This Privacy Policy explains how Charnwood Financial Services collects, uses, and protects your personal data when you use our website or engage with our services. We are committed to handling your information responsibly and in compliance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
1. Who We Are
Charnwood Financial Services is a professional accounting practice and the data controller responsible for your personal information.
2. What Data We Collect
We may collect the following types of personal data:
- Contact form submissions: your full name, email address, phone number, and business name (if provided), along with the content of your message.
- Client data: financial records, tax information, and any other personal or business data you provide in the course of receiving our accounting services.
- Usage data: anonymous information about how you interact with our website, collected automatically via cookies and analytics tools (see Section 7 below).
3. Why We Collect It
We collect and use your personal data for the following purposes:
- To respond to enquiries submitted through our contact form.
- To provide accounting, tax, payroll, bookkeeping, and related services.
- To comply with our legal obligations, including HMRC filing requirements.
- To understand how visitors use our website so we can improve it.
4. Legal Basis for Processing
We process your personal data on the following legal bases under UK GDPR:
- Legitimate interests - for responding to enquiries and maintaining our client relationships.
- Contract - where processing is necessary to deliver the services you have engaged us for.
- Legal obligation - where we are required to process data to comply with applicable law, such as HMRC reporting obligations.
5. How Long We Keep Your Data
- Enquiry data (contact form submissions from non-clients) is retained for up to 2 years from the date of submission.
- Client data is retained for 6 years following the end of the client relationship, in line with HMRC record-keeping requirements and standard accounting practice.
After these periods, data is securely deleted or anonymised.
6. Who We Share Your Data With
We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties for their own commercial purposes. We may share data only in the following limited circumstances:
- With HMRC or other regulatory bodies, where required by law.
- With professional advisers (such as legal counsel), where strictly necessary.
- With service providers who assist us in operating our business (such as email or software providers), subject to confidentiality obligations.
7. Cookies and Analytics
Our website may use cookies - small text files stored on your device - to help us understand how visitors use the site. This includes Google Analytics, which collects anonymous data about page visits and user behaviour to help us improve our website.
No personally identifiable information is collected through analytics cookies. You can disable or delete cookies at any time through your browser settings. Please note that disabling cookies may affect how some parts of the website function.
8. Your Rights
Under UK GDPR, you have the following rights in relation to your personal data:
- Right of access - you can request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Right to rectification - you can ask us to correct any inaccurate or incomplete information.
- Right to erasure - you can request that we delete your data, subject to any legal retention requirements.
- Right to restrict processing - you can ask us to limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
- Right to complain - if you have concerns about how we handle your data, you can raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details below.
9. Contact Us About Privacy
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal data, please get in touch:
This policy may be updated from time to time. The date shown at the top of this page reflects when it was last revised. Continued use of our website after any changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.