Citizens Advice Diss, Thetford & District (CADAT) Privacy Notice

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 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 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 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 CADAT collects your data

To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

What CADAT ask for

To find out what information we ask for, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

How CADAT uses your information

To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy

Working on your behalf

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.

We will only share your information with a third party if you have given your permission to do so. We will explain why the information needs to be shared before seeking your consent.

How CADAT stores your information

We store your information on a secure system owned and operated by National Citizens Advice. This means that CADAT and National Citizens Advice are ‘joint data controllers’ for your personal information that is stored there. 

At any time you are entitled to make a ‘subject access request’ (SAR) to access all or part of the data we hold on you. We will consider and respond to all SAR within the one month time frame required under General Data Protection Regulations.

How CADAT shares your information

We will sometimes share client information with third parties, for example funders. This data is always anonymised and any personal identifiers such as name, postcode etc are removed. We will sometimes use case studies as part of our research and campaigns work to help raise awareness around a particular issue. 

We will either seek consent from individuals to use their information in this way or change key elements of the information to ensure it cannot be directly attributed to an individual.

Contact
CADAT about your information

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

Telephone: 01379 651752 (Diss)

There is an answer machine if you are calling outside of office hours (Monday, Wednesday – Friday, 10:00 am – 15:00 pm)

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 our 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.