Privacy Policy

At Citizens Advice Northumberland we collect and use your personal information to help solve your problems, improve our services and tackle wider issues in society that affect people’s lives.  We handle and store your personal information in line with data protection law and our confidentiality policy. 

Jointly controlled data

All offices in the Citizens Advice network use some joint systems to carry out our activities. These include joint case management systems, telephony platforms and more. 

Staff from a different local Citizens Advice can only access your personal information in a joint system if they have a good reason. For example when:

  • you go to a different office to seek advice
  • more than one office is working together in partnership
  • they need to investigate a complaint or incident.

We have rules and controls in place to stop people accessing or using your information when they shouldn’t.

Tell an adviser if you’re worried about your details being on a national system. We’ll work with you to take extra steps to protect your information – for example by recording your problem without using your name.

How we use your data 

For general advice and nationally funded advice programmes please see the national Citizens Advice privacy notice.

How we collect your information

We collect your information in person, over the telephone, by email and web chat and from third party referrals. 

What information we collect

We’ll only ask for information that’s relevant to your problem. Depending on what you want help with, this might include:

  • your name and contact details 
  • personal information
  • details about services you get that are causing you problems 
  • details of items or services you’ve bought and traders you’ve dealt with
  • information like your gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

What we use your information for

The main reason we ask for your information is to help solve your problem.  We only access your information for other reasons if we really need to, for example, for training and quality purposes, to investigate complaints, to get feedback from you about our services or to help us improve our services.

All advisers and staff accessing data have had data protection training to make sure your information is handled sensitively and securely.

Our confidentiality policy

At Citizens Advice we have a confidentiality policy which states that anything you tell us as part of advice will not be shared outside of the Citizens Advice network unless you provide your permission for us to do so.

There are some exceptions to this such as needing to share:

  • to prevent an immediate risk of harm to an individual
  • In select circumstances if it is in the best interests of the client
  • where we are compelled to do so by law (e.g. a court order or meeting statutory disclosures)
  • where there is an overriding public interest such as to prevent harm against someone or to investigate a crime
  • to defend against a complaint or legal claim
  • to protect our name and reputation for example to provide our side of a story reported in the press.

Your data protection rights

You have rights in relation to your personal data that we hold. Your rights include being able to request:

  • Access to copies of your data
  • Corrections are made to inaccurate data
  • Deletion of your personal data
  • Object to how we use your personal data.

For more information about your rights you can visit the ICO website.

Raising a concern about how we use your information

If you are concerned about how we have handled your personal information please contact us at rachelturnbull@citizensadvicenorthumberland.org.uk .

You can also raise your concern with the Information Commissioner’s Office. They will normally expect you to have made a complaint to us directly in the first instance.