At Advice Nottingham 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 commercial organisations
- 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
How Advice Nottingham collect’s your data
Our service collects and retains your information as a client, by asking you to either:
- sign a paper permissions and consent form
- tick a box online
- give agreement over the telephone
What Advice Nottingham ask for
We’ll only ask for information that’s relevant to your problem. Depending on what you want help with, this might include:
- your name and contact details – so we can keep in touch with you about your case
- personal information – for example about family, work, or financial circumstances
- details about services you get that are causing you problems
- details of items or services you’ve bought, and traders you’ve dealt with
- information like your gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation
How Advice Nottingham use your information
The main reason we ask for your information is to help solve your problem. We only access your information for other reasons if we really need to – for example:
- for training and quality purposes
- to investigate complaints
- to get feedback from you about our services
- to help us improve our services
Working on your behalf
When you give us authority to act on your behalf we may need to share information with relevant third party organisations. For example, when helping you with council tax issues we may need to share information with Nottingham City Council, Rushcliffe Borough Council or Gedling Borough Council (depending on where you live), or when helping you with issues regarding your benefits we may need to share information with the DWP.
How Advice Nottingham store your information
We store your information electronically on our case recording system, and we also keep paper copies relating to your enquiry if it is absolutely necessary.
How Advice Nottingham share your information
We only share information with relevant organisations if we have received your consent to do so.
Contact Advice Nottingham about your information
If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact our office. 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