Introduction
The Data Protection Act 2018 (“DPA 2018”) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“ UK GDPR”) impose certain legal obligations in connection with the processing of personal data.
On 1st April 2022, Wilfred T Fry Ltd. (part of The Fry Group) bought Harris Stewart and became a joint data controller of all data provided to Harris Stewart, including data that you have provided to Harris Stewart directly.
The Fry Group and Harris Stewart are joint data controllers within the meaning of the UK GDPR and both process personal data. The firm’s contact details are as follows:
The Fry Group, Crescent House, Crescent Road, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 1RN
Tel no: 01903 231545
Data Protection Officer: Aidan Bailey
We may amend this privacy notice from time to time. If we do so, we will supply you with and/or otherwise make available to you a copy of the amended privacy notice.
Where we act as a data processor on behalf of a data controller (for example, when processing payroll), we provide an additional schedule setting out required information as part of that agreement. That additional schedule should be read in conjunction with this privacy notice.
By using our websites www.harrisstewart.com or www.thefrygroup.co.uk you agree to the use and treatment of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
How we collect or obtain personal information about you
We collect personal information when you provide it to us:
- when you fill in a form on our website
- when you contact us by phone, email or in writing
- when you use post or react to our social media channels
- when you order goods or services from us
Where permitted by law we may also receive information about you from third parties such as affiliates, business partners, credit and fraud checking services as well as third parties with whom we have had no prior contact.
How we collect anonymous information about your behaviour
We indirectly collect anonymous information about you to get a general idea of how our website is performing, this information is not linked directly to you but third party services outside of our control may use this to profile your activities and provide relevant advertising in other platforms.
This may occur at any time while you are browsing our website.
Cookies
Cookies are small packets of information stored on your device used to keep a record of your history while using a particular website. This could be used to tailor page content to your past behaviour, to keep hold of information that lets us know if you’ve logged in, or to let us know what items you’ve added to a shopping cart. The cookies under our control are only visible to you and to our website.
While you are free to disable cookies on your browser, doing so may impact the functionality of this and other websites you visit and as such is not recommended.
Third Party Cookies
We use other services to help us to deliver our website, and they may also store cookies on your device to display personalised content or to gather statistics while you are visiting our website. We’ll list those in detail and give a brief overview of why and how we use them below.
Contact Forms
Information you submit to us on a contact form will be sent by email to our staff, and will remain stored on the website or within backups for a maximum of 60 days just in case the email doesn’t get to us. If we intend to retain information for marketing purposes we’ll ask you first and give details on the form.
User submitted Comments & Reviews
You can submit comments on our content if you want to. Normal visitors will be able to read anything that you post, and the name under which you have submitted the comment. You may use a pseudonym if you prefer to remain anonymous. We may ask for your email address to verify but we will never make this public.
Third-Party Services we may share data with
Third Party Analysis Tools
We use the following third party services to track and monitor visitor flows and behaviour.
Google Analytics
Google analytics provides us with detailed web statistics and real time monitoring to help us measure the performance of our web site. Google’s privacy policy is available in full at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/
Email Communication Services
We use the following third party services to send email, so they will indirectly have access to a portion of your activity and some of your personal details. Once an email leaves systems we use directly, it may be routed through any number of others systems.
MailGun
Mailgun provides a means for our web site to send email to staff and visitors, as such information will be passed through their services. Email content is retained for logging purposes for a short time.
Mailgun’s privacy policy can be reviewed in full at https://www.mailgun.com/privacy-policy
The purposes for which we intend to process personal data
We intend to process personal data for the following purposes;
- To enable us to supply professional services to you as our client.
- To fulfil our obligations under relevant laws in force from time to time (e.g. the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (“MLR 2017”)).
- To use in the investigation and/or defence of potential complaints, disciplinary proceedings and legal proceedings.
- To enable us to invoice you for our services and investigate/address any attendant fee disputes that may have arisen.
- To contact you about other services we provide which may be of interest to you if you have consented to us doing so.
The legal bases for our intended processing of personal data
Our intended processing of personal data has the following legal bases:
- At the time you instructed us to act, you gave consent to our processing your personal data for the purposes listed above.
- The processing is necessary for the performance of our contract with you.
- The processing is necessary for compliance with legal obligations to which we are subject (e.g. MLR 2017).
- The processing is necessary for the purposes of the following legitimate interests which we pursue:
- investigating/defending legal claim
- offering services of interest
- providing legislative updates e.g. budget updates
It is a requirement of our contract with you that you provide us with the personal data that we request. If you do not provide the information that we request, we may not be able to provide professional services to you. If this is the case, we will not be able to commence acting or will need to cease to act.
Categories of personal data collected
Through the course of our engagement we may collect the following personal data;
- your personal details (such as your name, address, date of birth, nationality, tax references);
- Details of assets held such as bank accounts, property addresses, shareholdings;
- Details of username and passwords to the extent you have shared them with us and authorised us to use them;
- details of contact we have had with you in relation to the provision, or the proposed provision, of our services;
- details of any services you have received from us;
- our correspondence and communications with you;
- information about any complaints and enquiries you make to us;
- information from research;
- Information we receive from other sources, such as publicly available information, information provided by your employer , your third party advisors or information from our member network firms or other accountancy firms.
Source of personal data collected
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including:
-
- Direct interactions: You may give us your identity and contact data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise.
- Other clients where joint assets are held: information may be provided by a data subject where you are entitled to share of the income
- Professional firms from which the data subject was previously introduced: Such as Complete Accounting Solutions Limited
- Member Firms: Wilfred T Fry Ltd. wholly owns Harris Stewart Ltd (which wholly owns British Taxpayers Association Ltd), and information which may be relevant to the data subject, may be provided by Wilfred T Fry Ltd., Harris Stewart and/or British Taxpayers Association Ltd.
- Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
- Information available on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, which may be based outside the EEA.
- Identity and Contact Data from publicly availably sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register, based inside the EEA.
- Businesses with which the data subject has a relationship such as independent financial advisors, brokers and investment companies, letting agents, banks, trustees, HMRC , based inside the EEA and where prior consent has been given by the data subject to liaise with them directly.
Persons/organisations to whom we may give personal data
We may share your personal data with:
- HMRC
- any third parties with whom you require or permit us to correspond
- subcontractors
- an alternate appointed by us in the event of incapacity or death
- tax insurance providers
- professional indemnity insurers
- our professional bodies: CIOT, ATT, ACCA, STEP and/or the Office of Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervisors (OPBAS) in relation to practice assurance and/or the requirements of MLR 2017 (or any similar legislation)
- Member Firms: The Fry Group wholly owns Harris Stewart Ltd (which wholly owns British Taxpayers Association Ltd), and information which may be relevant to the data subject, may also be provided to The Fry Group and/or British Taxpayers Association Ltd.
If the law allows or requires us to do so, we may share your personal data with:
- the police and law enforcement agencies
- courts and tribunals
- the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”)
We may need to share your personal data with the third parties identified above in order to comply with our legal obligations, including our legal obligations to you. If you ask us not to share your personal data with such third parties we may need to cease to act.
Transfers of personal data outside the EEA
Your personal data will be processed in the EEA only unless any of the third party advisors listed in the section titled ‘persons/organisations to whom we may give your personal data’ above are based outside the EEA.
Retention of personal data
When acting as a data controller and in accordance with recognised good practice within the tax and accountancy sector we will retain all of our records relating to you as follows:
- where tax returns have been prepared it is our policy to retain information for seven years from the end of the tax year to which the information relates. However, where we have an ongoing relationship, we may extend this to one year following the date our business relationship ceased.
- where ad hoc advisory work has been undertaken it is our policy to retain information for six years from the date the business relationship ceased.
- where we have an ongoing client relationship, data which is needed for more than one year’s tax compliance (e.g. capital gains base costs and claims and elections submitted to HMRC) is retained throughout the period of the relationship, but will be deleted six years after the end of the business relationship unless you as our client ask us to retain it for a longer period.
Our contractual terms provide for the destruction of documents after six years and therefore agreement to the contractual terms is taken as agreement to the retention of records for this period, and to their destruction thereafter.
You are responsible for retaining information that we send to you (including details of capital gains base costs and claims and elections submitted) and this will be supplied in the form agreed between us. Documents and records relevant to your tax affairs are required by law to be retained by you as follows:
- with trading or rental income: five years and 10 months after the end of the tax year;
- otherwise: 22 months after the end of the tax year.
Companies, LLPs and other corporate entities
- six years from the end of the accounting period.
Where we act as a data processor as defined in DPA 2018, we will delete or return all personal data to the data controller as agreed with the controller.
Requesting personal data we hold about you (subject access requests)
You have a right to request access to your personal data that we hold. Such requests are known as ‘subject access requests’ (“SARs”).
Please provide all SARs in writing marked for the attention of Aidan Bailey.
To help us provide the information you want and deal with your request more quickly, you should include enough details to enable us to verify your identity and locate the relevant information. For example, you should tell us:
-
- your date of birth
- previous or other name(s) you have used
- your previous addresses in the past five years personal reference number(s) that we may have given you, for example your national insurance number, your tax reference number or your VAT registration number
- what type of information you want to know
If you do not have a national insurance number, you must send a copy of:
- the photo page of your passport or a copy of your driving license; and
- a recent utility bill.
UK GDPR requires that we comply with a SAR promptly and in any event within one month of receipt. We may extend the period by a further two months where the request is complex but we will inform you within one month of the receipt of the request and explain why the extension is necessary.
There are, however, some circumstances in which the law allows us to refuse to provide access to personal data in response to a SAR (e.g. if you have previously made a similar request and there has been little or no change to the data since we complied with the original request).
We will not charge you for dealing with a SAR.
You can ask someone else to request information on your behalf – for example, a friend, relative or solicitor. We must have your authority to respond to a SAR made on your behalf. You can provide such authority by signing a letter which states that you authorise the person concerned to write to us for information about you, and/or receive our reply.
Where you are a data controller and we act for you as a data processor (e.g. by processing payroll), we will assist you with SARs on the same basis as is set out above.
Putting things right (the right to rectification)
You have a right to obtain the rectification of any inaccurate personal data concerning you that we hold. You also have a right to have any incomplete personal data that we hold about you completed. Should you become aware that any personal data that we hold about you is inaccurate and/or incomplete, please inform us immediately so we can correct and/or complete it.
Deleting your records (the right to erasure)
In certain circumstances you have a right to have the personal data that we hold about you erased. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). If you would like your personal data to be erased, please inform us immediately and we will consider your request. In certain circumstances we have the right to refuse to comply with a request for erasure. If applicable, we will supply you with the reasons for refusing your request.
The right to restrict processing and the right to object
In certain circumstances you have the right to ‘block’ or suppress the processing of personal data or to object to the processing of that information. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). Please inform us immediately if you want us to cease to process your information or you object to processing so that we can consider what action, if any, is appropriate.
Obtaining and reusing personal data (the right to data portability)
In certain circumstances you have the right to be provided with the personal data that we hold about you in a machine-readable format, e.g. so that the data can easily be provided to a new professional adviser. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk).
The right to data portability only applies:
- to personal data an individual has provided to a controller;
- where the processing is based on the individual’s consent or for the performance of a contract; and
- when processing is carried out by automated means
We will respond to any data portability requests made to us without undue delay and within one month. We may extend the period by a further two months where the request is complex or a number of requests are received but we will inform you within one month of the receipt of the request and explain why the extension is necessary.
Withdrawal of consent
Where you have consented to our processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Please inform us immediately if you wish to withdraw your consent.
Please note:
- the withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing
- if you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to continue to provide services to you
- even if you withdraw your consent, it may remain lawful for us to process your data on another legal basis (e.g. because we have a legal obligation to continue to process your data)
Automated decision-making
We do not intend to use automated decision-making in relation to your personal data.
Complaints
If you have requested details of the information we hold about you and you are not happy with our response, or you think we have not complied with the UK GDPR or DPA 2018 in some other way, you can complain to us. Please send any complaints to Aidan Bailey.
If you are not happy with our response, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the ICO (www.ico.org.uk).