Privacy & Cookie Policy
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
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 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.
How Citizens Advice Barnet collects your data
When you contact us for advice or information, we ask for your consent to collect your personal data. If you contact us face to face, this will be through completing and signing our consent form. If it is over the phone, we will ask for your express verbal consent. If you contact us for advice by e-mail, we will ask you to electronically tick a box which allows us to record your personal data.
What Citizens Advice Barnet ask for
To find out what information we ask for, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy
How Citizens Advice Barnet 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 will only share information with your agreement. We commonly share information with Barnet Council housing and revenue and benefits departments and the Department for Work and Pensions in order to act on your behalf.
How Citizens Advice Barnet store your information
We store your information locally on a secure and encrypted server. Where we hold paper information we keep this locked in secure storage cabinets.
How Citizens Advice Barnet share your information
When we share your information with third parties, such as solicitors or other organisations we have referred you to, we transmit this information by secure, encrypted and password-protected email.
Contact Citizens Advice Barnet about your information
If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact our office.
Write to: Citizens Advice Barnet, 40-44 Church End, Hendon NW4 4JT
Email: hub@barnetcab.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 to 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.
Cookies
We use cookies* on this website to:
- track aspects of user visits, including the length of a user’s visit, their browser, geographic location and the use of the search facility on this website
- remember users selected contrast and/or text resizing style preferences for this website
- record a user’s video preferences for our YouTube videos viewed on this website.
Cookie name, purpose and expiry details
Cookie name | Purpose | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| __utma | Used to determine unique visitors to this site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure.† | 2 years from set/update |
| __utmb | Used to establish and continue a user session with this site.† | 30 minutes from set/update |
| __utmc | Used to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user.† | At end of session |
| __utmz | Stores the type of referral used by a visitor to reach this site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within this site. The cookie is updated with each page view to this site.† | 6 months from set/update |
| citaContrast | Stores user’s colour scheme preference. | 1 year |
| citaStyleJS | Stores user’s text size preference. | 1 year |
| eprivacy | Stops the banner message about cookies showing on every page. It is only shown on the first three pages visited, or until it is closed. | 1 year |
| NID | Google cookie typically written to the browser upon the loading of Google Plus One social media buttons. | At end of session |
| PREF | Google cookie typically written to the browser upon the loading of Google Plus One social media buttons. | At end of session |
| testSessionCookie | Stores user’s login session | 1 year |
*cookie – a bit of information kept on a user’s computer.
† For more information: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html
For more on how cookies work and can be managed: www.allaboutcookies.org