Privacy Policy

Who are we?

O’Connors Legal Services Limited, The Plaza, 100 Old Hall Street, Liverpool, L3 9QJ, collects, uses and is responsible for personal information about you. When we do this we are the ‘controller’ of this information for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation and other applicable data protection laws.

Our Data Protection Officer (DPO) is Joshua Bates.

What do we do with your information?

Information collected by us

Through our website and/or when carrying out legal activities relating to individuals with business interests we may collect, use and store the following personal information that you provide to us:

• Name
• Address
• Telephone Number
• Date of Birth
• National Insurance Number
• Email address
• Identification documents
• Credit check
• KYC Questionnaire responses

We collect the following information about you from other sources:

• Personal data required to enable us to provide you with legal services and/or communications

Your personal data

We use your personal information for the following purposes:

• To enable us to provide you with requested legal services
• To verify the identity of our Client
• To contact you in relation to your query and/or potential instruction(s)

Cookies

We may use 'cookies' to collect aggregate information. A cookie is a small piece of information sent by our web server to your web browser, which enables us to record anonymous details and allows you to move around the website faster. We may use cookies for a number of purposes, for instance to enable us to simplify a logging on process, to help ensure the security and authenticity of users and to enable traffic monitoring. You can find out more about the way cookies work on http://www.cookiecentral.com. Most browsers allow you to turn off the cookie function. If you want to know how to do this, please look at the help menu on your browser. However, if you turn off the cookie function your use of the website may be impaired.

Whether information has to be provided by you, and why

This personal information outlined above must be provided by you to us, to enable us to carry out your instructions. When we collect information from you, we will inform you whether you are required to provide this information to us.

Legal reasons we collect and use your personal data

We rely on the following legal bases for processing your information:

• Necessary for the performance of a contract
• Necessary for compliance with a legal obligation
• Legitimate interests (to inform you about other services we provide that may be of interest to you)

Who will we share your personal information with?

We have relationships with a number of third parties that we may share your personal data with. For a list of these third parties please contact our DPO at the above address. This data sharing enables us to ensure that you receive the required professional service from us and for us to comply with our obligations under current anti-money laundering legislation.

Where it is necessary to conduct an ID verification check we will share personal information with the relevant outsource partner. Our present provider of ID verification is Smartcredit Limited (t/a Smartsearch), who will undertake ID verification searches with various third party reference agencies including but not limited to: (i) TransUnion (ii) Dow Jones (iii) Equifax and (iv) Experian. For copies of their Privacy Notices please contact our DPO at the above address.

We reserve the right to alter our outsource partner(s) from time to time in order for us to comply with our obligations.

We will share personal information with law enforcement agencies if required by applicable law.

We will not share your personal information with any other third parties without your consent.

Transfer of your information outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

It may be necessary to transfer your personal information outside the EEA or to an international organisation in order to provide some of our legal services to you. If this is necessary the identity of any third countries that your personal data may be transferred to will be made known to you. Any transfer will be subject to appropriate safeguards as permitted under the UK and/or EU General Data Protection Regulation. These safeguards are designed to protect your privacy rights and provide you with remedies in the unlikely event that your personal information is misused. You are entitled to obtain a copy of the safeguards and they can be made available to you along with any further information from our DPO.

How long will we store your personal data?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as is reasonably required for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements; this will enable us to answer any client care queries you may have at a later date.

Your Rights

Under the latest data protection laws, you have a number of important rights that you can exercise free of charge. In summary, these rights are:

• Transparency over how we use your personal data and fair processing of your information;
• Access to your personal information and other supplementary information;
• Require us to correct any mistakes or complete missing information we hold on you;
• Require us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances;
• Receive a copy of the personal information you have provided to us or have this information be sent to a third party, this will be provided to you or the third party in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format;
• Object at any time to processing of your personal information for direct marketing;
• Object in certain other situations to the continued processing of your personal information;
• Restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances;
• Request not to be subject to automated decision making which produce legal effects that concern you or affect you in a significantly similar way.

If you want more information about your rights under data protection law please see the Guidance from the Information Commissioners Office on Individual's rights under the GDPR.

If you want to exercise any of these rights, please:

• Email, call, or write to our DPO at the above address;
• Provide other information so that we can identify you. We may need to contact you to request further information to verify your identity;
• Let us have proof of your identity and address;
• State the right or rights that you wish to exercise.

We will respond to you within one month from when we receive your request. Please note if you wish to unsubscribe from any email you can do so by following the instructions set out in the email.

How to make a complaint?

We hope that you are happy with our service and that our DPO can resolve any issues or complaints that arise. Please get in touch if you have any concerns (about your personal data see ‘Get in touch’ below).

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular, in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where the alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The UK supervisory authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office who can be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.

Our Security

If you require further information about how we protect your data please contact our DPO at the above address.

Future Processing

We do not intend to process your personal information for any reason other than stated within this privacy notice. If this changes we will inform you by a communication method agreed with you when we took your initial instructions.

Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy was last updated on 21 August 2024.

We constantly review our internal privacy practices and may change this policy from time to time. When we do we will inform you by an agreed communication method.

Get in touch

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you, please contact our DPO.

The best way to reach us is to call us on 0151 906 1000 or alternatively, please email us at enquiries@oconnors.law

Alternative formats

If it would be helpful to have this notice provided in another format (for example: in another language, audio, braille) please contact us (see ‘Get in touch’ above).