Policy version: updated 7 May 2021

Hawkes & M Limited (hereafter referred to as 'we') takes your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share any information relating to you (your personal data) in connection with your use of our website. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or a relevant regulator in the event you have a complaint. 

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal data about you. When we do so we are subject to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). 

This version of our privacy policy is primarily written for adults, including parents and guardians of child users. If you are a child (under 18 years old) you are welcome to read this policy if you find it useful, but please note that we would need to seek consent from those who hold parental responsibility for you before we do anything with you or your personal data.

This privacy policy is divided into the following sections:

•  What this policy applies to

•  Personal data we collect about you

•  How your personal data is collected

•  How and why we use your personal data

•  Marketing

•  Who we share your personal data with

•  How long your personal data will be kept

•  Transferring your personal data out of the UK

•  Cookies

•  Your rights

•  Keeping your personal data secure

•  How to complain

•  Changes to this privacy policy

•  How to contact us

This privacy policy relates to your use of our website only.

Throughout our website we may link to other websites owned and operated by certain trusted third parties to make adequate services available to you. Those other third party websites may also gather information about you in accordance with their own separate privacy policies. For privacy information relating to these other third party websites, please consult their privacy policies as appropriate.

The personal data we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through our website. We will collect and use the following personal data about you:

•  your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number and company detailsl

•  information to check and verify your identity (e.g. date of birth)

•  your gender (if you choose to give this to us)

•  location data (if you choose to give this to us)

•  your billing information, transaction and payment card or other payment method information

•  bank account and payment details

•  details of any information, feedback or other matters you give us by phone, email, post or via social media

•  your activities on, and use of, our website

•  your personal and/or professional interests

•  your professional online presence (e.g. LinkedIn profile)

•  information about the services we provide to you

•  your contact history

•  information about how you use our website and technology systems

•  your responses to surveys, blogs and promotions

If you do not provide personal data we ask for where it is indicated to be ‘required’ at the point of collection, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you.

We collect and use this personal data for the purposes described in the section ‘How and why we use your personal data’ below.

We collect personal data from you: 

•  directly, when you enter or send us information, such as when you contact us (including via email), send us feedback, receive services, post material to our website and complete customer surveys, and 

•  indirectly, such as your browsing activity while on our website; we will usually collect information indirectly using the technologies explain in the section on ‘Cookies and other tracking technologies’ below.

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, e.g.:

•  where you have given consent

•  to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

•  for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, or

•  for our legitimate interests or those of a third party

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We will carry out an assessment when relying on legitimate interests, to balance our interests against your own. You can obtain details of this assessment by contacting us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).

Set out below explains what we use your personal data for and why.

(a) Create and manage your account with us - For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

(b) Providing services to you - To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract

(c) Conducting checks to identify you and verify your identity or to help prevent and detect fraud against you or us - To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

(d) To enforce legal rights or defend or undertake legal proceedings - Depending on the circumstances:

 i) To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

 ii) In other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect our business, interests and rights or those of others

(e) Customise our website and its content to your particular preferences based on a record of your selected preferences or on your use of our website - Depending on the circumstances:

 i) Your consent as gathered e.g. by the separate cookies tool on our website — see ‘Cookies and other tracking technologies’ below

 ii) Where we are not required to obtain your consent and do not do so, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

(f) Retaining and evaluating information on your recent visits to our website and how you move around different sections of our website for analytics purposes to understand how people use our website so that we can make it more intuitive or to check our website is working as intended - Depending on the circumstances:

 i) Your consent as gathered e.g. by the separate cookies tool on our website — see ‘Cookies and other tracking technologies’ below

 ii) Where we are not required to obtain your consent and do not do so, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

(g) Communications with you not related to marketing, including about changes to our terms or policies or changes to the services or other important notices - Depending on the circumstances:

 i) To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

 ii) In other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

(h) Protecting the security of systems and data - To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations We may also use your personal data to ensure the security of systems and data to a standard that goes beyond our legal obligations, and in those cases our reasons are for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to protect systems and data and to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for you and/or us

(i) Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, e.g. in relation to our financial performance, customer base, product range or other efficiency measures - For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

(j) Updating and enhancing customer records - Depending on the circumstances:

 i) To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract

 ii) To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

 iii) Where neither of the above apply, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, eg making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about existing orders and new products

(k) Disclosures and other activities necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, e.g. to record and demonstrate evidence of your consents where relevant and/or required by the relevant legislation - To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

(l) Marketing our services to existing and former customers  - For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to promote our business to existing and former customers. See ‘Marketing’ below for further information

(m) External audits and quality checks, e.g. for the audit of our accounts - For our legitimate interests or a those of a third party, i.e. to maintain our accreditations so we can demonstrate we operate at the highest standards

(n) We may need to share your personal data with members of our group and third parties in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency (In such cases information will be anonymised where possible and only shared where necessary) - Depending on the circumstances:

 i) To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

 ii) To provide you appropriate services in a sensible and reasonable manner

 iii) In other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect, realise or grow the value in our business and assets

Certain personal data we collect may be treated as a special category to which additional protections apply under data protection law, such as:

•  personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership

•  genetic data

•  biometric data 

•  data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation

Where we process such special category personal data, we will also ensure we are permitted to do so under data protection laws. 

See ‘Who we share your personal data with’ for further information on the steps we will take to protect your personal data where it needs to be shared with others.

We may use your personal data to send you updates (by email, text message, telephone or post) about our services, including selective news, campaign or promotions.

We have a legitimate interest in using your personal data for marketing purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your personal data’). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you marketing information. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this separately and clearly.

You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by:

•  contacting us at mayumi.hawkes@hawkesandm.co.uk; or

•  using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails or ‘STOP’ number in texts

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you ask us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never share it with other organisations except Cognitive Law Limited for marketing purposes.

For more information on your rights to object at any time to your personal data being used for marketing purposes, see ‘Your rights’ below.

We routinely share personal data with:

•  third parties we use to help deliver our services to you

•  other third parties we use to help us run our business, e.g. website hosts and website analytics providers

•  Cognitive Law Limited, its staff and the solicitors/consultants working for Cognitive Law

We only allow those organisations to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data.

We or the third parties mentioned above may occasionally also need to share personal data with:

•  external auditors, e.g. in relation to the audit of our accounts, in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations

•  professional advisors (such as lawyers and other advisors), in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations

•  law enforcement agencies, courts, tribunals and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

•  other parties in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency —usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible, however, the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations

If you would like more information about who we share our data with and why, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).

We will not keep your personal data for longer than we need it for the purpose for which it is used.  For example, if we did not carry out any work for you, it will be 12 months, if you become our client, then a minimum of six years (13 years in the event any deed is involved).

Please note different retention periods apply for different types of personal data. 

The other countries/jurisdictions outside the UK have differing data protection laws, some of which may provide lower levels of protection of privacy. 

It is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal data to countries outside the UK. In those cases we will comply with applicable UK laws designed to ensure the privacy of your personal data.

We will use reasonable endeavours that all necessary protections and/or decisions and/or appropriate safeguard required by applicable UK laws are in place before transferring personal data to any organisation or body (or its subordinate bodies) located outside the UK.

Under data protection laws, we can only transfer your personal data to a country outside the UK where:

•  in the case of transfers subject to UK data protection law, the UK government has decided the particular country ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an ‘adequacy regulation’) further to Article 45 of the UK GDPR. 

•  there are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for you, or

•  a specific exception applies under relevant data protection law

Where we transfer your personal data outside the UK we do so on the basis of an adequacy regulation or (where such is not available) legally-approved standard data protection clauses recognised or issued further to Article 46(2) of the UK GDPR.  In the event we cannot or choose not to continue to rely on either of those mechanisms at any time we will not transfer your personal data outside the UK unless we can do so on the basis of an alternative mechanism or exception provided by UK data protection law.

Any changes to the destinations to which we send personal data or in the transfer mechanisms we use to transfer personal data internationally will be notified to you in accordance with the section on ‘Change to this privacy policy’ below.

For further information about such transfers and the safeguards we employ, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (e.g. computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use our website. We use cookies on our website. These help us recognise you and your device and store some information about your preferences or past actions.

You generally have the following rights, which you can usually exercise free of charge:

(1) Access to a copy of your personal data: the right to be provided with a copy of your personal data

(2) Correction (also known as rectification): the right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data: 

(3) Erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten): the right to require us to delete your personal data — in certain situations: 

(4) Restriction of use: the right to require us to restrict use of your personal data in certain circumstances, eg if you contest the accuracy of the data

(5) Data portability: the right to receive the personal data you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party — in certain situations

(6) To object to use: the right to object:

¨  at any time to your personal data being used for direct marketing (including profiling)

¨  in certain other situations to our continued use of your personal data, e.g. where we use your personal data for our legitimate interests.

(7) Not to be subject to decisions without human involvement: the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.  We do not make any such decisions based on data collected by our website.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply and circumstances in which they do not apply, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below). You may also find it helpful to refer to the guidance from the UK’s Information Commissioner on your rights under the UK GDPR. 

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please email or write to us — see below: ‘How to contact us’.  

When contacting us please:

•  provide enough information to identify yourself (e.g. your full name, address and matter reference) and any additional identity information we may reasonably request from you, and

•  let us know what right you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates

We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to access it. 

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Please contact us if you have any query or concern about our use of your information (see below ‘How to contact us’).  We hope we will be able to resolve any issues you may have.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner in the UK

The Information Commissioner may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or by telephone: 0303 123 1113.

We may change this privacy policy from time to time — when we make significant changes we will take steps to inform you, for example, by including a prominent link to a description of those changes on our website for a reasonable period, or by email.

You can contact us by post or email if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you, to exercise a right under data protection law or to make a complaint.

Our contact details are shown below:-

Registered Office Address: Mermaid Cove, 9 Wallbridge, Stroud GL5 3JS, United Kingdom

Email: mayumi.hawkes@hawkesandm.co.uk