Privacy & Cookies
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.
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 commercial organisations
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 privacy 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.
We have both a ‘legitimate interest’ and ‘substantial public interest’ to collect your data under data protection law.
We will collect this data in different ways depending on how you approach our service, including:
- face to face – for example by discussing your situation with an advisor
- completing a form – this could be a digital form or paper form
- over the phone – for example by calling Adviceline
- by email – via our ‘Online Enquiry Form’ or when emailing us directly
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.
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 the law.
To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy.
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.
Organisations we often contact on a client’s behalf include: Colchester Council, HMRC and local Housing Associations.
We may store your information on our internal computer system, in paper files securely locked away as well as the main Citizens Advice case management system “Casebook”.
If we refer you to other agencies for help we will ask your permission to share your data, for example, to a local solicitor.
If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact our office.
Telephone: 0808 278 7853, open Tuesday to Thursday 9:30am – 3:30pm to speak to an adviser, if available
Email: advice@colchestercab.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 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 the 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.