PRIVACY POLICY

At Mirach Solicitors Limited, we are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your working relationship with us in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (‘GDPR’).
It applies to all employees and contractors.
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This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy
This notice applies to current and former employees, workers and contractors. This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services. We may update this notice at any time.
It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.

Data Protection Principles
We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have explained clearly to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes
3. Relevant to the purpose we have told you about and limited only to hose purposes
4. Accurate and kept up to date
5. Kept only for as long as necessary for the purposes we have informed you about.
6. Kept securely.

The kind of Information we hold about you

• We will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information about you:
  Personal contact details such as name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth
•  Evidence of your identity (photographic identity) and proof of your address (Utility bills etc)
•  Information provided in recruitment: right to work, your references and other information you have provided on your CV, cover letter of part of the application process.
•  Information kept during your employment: Your employment start date, your role profile, job title, work history, working hours, training records, memberships, performance information, disciplinary/ grievance information, contract of employment, location
•  Emergency contact details, next of kin
•  Bank account details, national insurance number, payroll, tax status information, pension details, salary, annual leave, pension and benefits information
•  Information about your health including any medical condition health and sickness records.
•  Information about criminal convictions and offences.

How is your personal information collected?
We collect personal information about employees, workers and contractors through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency or background check provider. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties, including former employers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.

We will collect additional personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us.
How we will use information about you?

Situations in which we will use your personal information
We need all the categories of information in the above list, primarily to allow us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases, we may use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below.

• Making decisions about your recruitment or appointment.
• Determining our terms and conditions (on which you work for us).
• Checking that you are legally entitled work in the UK
• Carrying out credit and DBS checks in line with the firm’s policy on recruitment
• Paying you. For those who are employed, we will deduct National Insurance & tac contributions.
• Providing pension, private medical insurance and other benefits as applicable.
• Administering the contract, we have entered with you
• Business planning, management, accounting and auditing
• Conducting management and performance reviews and determining performance requirements.
• Identifying training needs
• Making decisions about salary reviews
• Assessing qualification for role profile, tasks, promotions
• Gathering evidence for disciplinary & grievance hearings (including decisions about your continued employment or engagement).
• Making arrangements for the termination of our working relationship
• Education, training and development requirements
• Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other employees, workers and contractors, including accidents at work
• Ascertaining your fitness to work
• Managing sickness, absence and holidays
• Complying with health and safety obligations
• To monitor your use of our information and communication systems to ensure compliance with our Information Security policies
• To ensure network & information security including preventing unauthorised access to our computer and electronic communications systems and preventing malicious software distribution
• To conduct data analytics to review and better understand employee retention and attrition rates
• Equal opportunities monitoring.
  Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you (such as paying you or providing a benefit), or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our employees).

Change of purpose
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information
Special categories of particularly sensitive information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of information in the following circumstances:
1. In limited circumstances. with your explicit written consent.
2. Where we need to carry out our obligations or exercise rights in relation to your employment with us. We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards in which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.
3. Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring or in relation to our occupational pension scheme. We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.
Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public. We may also process such information about members or former members of the Finn during legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.

Our obligation as an employer
We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways: –

• We will use information relating to leaves of absence, which may include sickness absence or family related leave, to comply with employment and other laws.
• We will use information about your physical or mental health or disability status to ensure your health and safety in the workplace and to assess your fitness to work to provide appropriate workplace adjustments, to monitor and manage sickness absences and to administer benefits.
• We will use information about your race, national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual orientation to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring & reporting.

Do we need your consent?
We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations, or exercise specific rights pursuant to employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to give your consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent by us.
Information about criminal convictions.

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy. Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.

We may also process such information about members or former members of the Firm during legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.
We envisage that we will hold information about criminal convictions.
We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate, given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so. Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process, or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us. We will use information about criminal convictions and offences in the following ways:

• Making decisions about your recruitment
• Assessing qualifications for a particular job or task

We are allowed to use your personal information in this way to carry out our obligations to allow us to perform our contact with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases, we use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. We have in place an appropriate policy and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.

Automated Decision making
Automated decision making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. We can use automated decision making in the following circumstances:
1. Where we have notified you of the decision and given you 21 days to request a reconsideration.
2. Where it is necessary to perform the contract with you and appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights. In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent and where appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
If we make an automated decision based on any particularly sensitive personal information, we must either have your written express consent or it must be justified in the public interest and we must also put in place appropriate measures to safeguard your rights.
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automate decision make unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you.
We do not envisage that any decisions will be take about you using automated means, however will notify you in writing if this position changes.

Data Sharing

• We may have to share your data with third parties, including third party service providers and other entities (this includes external auditors).
•  We require third parties to reset the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
•  We may transfer your personal information outside the EU.
•  If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.
•  Why might you share my personal information with third parties?
•  We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you, or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

How secure is my information with third party service providers and other entities in our group?
All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

What about other third parties?
We may share your personal information 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 information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law

Data Security
We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information: Details of these measures are available upon requested
Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from the Directors. 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.

Data Retention – How long will you use my information for?
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer an employee, worker or contractor of the company we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

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

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a ‘data subject access request’. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information 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 information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation in relation to which you want to object to processing on this ground. 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 information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
  If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the Directors in writing.

No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of your 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

What we may need from you
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 information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent please contact the Directors. Once we have received notification that have withdrawn your consent we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes originally agreed to unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law or where the original basis remains.

Data Protection Officer
This firm does not have a Data Protection Officer within the context of the GDPR however we do have an Information Protection Manager to whom all questions, queries or concerns can be directed to.

Change to this Privacy Notice
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
If you have any questions about this notice please contact the Directors who is responsible for ensuring compliance under this policy.