Citizens Advice East End Privacy Policy

Policy last reviewed 27 September 2024

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. 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.

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 collect and use the details you give us so we can help you. We have a ‘legitimate interest’ to do this under data protection law. This means it lets us carry out our aims and goals as an organisation. We’ll always explain how we use your information.

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 advisers 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 UK 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 we collect your data

We follow the national Citizens Advice privacy policy for collecting your data, which means collecting the information you give us with your consent, and storing it in a national computer system. In addition, 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

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.

Working on your behalf

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.

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.