhance the rights of data subjects. V J Nathan Ltd (“V J Nathan Solicitors”)is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. V J Nathan Solicitors recognises the importance of the correct and lawful treatment of personal information, and will only use personal information as set out in this Privacy Notice. 

This Privacy Notice sets out how V J Nathan Solicitors collects and uses any information that you give us.

The expressions “we”, “us” and “our” refer to V J Nathan Ltd or V J Nathan or V J Nathan Solicitors. 

We have appointed a Privacy Officer to oversee compliance with this Privacy Notice. If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or how we handle your personal information, please write to or contact the Privacy Officer at our head office.

We may change this Privacy Notice at any time by updating this page so you should therefore check our Website from time to time to ensure you are aware of any changes. 

It is important that you read this Privacy Notice, together with any Terms of Business we may provide on specific occasions or when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such personal information. 

This Privacy Notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them. 

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us. 

Who are we? 

V J Nathan Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales under company No. 10493573. 

V J Nathan Solicitors and V J Nathan are both trading names of V J Nathan Ltd. 

V J Nathan Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under Registration No: 644313.

Its registered office is located at 220B Kingston Road, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 3RJ

In what capacity will V J Nathan Solicitors hold personal information about you? 

During the course of providing its services, V J Nathan, may compile and hold certain personal information about you for the purposes of transactional activities. 

This may include personal information about your name, address, date of birth, passport, driving licence, bank and other financial information you provide to us, including details relating to your employment and income, lenders and third parties and others with whom we communicate on your transactions. 

In providing these services, we will act as both a Data Processor and in some instances, as a Data Controller in respect of your personal information. 

How is your personal information collected? 

We use different methods to collect personal information from and about you. 

1. Directly from you: 

Typically the personal information that we collect about you will be the personal information you provide to us.

In some instances, however, it could be provided in other electronic formats, on application forms, or in other communications which may be in writing, by telephone, via the internet or by any other means. 

2. From third parties: 

We will also gather personal information from other sources, such as including but not limited to accountants, financial advisors, lenders, law firms, credit reference agencies and regulatory bodies. 

What personal information will V J Nathan Solicitors hold about you? 

Personal information means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data relating to your file, the work we carried out or where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). 

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal information about you, as follows: 

• Full name and title 
• Contact information including email addresses and postal addresses, telephone numbers and fax numbers.
• Date of birth
• NI number
• Certificates, qualifications and employment history 
• Disciplinary and regulatory investigation history
• Details of any potential conflicts of interest
• Adverse credit and negative media 
• Criminal convictions
• Identification or supporting documents (such as passport, driving license, birth certificate, utility bill etc.) 
• IP address
• Gender 
• Bank details
• Other data (eg: mortgage account information and other data in respect of your transaction)

We do not collect any special categories of personal data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). 

How will V J Nathan Solicitors use personal information held about you? 

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. 

We will use your personal data where we need to:

  (a) in order to meet our contractual obligations under our agreement with you; 

(b) where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests; or

(c) where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

We do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal information other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you. 

Please note you have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us at:

by email on: informationcompliance@vjnathan.com, or

by post to: Privacy Officer, V J Nathan, 220B Kingston Road, New Malden, Surrey KT3 3RJ 

Change of purpose 

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so. 

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law. 

Disclosure of your personal information 

V J Nathan Solicitors may share the personal information that it has about you with any relevant or authorised third party (collectively, the “Relevant Parties”). 

Your personal information may also be disclosed to the following parties: 

• Employees of the Relevant Parties;
• Affiliates of the Relevant Parties;
• Group companies of the Relevant Parties;
• Successors in title to the business of the Relevant Parties;
• Providers of IT solutions to the Relevant Parties;
• Third party consultants, contractors or other service providers who may access the personal information when providing services to the Relevant Parties (including but not limited to IT support services);
• Government bodies, law enforcement agencies, regulatory bodies, legal societies, trade associations and in response to other legal or regulatory requests from similar third parties;
• Legal advisers, auditors, contractors or other advisers auditing, assisting with or advising on any of the business purposes of the Relevant Parties.

If you give us personal information regarding another person, you are confirming they have given you permission to provide their personal information to us to be able to process their personal information and also that you have advised them that their personal information will be passed to V J Nathan. 

Will your personal information be transferred to other countries? 

We may need to share personal information with third parties in both the UK and internationally for a variety of reasons. We require third parties to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We may transfer your personal information outside the EU. If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information. 

We may transfer the personal information we collect about you to countries outside the EU in order to process your personal information on one of the grounds listed above. It is possible that the European Commission will have deemed such countries adequate. This means we can transfer your personal information to those countries as they will provide an adequate level of protection for your personal information. 

However, not all countries to which we may transfer your personal information will be deemed adequate by the European Commission. To ensure that your personal information does receive an adequate level of protection we will put in place standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission with those third parties wherever necessary. 

This ensures that your personal information is treated in a way that is consistent with and which respects the applicable laws on data protection. 

What happens if you choose not to provide us with personal information or are unable to provide us with personal information? 

If you fail to provide certain personal information when requested, we may not be able to perform the agreement we have entered into with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations. 

Therefore if you are unable or not willing to provide the required personal information this may also impact our ability to progress with your transactions and we would be entitled to end our retainer. 

What are your rights relating to the use of your personal information? 

Under the GDPR, you have certain rights in respect of the processing of your personal information, which may vary dependent on the legal basis for collection of your personal information and the uses made of this personal information. 

For all uses made of your personal information you have the right to be informed about how we use your personal information, and this notice discharges that obligation. However, further rights may apply in different circumstances, as set out below: 

• Right of access- you have a right to access a copy of the personal information that is held about you (subject to Data Protection Laws).
• Right of rectification- you have a right to correct personal information that is held about you if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten- in certain circumstances you can ask for the personal information held about you to be erased (please note our retention period set out below).
• Right to restrict processing- where certain conditions apply you have a right to restrict processing (please note this may impact our ability to provide our services to you or your law firm).
• Right to data portability- you have the right to have the personal information held about you to be transferred to another organisation, where applicable V J Nathan Solicitors will provide copies of personal information in a structured commonly used, and machine readable form.
• Right to object- you have the right to object to certain types of processing, such as marketing (please note that we will only ever use your contact information for marketing purposes where you have provided express consent).
• Right to withdraw consent- In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact informationcompliance@vjnathan.com, or by post to: Privacy Officer, V J Nathan, 220B Kingston Road, New Malden, Surrey KT3 3RJ.

In the event you wish to exercise any of these rights, please make your request in writing to V J Nathan’s Privacy Officer. 

How long will V J Nathan Solicitors retain your personal information for? 

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, insurance or reporting requirements. 

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. 

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such personal information without further notice to you. 

Security 

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. 

However the internet is not a secure medium but we are committed to ensuring that your personal information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the personal information we collect online. We will use our best efforts to ensure that no unauthorised parties have access to any of your personal information and we restrict access to non-public information about you to those individuals and entities that need to know the personal information to be able to provide products and services to you. 

How we use cookies 

Cookies may be used on our website. A cookie is a small file that is stored on your computer when you visit a website. If you visit the Website again, it is recognised as a repeat visit by means of the cookie. The cookie cannot be used to identify you on websites of third parties. The cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used, which helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve the Website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. Some personalised services on the website may not be available if you choose to disable cookies. 

Links to other websites 

Our website may contain links to enable you to visit other websites of interest more easily. However, once you have used these links to leave our Website, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and this Privacy Notice does not govern such sites. 

Further information 

In the event you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or wish to make a complaint about how your personal information is being processed by V J Nathan Solicitors you have the right to complain to the Privacy Officer, by email to: informationcompliance@vjnathan.com, or by post to: Privacy Officer, V J Nathan, 220B Kingston Road, New Malden, Surrey KT3 3RJ

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the relevant supervisory authority. The UK supervisory authority for data protection issues is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). 

Legal statement about this Privacy Statement 

This Privacy Notice is not designed to form a legally binding contract. It is a guide to the use of the Website. 

Use of any of our services constitutes acceptance by you of the Privacy Notice. If you do not wish to accept the Privacy Notice, you should not inform us in writing immediately, and we reserve the right to end our retainer.