Privacy policy

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.

How Citizens Advice Braintree, Halstead and Witham collect your data

We collect your data through:

Adviceline (telephone advice)
face-to-face general advice
when you are referred to our money advice service
disability outreach home visits
FABA

We’ll get your permission by asking you to:

give agreement over the phone
sign a paper consent form

What Citizens Advice Braintree, Halstead and Witham ask for

We’ll only ask you for information that’s relevant to your problem. Depending on what you want help with, this might include:

your name and contact details – so we can keep in touch with you about your case
personal information – for example about family, work or financial circumstances
details about services you get that are causing you problems – like energy or post
details of items or services you’ve bought and traders you’ve dealt with
information like your gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation

If you don’t want to give us certain information, you don’t have to. For example, if you want to stay anonymous we’ll only record information about your problem and make sure you’re not identified.

How Citizens Advice Braintree, Halstead and Witham use your information

The main reason we ask for your information is to help solve your problem. We only access your information for other reasons if we really need to – for example:

for training and quality purposes
to investigate complaints
to get feedback from you about our services
to help us improve our services

All advisers and staff accessing data have had data protection training to make sure your information is handled sensitively and securely.

We use some information to create statistics about who we’re helping and what problems are most common. This information is always anonymised – you can’t be identified.

We share these statistics with funders, regulators, government departments and publicly in our annual report. These statistics also inform our policy research, campaigns and media work.

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 information with agencies relevant to your case and we will tell you who these agencies are.

We will ask you to sign a form of authorisation giving us permission to do this.

If we refer you to another organisation for more advice, we might share information about your problem with them so they can help you more quickly.

How Citizens Advice Braintree, Halstead and Witham store your information

Whether you get advice face to face, over the phone or by email, our advisor will log all your information, correspondence and notes about your problem into our secure national case management system. Our case management system is hosted within the EEA and wherever possible, the UK.

Most of our trusted partners store their data securely within the EEA in line with data protection law.

Some of your information might also be kept within our secure email and IT system. All of this information is stored locally on our encrypted system. We may also hold paper files on your case and this is stored security at our offices.

We keep your information for 6 years. If your case has been subject to a serious complaint, insurance claim or other dispute we keep the data or 16 years.

If you call Adviceline, we’ll record the conversation for training and monitoring purposes. When you call, you’ll hear a recorded message telling you how we use and store your information – you can let the adviser know if you disagree.

Calls are recorded by our trusted partner, KCOM. They’ll be deleted after 6 months.

How Citizens Advice Braintree, Halstead and Witham share your information

With your permission, we might share your information with other organisations so we can:

help solve your problem – for example, if you ask us to contact your creditors we will need to share your name, address and financial details with them
refer you to another organisation for more advice, if relevant
monitor the quality of our services

The organisations we share your data with must store and use your data in line with data protection law.

There might be specific organisations we share your information with, depending on what service you access. These will include:

DWP
Greenfields and other housing agencies
Your creditors if you are using our money advice service
Braintree District Council
Other organisations relevant to your case

Contact Citizens Advice Braintree, Halstead and Witham about your information

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

Citizens Advice Braintree Halstead and Witham
Public Hall
Collingwood Road
Witham
CM8 2DY

Telephone: 01376 515235
Email: admin.office@bhwcab.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.