Our Privacy Policy

Background and Information About Us.

McKenna & Company Solicitors are a law firm who are based at 275 Woodstock Road, Belfast, BT6 8PR regulated by the Law Society of Northern Ireland. Our company is registered, and our registered office is 275 Woodstock Road, Belfast BT6 8PR.

As a firm we respect your privacy, and we are committed to protecting your personal data. We understand that your privacy is important to you and that you care about how your personal data is used. We respect and value the privacy of all our clients and will only collect and use personal data in ways that are described here, and in a way that is consistent with our obligations and your rights under the law.

This Privacy Policy explains how we use any personal information we collect about you as a client when you use our website or we provide legal services to you. It sets out how we look after your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practises regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

1. What information do we collect about you?

We collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal information about you when we accept instructions from you to provide legal services or advices. This can be classed as;

Identity and Contact Data;  this includes first and last names, title ,address, date of birth, gender ,job title, profession ,national insurance number, email address and telephone numbers, passport, driving licence, utility bills, bank statements .This type of Data directly or indirectly reveals your identity.

This information may be in writing, by telephone or via the internet.

We also collect information when you voluntarily complete our Customer Survey or Feedback forms.

When you use our website or input information by filling in a contact form we do not collect information by Cookies.

We also get information about you from other sources including lenders, banks, other law firms or regulatory bodies.

On occasions we may obtain Special Category of Personal Data for example your GP or medical records, or information about your criminal convictions, bank details, mortgage details.

 

2. How will we use the information about you?

We collect information about you to verify your identity, provide legal services, correspond with us, manage your account in a transaction or conveyance that we are acting in or on your behalf and if you agree to periodically email you about other services that we think may be of interest to you and or to improve our services.

We use your information collected from our website to monitor the usage and traffic on our website.  We do not pass this personal information to any other company.  McKenna & Company will not share your information for marketing purposes with any other company. We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to a third party unless we have your express permission to do so or are required by law to do so.

In providing legal services we may send your details to experts we instruct on your behalf or to third party financial or insurance companies who are involved in your case.

In providing these legal services we will act as a Data Processor and in some instances as a Data Controller in respect of your personal information

We only use your personal information when the law allows us to and that we have your permission to do so.

McKenna & Company will use your personal data when we need to.

1. To meet our contractual obligations under our agreement or contract with you to provide legal services, either advices or representation.

2. When it is necessary for our legitimate interest ( or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests

3. We need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

In short this means we use your personal information to enable us to give legal advice to you, represent you at a court or tribunal, to interact or communicate with other third parties to help us achieve our aim of providing legal services to you and or to manage the conveyance process or transaction or contract that we are involved in on your behalf.

We will only use your personal data for the purpose for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose.

We rely on your written consent as a legal basis for processing your personal information.

We would like to send you information about our own products and services by post, telephone, email or SMS.  We will ask you to consent to agree to being contacted in this way for marketing.  You have a right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us by email to a.mckenna@mckennasolicitors.com  or by post to the Privacy Officer, Alexis McKenna at McKenna & Company Solicitors, 275 Woodstock Road, Belfast, BT6 8PR.

 

3. What happens if you choose not to provide this information?

If you fail to provide certain personal information when requested we may not be able to perform the agreement we have entered into with you or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations.

If you are unable or not willing to provide personal information this may also impact our ability to progress conveyance transactions on your behalf.

 

4. What are your rights relating to the use of your personal information?

Under the GDPR, you have certain rights in respect of the processing of your personal information, which may vary dependent on the legal basis for collection of your personal information and the uses made of this personal information.

For all uses made of your personal information you have the right to be informed about how we use your personal information, and this notice discharges that obligation.  However, further rights may apply in different circumstances, as set out below:

• Right of access – you have a right to access a copy of the personal information that is held about you (subject to Data Protection Laws).This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data that we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Right of rectification or correction – you have a right to correct personal information that is held about you if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten or erasure– in certain circumstances you can ask for the personal information held about you to be erased (please note our retention period set out below).This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it.
• Right to restrict processing- where certain conditions apply you have a right to restrict processing (please note this may impact our ability to provide our services to you or your law firm).
• Right to transfer your data and portability of same – you have the right to have personal information held about you to be transferred to another organisation, where applicable McKenna & Co will provide copies of personal information in a structured commonly used, and machine readable form. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing, such as marketing (please note that we will only ever use your contact information for marketing purposes where you have provided express consent).You can also object to our processing if you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms.
• Right to withdraw consent – In the limited circumstances where you may have provided you consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact info@mckennasolicitors.com or by post to: Privacy Officer, Alexis McKenna, McKenna & Company, 275 Woodstock Road, Belfast, BT6 8PR.If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

In the event you wish to exercise any of these rights, please make your request in writing to McKenna & Company’s Privacy Officer.

We will respond to your request to change, correct or delete your information within a reasonable timeframe and notify you of the action we have taken.

 

5. How long will McKenna & Company retain your personal information?

We will only retain your personal information for the duration of our agreement with you and for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such personal information without further notice to you.

 

6. Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. We have in place measures; physical, electronic and managerial to safeguard and protect the security of your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents or contractors and other third parties who have a need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

However the internet is not a secure medium but we are committed to ensuring that your personal information is secure.  In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the personal information we collect online.  We will use our best efforts to ensure that no unauthorised parties have access to any of your personal information and we restrict access to non-public information about you to these individuals and entities that need to know the personal information to be able to provide products and services to you.

 

7.How Can I access my personal Data?

If you want to know what personal data we have about you, you can ask us for details of that personal data and for a copy of it (where any such personal data is held). This is known as a “subject access request “.

All subject access requests should be made in writing and sent to the email or postal address shown below. To make this as easy as possible for you, a Subject Access Request Form is available for you to use. You do not have to use this form.

There is not normally any charge for a subject access request. If your request is manifestly unfounded or excessive (for example, if you make repetitive requests) a fee may be charged to cover our administrative costs in responding.

We will respond to your subject access request within one month of receiving it.Normally ,we aim to provide a complete response ,including a copy of your personal data within that time. In some cases, however, particularly if your request is more complex, more time may be required up to a maximum of three months from the date we receive your request. You will be kept fully informed of our progress.

 

Links to other websites

Our Website may contain links to enable you to visit other websites of interest more easily.  However, once you have used these links to leave our Website, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website.  Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any such information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and this Privacy Notice does not govern such sites.]

 

Further information

In the event you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or wish to make a complaint about how your personal information is being processed by McKenna & Company you have the right to complain to the Privacy Office by email to: info@mckennasolicitors.com

or by post to: Privacy Officer, Alexis McKenna, McKenna & Company, 275 Woodstock Road, Belfast, BT6 8PR.

Telephone 02890 739979.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the relevant supervisory authority.  The UK supervisory authority for data protection issues in the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).We would however ,appreciate the chance to deal with your concern before you approach the ICO ,so please contact us in the first instance.

 

Legal Statement about this Privacy Statement

This Privacy Notice is not designed to form a legally binding contract.  It is a guide to the use of the Website and how we use your personal information as our client.

We may change this privacy notice from time to time. This may be necessary if the law changes, or if we change our business in a way that affects the protection of personal data.

Use of our Website by you constitutes acceptance by you of the Privacy Notice.  If you do not wish to accept the Privacy Notice, you should not continue to use our Website.

All calls made to and by us may be monitored or recorded.

This Privacy Notice was last updated on 23^rd May 2023