George Hay & Company takes the privacy of its clients and website users seriously. This statement explains our privacy and data-protection practices.
It is important for George Hay & Company to safeguard its client's privacy while providing a personalised and valuable service. Collecting personal information is necessary if George Hay & Company is to satisfy the expectations and requirements of its clients.

ABOUT US AND THE PURPOSE OF THIS NOTICE
George Hay & Company Westminster LLP (“George Hay & Co”, "we", “us”, “our” and “ours”) is a firm of Chartered Accountants, business and tax advisers. We are registered in England and Wales as a limited liability partnership under number: OC376894 and our registered office is at: 83 Cambridge Street, Pimlico, London, SW1V 4PS.

This notice will tell you how we look after your personal data, will tell you about your privacy rights, and about our compliance with and your protections under Data Protection Legislation.

In this notice “Data Protection Legislation” means the Data Protection Act 2018 (as amended by the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 which merge the previous requirements of the Data Protection Act with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679)) and any other laws and regulations in the UK applicable to the processing of personal data.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Legislation and this notice, we are the ‘data controller’. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal data about you. We are required under the Data Protection Legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

We have appointed a partner, Marino Achilleos as Data Protection Officer. Our Data Protection Officer is our Data Protection Point of Contact and is responsible for assisting with enquiries in relation to this privacy notice or our treatment of your personal data. Should you wish to contact our Data Protection Point of Contact you can do so by emailing him at: marino.achilleos@georgehay.com or writing to him at the firm’s address.

THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU 
The information we hold about you may include the following:
• your personal details (such as your name and/or address);
• details of contact we have had with you in relation to the provision, or the proposed provision, of our services;
• details of any services you have received from us;
• our correspondence and communications with you;
• information about any complaints and enquiries you make to us;
• information from research, surveys, and marketing activities;
• information provided by your employer for payroll processing purposes (e.g. salary details national insurance numbers, tax codes pension details, bank details etc.)
• information we receive from other sources, such as publicly available information, or information from other relevant third parties

HOW WE MAY COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We obtain your personal data directly from you when: 
• you request a proposal from us in respect of the services we provide; 
• you or your employer or our clients engages us to provide our services and also during the provision of those services;
• you contact us by email, telephone, post or social media, for example when you have a query about our services;

We may also obtain your personal data indirectly:
• from your employer where our client engages us to provide services and also during the provision of those services (e.g. contact details, salary details, national insurance numbers, tax codes pension details, bank details etc.);
• from third parties and/or publicly available resources, for example, from HM Revenue & Customs or from Companies House.

HOW WE USE PERSONAL DATA WE HOLD ABOUT YOU
We may process your personal data for purposes necessary for the performance of our contract with you or your employer or our clients and to comply with our legal obligations.

This may include processing your personal data where you are an employee, subcontractor, supplier or customer of our client.

We may also process your personal data for the purposes of our own legitimate interests provided that those interests do not override any of your own interests, rights and freedoms which require the protection of personal data. This includes processing for marketing, business development, statistical and management purposes.

Please note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.

Situations in which we will use your personal data
We may use your personal data in order to:
• carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between you or your employer or our clients and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services);
• carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between our clients and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services) where you may be a subcontractor, supplier or customer of our client;
• provide you with information related to our services and our events or seek your thoughts and opinions on the services we provide and;
• notify you about any changes to our services

In some circumstances we may anonymise or pseudonymise the personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use it without further notice to you. If you refuse to provide us with certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you. Alternatively, we may be unable to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations.
We may also process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in accordance with this notice, where we are legally required or permitted to do so.

Data retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it is collected. 

When assessing what retention period is appropriate for your personal data, we take into consideration the requirements of our business and the services provided, any statutory or legal obligations and the purposes for which we originally collected the personal data.

Change of purpose
Where we need to use your personal data for a reason, other than the purpose for which we originally collected it, we will only use your personal data where that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your data for a new purpose, we will notify you and communicate our legal basis for this new processing.

Data sharing
We will share your personal data with third parties where we are required by law, where it is necessary to administer the relationship between us or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so. This may include sharing your personal data with a regulator or to otherwise comply with law.

“Third parties” includes third-party service providers. The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: IT and cloud services, professional advisory services, administration services, marketing services and banking services. We only permit our third-party service providers to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

We may share your personal data with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business. We may also need to share your personal data with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.

TRANSFERRING PERSONAL DATA OUTSIDE THE UNITED KINGDOM (UK)
We will not transfer the personal data we collect about you outside of the UK.

Should you require further information about the protective measures we use, please contact us using the contact details below in the Contact Us section.

DATA SECURITY
We have put in place commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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

RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION
Your duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Should your personal information change, please notify us of any changes of which we need to be made aware by contacting us, using the contact details below. 

Your rights in connection with personal data
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data. This enables you to receive details of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are processing it lawfully.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. 
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this basis. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. 
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or another data controller if the processing is based on consent, carried out by automated means and this is technically feasible.
If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email our data protection point of contact: marino.achilleos@georgehay.com

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee for the administrative costs of complying with the request if your request for access is manifestly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT
In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal data for a specific purpose (for example, in relation to direct marketing that you have indicated you would like to receive from us), you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please email our data protection point of contact: marino.achilleos@georgehay.com
 
Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal information (personal data) for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

CHANGES TO THIS NOTICE
Any changes we may make to our privacy notice in the future will be updated on our website at: www.georgehay.com.

This privacy notice was last updated on 18th February 2021

Third party links on our website
Our website may contain links to third party websites. If you follow a link to these websites, please note that they have their own privacy policies and we do not accept responsibility nor liability for their policies. Please check their policies before submitting any personal data to such websites.
           
Contact us
If you have any questions regarding this notice or if you would like to speak to us about the manner in which we process your personal data, please email our Data Protection Point of Contact: marino.achilleos@georgehay.com or write to him at: George Hay & Company, 83 Cambridge Street, Pimlico, London SW1V 4PS.
You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues, at any time. The ICO’s contact details are as follows:
Information Commissioner's Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone - 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745
Website - https://ico.org.uk/concerns
For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998, the data controller is George Hay & Company (Westminster) LLP, 83 Cambridge Street, Pimlico, London, SW1V 4PS, United Kingdom.

Cookies

The cookies we use on the website help us to ensure it can deliver the functionality needed by the visitors and also so that we might better understand how people are using the site. Such insight typically allows us then to ensure the site is developed with the visitors’ needs and preferences in mind. These cookies only record anonymous data such as the visitor’s IP address and browser session information such as the duration of the visit, pages visited, and the type of browser used.
Here is an example of the main type of cookie being used on the site:
Google Analytics / Google Maps cookies - we use these to collect information about how visitors are using our site e.g. how often they visit and which pages they visit. We also use cookies to enable us to show visitors a Google map without having to leave the site. Please visit Google's privacy policy for more information.

Changing your cookie settings

You can also change your cookie settings at any time in your browser to define which types of cookies you want your browser to accept, however in doing so, you may not be able to view certain types of content on this site or your ability to interact with certain parts of the site might be limited or non-functional.
If you have any questions, please do contact us.