Privacy and cookie policy

Rural Cambs Citizens Advice is registered under the Data Protection Act.

Who’s responsible for keeping your personal information safe?

At Citizens Advice Rural Cambs, 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.

This privacy policy explains how we use your information and what your rights are. We handle and store your personal information in line with data protection law and our confidentiality policy. The following pages tell you more about how we use your information in more detail.

Our network

Citizens Advice is a membership organisation made up of the national Citizens Advice charity and many local offices across England and Wales, including Citizens Advice Rural Cambs. Citizens Advice Rural Cambs is an independent charity and a member of the national Citizens Advice charity.

All members of the Citizens Advice network are responsible for keeping your personal information safe and making sure data protection law is followed.

Members of the network also run some jointly designed services and use some of the same systems to process your personal data. In these instances we are joint data controllers for these activities.

Jointly controlled data

All offices in the Citizens Advice network use some joint systems to carry out our activities. These include joint case management systems, telephony platforms and more.

Staff from a different local Citizens Advice can only access your personal information in a joint system if they have a good reason. For example when:

• you go to a different office to seek advice
• more than one office is working together in partnership
• they need to investigate a complaint or incident

We have rules and controls in place to stop people accessing or using your information when they shouldn’t.

Tell an adviser if you’re worried about your details being on a national system. We’ll work with you to take extra steps to protect your information – for example by recording your problem without using your name.

National Citizens Advice has a privacy notice available on their website that covers general advice and nationally managed systems, including our case management systems. This policy covers the processing we carry out in our office.

How will you use my data?

This section covers how we use your data to provide you with advice.

For general advice and nationally funded advice programmes please see the national Citizens Advice privacy notice.

First and foremost your information will be used to provide you with advice. 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.

We also use information in a way that doesn’t directly identify you to understand how different problems are affecting society and to take action to tackle these problems. As this is used for research it is kept separate from your case record.

We may collect data about you from a partner organisation if they refer you to us. This should only be done with your permission, and our partners will have their own policies on how they obtain your permission.

Our confidentiality policy

At Citizens Advice we have a confidentiality policy which states that anything you tell us as part of advice will not be shared outside of the Citizens Advice network unless you provide your permission for us to do so.

There are some exceptions to this such as needing to share:

• to prevent an immediate risk of harm to an individual
• In select circumstances if it is in the best interests of the client
• where we are compelled to do so by law (e.g. a court order or meeting statutory disclosures)
• where there is an overriding public interest such as to prevent harm against someone or to investigate a crime
• to defend against a complaint or legal claim
• to protect our name and reputation for example to provide our side of a story reported in the press

What information Citizens Advice Rural Cambs ask for

To find out what information please refer to National Citizens Advice privacy notice

How Citizens Advice Rural Cambs use your information

To find out what information please refer to National Citizens Advice privacy notice

Where will you store my data?

The record of your case will be stored securely in an electronic case management system used jointly by all of the Citizens Advice service. We are all responsible for keeping it safe. As part of solving your problem, we might also make written notes, download copies of your case or send emails containing your information. We will make sure any information is stored securely and only accessed when there’s a good reason by staff and volunteers of the Citizens Advice service.

How long do you keep records for?

We keep records for 6 years. We may keep records for 16 years if the advice given could have serious consequences if it was not stored for a longer period.

Why might you share my information? Who will you share it with?

Citizens Advice Rural Cambs will generally not share information without your permission, unless required to do so by law or in some very limited situations, like to protect you or someone else from serious harm.

If a particular service involves sharing your information without permission, we will always let you know upfront that it isn’t confidential.

Your data protection rights

You have rights in relation to your personal data that we hold. Your rights include being able to request:

• Access to copies of your data
• Corrections are made to inaccurate data
• Deletion of your personal data
• Object to how we use your personal data

These rights are not absolute and may not apply in every circumstance. For more information about your rights you can visit the ICO website.

To make a data protection rights request you can do so by emailing data-protection@citizensadviceruralcambs.org.uk

Raising a concern about how we use your information

If you are concerned about how we have handled your personal information please contact us at data-protection@citizensadviceruralcambs.org.uk You can also contact the national charity if you are unhappy with how we have used your personal data or wish to raise a concern about how a local office has handled your personal data. To do so you can email us at DPO@citizensadvice.org.uk

Contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

You can also raise your concern with the Information Commissioner’s Office which regulates data protection law in the UK. if you are unhappy with how we have used your personal information. They will normally expect you to have made a complaint to us directly in the first instance.

• Visit the ICO website.
• Address: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
• Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Cookies and browsing of this site

A cookie is a small file of text and numbers that we put on your computer. The only cookies that may be used by this site are analytical cookies, which allow us to compile anonymous statistics of visitors to our website.

If you would like to have more detailed information about cookies, then please go to https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/.

The cookies we may use are Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics sets a cookie in order to evaluate your use of the website and to compile reports for us on activity on the website. Google stores the information collected by the cookie on servers in the United States. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

For an overview of Google Analytics: www.google.co.uk/intl/en/analytics/privacyoverview.html
The overview provides a link to Google’s browser opt-out which gives you the opportunity to opt out of all Google Analytics on all websites.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, 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 information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

AI chat system

The IBM Watson AI powered chat system used on the website stores the information given to it on IBM servers for a period of 7 days. After that it is not accessible. It does not request personal nor confidential data, it only interprets the English language questions fed to it and tries to direct people to a relevant Help Article page on the website, it does nothing further with peoples’ supplied data.

CARC staff and their representatives review the questions and answers gathered in the AI system from time to time (they are only stored for the previous 7 days) to try to teach the AI to provide better answers to peoples’ problems and/or better interpret peoples’ questions to direct them to an existing Help Article on the website.