Data Protection and Privacy Policy

INTRODUCTION

The processing of your personal  data as a client or potential client of Saint & Co is necessary for the purposes of the provision of a variety of accountancy services. This Data Protection and Privacy Policy outlines what this means in practice and explains how Saint & Co collect, store, manage and protect your personal data.

Under Data Protection Act 2018, we must have one or more bases for storing and processing your personal data. Saint and Co rely upon two bases (i) legitimate interests (ii) consent by a client or potential client. Below we set out what Saint & Co consider are its legitimate interests for processing your personal data.

WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO

We provide our clients with many services including; Accounts, Audits, Management Accounts, Bookkeeping, Payroll Services, Completion of Corporation Tax returns, Completion of personal, partnership and trust tax returns, VAT services, P11ds, cashflow forecasting and many other adhoc services.

In order to provide these services, we have several computer programmes that store or process personal data collected by our staff during the course of the work you have asked us to perform.

In the first instance we will build a profile for you on our correspondence and time recording systems based on the information provided in our new client information record and the vast majority of this information will have been obtained directly from you.

If you have requested to join our mailing list we will store the contact details you have given us.

To market our services and engage with you in a bespoke and relevant manner. We will also maintain details about the services we do and don’t provide to you along with the nature of your business, whether you are VAT registered and so on.

DATA PROTECTION OFFICER FOR THE FIRM INCL INSOLVENCY

Lindsay Farrer, Managing Partner (Carlisle office)  is the Data Protection Officer and may be contacted at dataprotection@saint.co.uk.

THE DATA WE HOLD

For money laundering purposes we gather the following information about you:

  • Your name, title, nationality, home address, gender and date of birth

In addition we will hold the following other information

  • Records of verbal or email conversations and meetings.
  • A record of the communications we have sent to you and any responses to such communications.
  • Your contact preferences, telephone number, email addresses.
  • (if applicable) Details of your shareholdings.
  • (if applicable) Details of your bank accounts and copies of bank statements and credit card statements.
  • (if applicable) Details of your directorships and other business interests.
  • (if applicable) Your family and partner/spousal details.
  • (if applicable) Details of your employer, your income levels, tax codes, national insurance numbers, Unique Taxpayer Reference, benefits received, pension details, whether you have student loan repayments and any attachment of earnings.
  • (if applicable) copies of your accounting software and other records including purchase invoices, sales invoices and payroll reports.
  • (if applicable) Details of any tax elections, historical data on your assets for capital gains purposes.
  • (if applicable) Details of company’s house access codes, charity commission access codes, accounting software passwords and other relevant passwords.
  • (if applicable) VAT registration details
  • (if applicable) any other relevant accounting information.
  • (if applicable) details of your employees including personal addresses, National Insurance numbers, passport numbers, bank details and any attachment of earnings orders.

WHAT SAINT & CO USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA FOR

Unless you have requested otherwise, the personal data you provide is used by Saint & Co to communicate with you and third parties (eg HMRC) for a variety of purposes. These may include:

  • Providing you with the services and information you have contracted with us to provide.
  • Complying with our legal duty to retain records in accordance with HMRC guidance and also as stipulated by our professional indemnity insurance.
  • Distribution of Saint & Co mailings e.g. The Brighter Business quarterly newsletter, blogs and other tax updates as appropriate. You may at any time opt-out of receiving this by request (see below “Your Right to Make Changes or to Ask Us to Stop Using Your Personal Data”)
  • Complying with our legal duty to comply with Insolvency Legislation and SIPs

WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA WITH

Saint & Co will not share your personal data with any third party unless compelled to do by the law or by a regulatory authority. Saint & Co does not traffic or sell your personal data to anyone.

DATA ANALYSIS AND UPDATING YOUR CONTACT DETAILS

To ensure that our communications are relevant to you and your interests, we may use tools that help us track whether the emails we send are opened and which links are clicked within a message. We may also track website visits and use analytical tools, such as Google Analytics, to use this information to improve our website.

We will update your personal data when we receive notification from yourself of any change in your contact details or if any information from company websites or other publicly available sources indicates the data we hold is out of date.

OTHER WEBSITES

Our website may contain links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to the personal data stored and processed by our marketing team; when you link to other websites you should read their own policy.

HOW LONG IS PERSONAL DATA HELD?

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.

Although certain documents may legally belong to you, we may destroy correspondence and other papers that we store electronically or otherwise that are more than seven years old, except documents we think may be of continuing significance. You must tell us if you wish us to keep any documents for any shorter or longer period.

If you provide us with backups of the data of your accounting software we will keep a copy of this until we have completed your accounts, at which point we will delete this data. Please note it is your responsibility to maintain your own backups of the data of your accounting software.

DATA SECURITY AND STORAGE

We have appropriate technical and organisational security policies and procedures in place to protect personal data and information from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction.

Additionally we aim to ensure that the access to your personal data is limited to those who need to access it. All our employees are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information.

YOUR RIGHT TO MAKE CHANGES OR TO ASK US TO STOP USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA

You are in control of your personal data and have the right to opt-out of any or all specific communication types at any point. You also have the right to request copies of the personal data held about you. To change your preferences or request data held about you, please contact us via: dataprotection@saint.co.uk

IF YOU HAVE A CONCERN ABOUT HOW YOUR PERSONAL DATA IS BEING HANDLED

You can contact the Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@saint.co.uk . In addition, you can raise any concerns directly with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) here: https://ico.org.uk/concerns.

CHANGES TO THE DATA PROTECTION AND PRIVACY POLICY

In the interest of being transparent we may amend this Data Protection and Privacy Policy from time to time. Any significant changes to this Policy or to the way we treat your data will be communicated via our website.

JOB APPLICANT PRIVACY POLICY

As part of any recruitment process, Saint & Co collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants.  We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use the data and to meeting our data protection obligations.  Read more here

FURTHER INFORMATION

If you have any questions which you feel have not been answered by this Data Protection and Privacy Policy, please do not hesitate to contact the Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@saint.co.uk or by post to The Data Protection Officer, Saint & Co, Wavell Drive, Rosehill Industrial Estate, Carlisle CA1 2SA.

Updated April 2024