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 UK 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.
Citizens Advice North Lancashire may collect your data in the following ways:
Where someone fills in our enquiry form on our website, we ask you for permission to store your data in our Casebook recording system
Where someone sends us a Facebook message asking for help we may pass your details onto our admin team so that we can contact you to offer an appointment
Where we work in partnership with other organisations we will ask you for permission to add you to our Stakeholder mailing list so that you can receive our regular email; this email has an unsubscribe link on it
If you ring us, we may collect your data over the phone and add this to our database with your permission, so that we can call you back or arrange an appointment
If you come and see us in person we will ask you to fill out our 'client permission and consent form'
‘To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy’
‘To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy’
When you give us authority to act on your behalf, for example, to help you with a Universal Credit claim, or getting support from Lancaster City Council we’ll need to share information with that third party. We will always ask you first.
Citizens Advice North Lancashire stores all client data on our case recording system which is called Casebook. This is password protected and all records are kept confidential.
For some of our sector partners we store information on Mailchimp for our stakeholder newsletter. We will always ask you before doing this and there is an ‘unsubscribe’ button on all our publications so you can remove yourself.
Our email system uses the Google platform which is password protected - on occasion we may use email to share information with third parties or colleagues.
Citizens Advice North Lancashire only shares identifiable information with permission from clients whether that’s a referral to another agency or a case study or research and campaigns.
We do anonymise case studies on occasion and share these both with the general public and with funders and colleagues within Citizens Advice - where this is the case we ensure that there are no identifiable features used about someone.
If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact our office.
Telephone: 01524 400 404, open Monday to Friday 9am-4pm
Email: enquiries@northlancashirecab.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
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.
