St James Legal Advice Centre CIO - Volunteers Privacy Notice

St James Legal Advice Centre – Privacy Notice for Volunteers

St James Legal Advice Centre (SJLAC) holds your personal data in accordance with current data protection legislation. We are a Data Controller, which means that we will keep your data confidential and ensure that it is kept securely. SJLAC is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.

The data we hold about you

We will collect, store and use personal information (or personal data) about you that you have provided us with. This information may include:

● Personal contact details, including name, title, addresses, telephone numbers and personal email addresses. This information is used to contact you about your volunteering and involvement with SJLAC.

● Recruitment information, including information contained in any curriculum vitae you provide and information provided by any referees. This information is used to make a decision about your recruitment as a volunteer.

● Date of birth and age. You will likely provide us with this information, and is required to ensure that you are aged over 18.

● Emergency contact information. This is required so we can contact someone in an emergency

● Information about your health, including any medical conditions. We may require this information to comply with our health and safety obligations in law and enable reasonable adjustments to be made.

How is your personal information collected

We collect personal information about volunteers through the application and recruitment process, directly from candidates. Where volunteers are students who volunteer with us through a university scheme, we will also collect information from the volunteers’ university. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties, including former employers, with the consent of volunteers.

The grounds under data protection law which we collect and use information about you

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. We process your personal information for the above purposes relying on one or more of the following lawful grounds:

● Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. Our legitimate interests is fulfilling the charitable purpose of SJLAC to provide free legal advice and assistance. This includes:

contacting volunteers to plan and administrate the legal advice clinics run by SJLAC and any other activities run by SJLAC.;
taking steps to ensure and monitor compliance with our legal obligations and internal standards and procedures;
assessing suitability of volunteers for potential roles; and keeping records of volunteer activities and performance

● Where it is necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation, such as equality law or health and safety obligations.

● Where you have freely provided your specific, informed and unambiguous consent for particular purposes; and

● Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you, or in order to take any pre-contract steps at your request and/or to perform our contractual obligations to you.

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

● Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else's interests), such as in a medical emergency.

● Where it is needed in the public interest.

Sensitive personal information

In the event that we collect and process sensitive personal information, such as information regarding your health, we will only do this with your explicit consent; in compliance with a legal obligation or, to protect your vital interests (or someone else’s interests) when you are not capable of giving your consent; or, where you have already publicised such information; or, where we need to use such sensitive data in connection with a legal claim that we have or may be subject to.

In particular, with your consent, where it is needed to assess your volunteering capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards, we will use information about your physical or mental health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety in volunteering with SJLAC and to provide appropriate adjustments.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the security of your information. We have also 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, unless where you have shared your data more widely, we seek to limit access to your personal information to those volunteers, employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.

Please note, that the SJLAC email addresses are accessible by all SJLAC volunteers so any personal information sent to these email addresses will be available to all SJLAC volunteers.

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 sharing

We may share your data with third parties in the following circumstances:

● To suppliers or service providers where it is necessary to do so to facilitate your volunteering and SJLAC’s legitimate interests. For example, to our technical service providers.

● Where we are legally obliged to, we will share the information of volunteers. We will provide the Charity Commission and Companies House with basic contact details of our Trustees.

● In circumstances where you have given your consent for us to share your data with a third party.

Data retention

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 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.

Personal information that we no longer need will be securely destroyed. Normally this will be within 1 year after a volunteer informs the clinic coordinator that they no longer wish to volunteer with SJLAC.

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.

The location of your data

SJLAC is based in the UK, and uses your personal data within the UK. We do not generally transfer your personal data outside of the UK.

In some cases, where our technology systems are provided by third parties, their data centres may be located in countries outside the UK. However, if we ever have to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside the European Economic Area and the UK, we will seek your consent to do.

Your data protection rights

In accordance with data protection laws, you have a right to request:

● To obtain a copy of the personal data we hold about you at any time;

● The correction of your personal data when incorrect, out of date or incomplete.

● That we stop any consent-based processing of your personal data after you withdraw that consent.

● In some circumstances, to request us to erase or restrict our use of your data, or otherwise to object to our processing of your data for reasons relating to your situation.

Note that there are certain limitations and exemptions to these rights which we may apply depending on the circumstances.

Whenever you have given us your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and withdraw that consent.

In cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can ask us to stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must then do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your personal data.

Please contact us to send us requests to exercise these rights (specifying what you are requesting), or if you would like further information about them (see contact details below). If we choose not to action your request, we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal.

If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113, or online www.ico.org.uk/concerns.

You have the following legal rights in relation to our collection and processing of your personal information:

Our contact details

St James Legal Advice Centre

St James Church, St James’s Lane, Muswell Hill, London N10 3DB

Email: manager@stjameslegaladvice.org

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