Purpose of this Notice

During the course of dealing with us, we will ask you to provide us with detailed personal information relating to your personal circumstances, immigration history and your financial situation. This notice describes how we collect and use personal data about you.

Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

About Us

Wai Leung Solicitors is a law firm. We provide legal services. We are specialists in asylum and Immigration law. We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Our SRA number is 422219.

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.

How Your Personal Data Is Collected By Us

We obtain personal data about you, for example when you engage us to provide our services and during the provision of those services, and also when you use our website and contact us about our services.

Types Of Data We Hold About You

The personal information which we will collect from you will vary depending on the kind of services you engage us to deliver. The personal information which we will usually collect might include the following:

  • Name
  • Date of birth
  • Nationality
  • Address
  • Telephone Number
  • Email Address
  • Your immigration history
  • Your Home Office reference and Port Reference numbers
  • Your UTR (Unique Tax Reference) number
  • National Insurance Number
  • Bank Account Details
  • Your IP address, which pages you may have visited on our website and when you accessed them

How We Use Your Data

We may process your personal data for purposes necessary for the performance of our contract with you and to comply with our legal obligations.

In general terms, and depending on which service you engage us to deliver, as part of providing our agreed services we may use your information to:

  • Contact you by post, email or telephone
  • Verify your identity where this is required
  • Understand your needs and how they may be met
  • Maintain our records in accordance with applicable legal and regulatory obligations
  • Process financial transactions
  • Prevent and detect crime, fraud or corruption

Situations In Which Your Personal Data Will Be Used By Us

We may use your personal data in order to carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between you and us, which will most usually be for the provision of our services.

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
  • The purposes for which we originally collected the personal data
  • The lawful grounds on which we based our processing
  • The types of personal data we have collected
  • The amount and categories of your personal data; and whether the purpose of the processing could reasonably be fulfilled by other means.

Change of Purpose

Where we need to use your personal data for another reason, other than for the purpose for which we collect, we will only use your personal data where that reason is compatible with the original purpose.

Should it be necessary to use your personal data for a new purpose, we will notify you and communicate the legal basis which allows us to do so before starting any new processing.

Data Sharing

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes

Any staff with access to your information have a duty of confidentiality under the ethical standards that this firm is required to follow.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf

We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purpose of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf, for example to process legal aid application. However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own purposes.

Why might you share my personal data with third parties?

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.

Transferring Personal Data Outside The European Economic Area (EEA)

We will not transfer the personal data we collect about you outside of the EEA.

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, and other third parties who have the business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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 right please email to mail@wlsolicitors.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 if your request for access is clearly 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 at mail@wlsolicitors.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: www.wlsolicitors.com. This privacy notice was last updated on 25 May 2018.

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 to mail@wlsolicitors.com. 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