Citizens Advice East End Privacy Policy

Policy last reviewed 11 February 2025

At Citizens Advice East End 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.

This privacy policy explains how we use your information and what your rights are. We handle and store your personal information in line with data protection law and our confidentiality policy. Here we tell you more about how we use your information in more detail.

You have a number of rights regarding your personal information:

the right to be informed about how we will use your personal data
the right to access a copy of any personal data we hold about you
the right to have personal data rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete
the right to request the deletion or removal of personal data
the rights to restrict and object to processing of personal data
the right to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes
rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
the right to withdraw your consent for the processing of your personal data
the right to lodge a complaint with us and/or the Information Commissioner’s Office

The main Citizens Advice privacy policy explains how we handle your personal information in most cases.

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
to protect someone’s life – for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a client was unwell at our office
to carry out our legitimate aims and goals as a charity – for example, to create statistics for our national research
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
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
to defend our legal rights – for example, sharing information with our legal advisers if there was a complaint that we gave the wrong advice
to protect our name and reputation – for example to provide our side of a story reported in the press

We handle and store your personal information in line with the law – including the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Our network

Citizens Advice is a membership organisation made up of the national Citizens Advice charity and many local offices across England and Wales, including Citizens Advice East End. Citizens Advice East End is an independent charity and a member of the national Citizens Advice charity.

All members of the Citizens Advice network are responsible for keeping your personal information safe and making sure data protection law is followed.

Members of the network also run some jointly designed services and use some of the same systems to process your personal data. In these instances we are joint data controllers for these activities.

Jointly controlled data

All offices in the Citizens Advice network use some joint systems to carry out our activities. These include joint case management systems, telephony platforms and more.

Staff from a different local Citizens Advice can only access your personal information in a joint system if they have a good reason. For example when:

you go to a different office to seek advice
more than one office is working together in partnership
they need to investigate a complaint or incident

We have rules and controls in place to stop people accessing or using your information when they shouldn’t.

Tell an adviser if you’re worried about your details being on a national system. We’ll work with you to take extra steps to protect your information – for example by recording your problem without using your name. National Citizens Advice has a privacy notice available on their website that covers general advice and nationally managed systems, including our case management systems. This policy covers the processing we carry out in our office too.

How we use your data for advice

This section covers how we use your data to provide you with advice. For general advice and nationally funded advice programmes please see the national Citizens Advice privacy notice.

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.

We handle and store your personal information in line with data protection law.

In addition, some of our partners, with your consent, may send your information to us so we can advise you. This process is known as “referral”. Our referral partners are:

Skinners Academy
Shoreditch Park School
St Scholastica’s School
Genesis Housing Association
L&Q Housing Association
Manor Park Surgery
Three Colts Lane Community Mental Health Trust

We have a data sharing agreement with each of our referral partners which sets out what information they can provide us about your case, and how that information should be shared and protected.

What information we ask for

See our national Citizens Advice privacy policy to find out what information we ask for.

How we use your information

See our national Citizens Advice privacy policy to find out how we use your information.

Our confidentiality policy

At Citizens Advice East End we have a confidentiality policy which states that anything you tell us as part of advice will not be shared outside of the Citizens Advice network unless you provide your permission for us to do so.

There are some exceptions to this such as needing to share:

to prevent an immediate risk of harm to an individual
in select circumstances if it is in the best interests of the client
where we are compelled to do so by law (eg a court order or meeting statutory disclosures)
where there is an overriding public interest such as to prevent harm against someone or to investigate a crime
to defend against a complaint or legal claim
to protect our name and reputation for example to provide our side of a story reported in the press

Who we share your information with

When you give us authority to act on your behalf, for example to help you with a Universal Credit claim or to request a Food Bank voucher, fuel voucher, or support through the Household Support Scheme, we’ll need to share information with that third party.

When we act on your behalf, we may share information with:

National government bodies, like the Department of Work and Pensions
Tribunals and courts, like employment tribunals
Your local authority: London Borough of Hackney, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London Borough of Newham
Food Banks such as the Trussell Trust
Voucher providers such as Charis or the Fuel Bank Foundation
Charities that award small grants for household items, such as the Hackney Parochial Charities
Your housing association, such as Southern Housing Group, L&Q, Genesis
Your creditors
Solicitors acting on your behalf pro-bono (without charging a fee), such as Chris Solicitors, Edwards Duthie Solicitors, Wilson O and Co Solicitors

We may share information among our three offices in London – Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets – when you contact one office but we can better help you at another office.

We are part of a GLA-funded advice project and we may refer your case to one of the partners on this project. We will ask for your permission before we do so.

Our lawful basis for using your information

When we use your personal information, we must have a lawful basis to do so. We must have a lawful basis for processing personal data, and a lawful basis for processing special category or criminal offence data.

The special category data we may process in relation to helping you with your problem could include

personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin
personal data revealing political opinions
personal data revealing religious or philosophical beliefs
personal data revealing trade union membership
data concerning health
data concerning your sex life
data concerning your sexual orientation

For the purpose of providing advice, information and guidance, where processing is not based on any public function, our basis for processing personal information is legitimate interests. We have carried out a Legitimate Interests Assessment for this processing.

For the purpose of providing advice, information and guidance, our basis for processing special category personal data is explicit consent. This means we will always ask you to agree to us processing this data.

How we store your information

If you are a client of Citizens Advice East End

The national Citizens Advice charity and Citizens Advice East End operate a system called Casebook to record information relating to the advice we give you. You can find out more about how Citizens Advice handles your information.

Citizens Advice East End uses Microsoft Office 365 for services such as email and IP telephony, and productivity tools such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Excel. By providing this service, Microsoft is working as our data processor. You can find out more about how Microsoft carries out that role.

If you tell us that you want to receive information by text message, Citizens Advice East End may use VoodooSMS to send you text messages. By providing this service, VoodooSMS is working as our data processor. You can find out more about how VoodooSMS carries out that role.

If you volunteer with or are an employee of Citizens Advice East End

If you are a member of paid staff or a volunteer at Citizens Advice East End, you can find out more about how we store and manage your personal data.

With your explicit consent, we may share information with the funders and partners below. We will tell you what information we are sharing, and ask for your explicit consent before sharing information. If you don’t want your information shared in this way, tell the adviser you speak to.

Charis Grants
Fuel Bank Foundation
Good Things Foundation
Homerton Hospital
London Borough of Hackney
London Borough of Newham
London Borough of Tower Hamlets
Manor Park Surgery
Southern Housing Group
Trussell Trust
Vicarage Lane Health Centre
We Are Digital (acting for L&Q)

To help you, we may refer you to one of the service providers listed below. We will tell you what information we are sharing, and ask for your explicit consent before sharing information. If you don’t want your information shared in this way, tell the adviser you speak to.

AgeUK East London
Chris Solicitors
City & Hackney Mind
deafPLUS
DV Solicitors
Fair Finance
Family Action
Hackney Community Law Centre
Hackney Marsh Partnership
Mile End Hospital
Owen Stevens Solicitors
Praxis
Relate
Shelter
Wilson O Solicitors

With your explicit consent, we may refer you to one of our partners in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets through the Mayor’s Community Grants Programme (MCGP). Referrals may take place through the THCAN Referral Portal. You can review the privacy notice online. Our LCF partners are:

Account3 Ltd
AgeUK East London
Bromley by Bow Centre
deafPLUS
Island Advice Centre
Legal Advice Centre
Limehouse Project
Praxis Community Projects
St Peter’s Bengali Association
Tower Hamlets Law Centre
Toynbee Hall
Women’s Inclusive Team (WIT)

We work in partnership with the housing associations below to help you with debt and housing-related issues. We will tell you what information we are sharing, and ask for your explicit consent before sharing information. If you don’t want your information shared in this way, tell the adviser you speak to.

Notting Hill Genesis
Southern Housing Group
London & Quadrant (L&Q)

Using our website

Our web-hosting company, GoDaddy, and Google Analytics, a service which helps us understand how our website is used, both have the facility to monitor and record connections to and from the Citizens Advice East End website. The monitoring data that our web-hosting company collects includes browser type, domain name visited, traffic volumes, time and date of access and IP address information. Google Analytics collects information about your engagement with our website, including your browser type, whether you are using a mobile or desktop device, when you accessed our site, and what pages you visited, and IP address information.

When you use our website, we collect your information in the following ways:

We use data called ‘cookies’ to get information about how you’re using our website – for example, what pages you click on and what device you’re using. You can find out how we collect and use cookies when you browse our website.
If you complete a form on our website, for example, if you apply to volunteer with us, the data is stored in Microsoft’s Office 365 product. By providing this service, Microsoft is working as our data processor. You can find out more about how Microsoft carries out that role.

Applying to volunteer with us

When you enter information on our website, we ask for your contact details including name, email and phone number. This is so we can respond to you. We also ask you to provide information in support of your application to volunteer with us.

We get your permission to collect your information by asking you to tick a box to give your consent.

We don’t share your personal information and use it only for our internal recruitment process. We retain volunteer applications for six months.

Contact us about your information

If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact our offices.

Contact our administration line on: 020 3855 4590‬, Monday to Friday 09:30 to 17:00.

You can also email: [email protected].

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.

Who’s responsible for looking after your personal information

The national Citizens Advice charity and your local Citizens Advice, Citizens Advice East End, 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, including East End 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.

Changes to this policy

27 September 2024: Grammar corrections. Reviewed partner lists.

23 September 2024: Updated to make minor corrections and to align with National Citizens Advice recommendations.

13 March 2023: Updated partners we work with, and examples of when we share information. Provided a direct link to Citizens Advice privacy policy when referring to Casebook. Separated service user and employee/volunteer policies.

25 October 2023: Removed completed projects. Added information about meeting minutes and business registrations. Added information about device management.

18 August 2023: Revised text to clarify usage of VoodooSMS system. Minor corrections. Updated links to Citizens Advice privacy policy.

8 February 2022: Revised text of policy. Updated information about partners. Added link to Moorepay’s privacy policy. Updated contact details. Modernised page layout.

4 July 2021: Revised information about partners we share information with. Updated link to Microsoft’s product terms.

27 April 2020: Revised contact details in response to Covid-19 remote working. Revised list of partners we share information with. Minor corrections to spelling and grammar.

25 May 2018: Made clear that clients can tell adviser that they do not want information shared with partners. Corrected contact details.

24 May 2018: Added extra details about data sharing that affects our employees and listed funders, partner service providers, and housing associations separately under “How Citizens Advice East End shares your information”.

23 May 2018: First publication on-line.