Privacy & Cookie Policy
At Cambridge & District 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.
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 Cambridge & District Citizens Advice. Cambridge & District Citizens Advice 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 Cambridge & District Citizens Advice collects your 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.
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 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.
What Cambridge & District Citizens Advice ask for
To find out what information we ask for, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy
How Cambridge & District Citizens Advice use your information
To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy
How Cambridge & District Citizens Advice store your information
The national Citizens Advice charity and Cambridge & District Citizens Advice operate a system called Casebook to keep your personal information safe. This means we are both ‘joint data controllers’ for your personal information that’s stored in our Casebook system.
Cambridge & District Citizens Advice uses Microsoft 365 as its productivity suite and your data may be stored within the Microsoft 365 cloud while your case is active. We aim to minimise all data collected and transfer this data to Casebook as soon as possible.
When using Sign In Solutions (Sign In Scheduling for appointments and Sign In App for visitor management), our policy is to minimise all data collected and we aim to transfer all personal information to Casebook during the course of your case. Sign In Solutions store your information in accordance with their Privacy Policy. Sign In Scheduling will send email and/or text reminders for your appointment but you can tell your adviser if you do not want these reminders.
When using the LiveChat Webchat Advice Service our policy is to minimise all data collected and transfer your personal information to Casebook during the course of your case. The transcript will be stored in an online system run by LiveChat. LiveChat will delete all the data after 13 months.
We use TextAnywhere to send SMS text messages such as reminders relating to upcoming appointments or updates on your case. When using TextAnyhwere, our policy is to minimise all data collected and transfer your personal information to Casebook during the course of your case. TextAnywhere stores your data in accordance with their Privacy Notice.
When using WhatsApp our policy is to minimise all data collected and we aim to transfer all personal information to casebook during the course of your case. Facebook will also store your data in accordance with the Terms of Service of your WhatsApp account. WhatsApp is a third-party service and Cambridge & District Citizens Advice cannot accept liability for data held by WhatsApp or breaches of that data. Security of data cannot be guaranteed in messages you send to us through WhatsApp and we do not control and are not responsible for the use of your data by this third-party service.
Where we hold your information on paper, we keep this locked in secure storage cabinets and do not keep it for longer than is necessary to assist you. Our policy is to upload copies of your documents to Casebook to reduce the need for paper-based storage.
Where we have control over your data, such as deciding how we use the messages you send us to meet your advice needs, we will make sure that we comply with GDPR and Data Protection laws to keep your data safe. For example, making sure only the right staff and volunteers can see the messages.
How Cambridge & District Citizens Advice share your information
When we share your information with third parties, such as solicitors or other organisations we have referred you to, we transmit this information by secure, encrypted and password-protected email.
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 such as Cambridge City Council. We will only share information with your agreement.
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
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 us at caba@cambridgecab.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:
Email – caba@cambridgecab.org.uk
Post – Cambridge & District Citizens Advice, 66 Devonshire Road, Cambridge, CB1 2BL
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
We use cookies* on this website to:
- track aspects of user visits, including the length of a user’s visit, their browser, geographic location and the use of the search facility on this website
- remember users selected contrast and/or text resizing style preferences for this website
- record a user’s video preferences for our YouTube videos viewed on this website.
Cookie name, purpose and expiry details
Cookie name |
Purpose |
Expires |
|---|---|---|
| __utma | Used to determine unique visitors to this site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure.† | 2 years from set/update |
| __utmb | Used to establish and continue a user session with this site.† | 30 minutes from set/update |
| __utmc | Used to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user.† | At end of session |
| __utmz | Stores the type of referral used by a visitor to reach this site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within this site. The cookie is updated with each page view to this site.† | 6 months from set/update |
| citaContrast | Stores user’s colour scheme preference. | 1 year |
| citaStyleJS | Stores user’s text size preference. | 1 year |
| eprivacy | Stops the banner message about cookies showing on every page. It is only shown on the first three pages visited, or until it is closed. | 1 year |
| NID | Google cookie typically written to the browser upon the loading of Google Plus One social media buttons. | At end of session |
| PREF | Google cookie typically written to the browser upon the loading of Google Plus One social media buttons. | At end of session |
| testSessionCookie | Stores user’s login session | 1 year |
*cookie – a bit of information kept on a user’s computer.
† For more information: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html
For more on how cookies work and can be managed: www.allaboutcookies.org