The Barristers’ Benevolent Association is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Statement applies to users of the Association’s website, donors, supporters, beneficiaries, and others who may send their personal data to us (for example, those who apply for financial support, or express an interest in hearing more about our activities).

Personal information relating to you from which you can be identified that we collect or which you provide is called personal data (‘Personal Data‘).

This privacy policy (‘Privacy Statement‘) tells you about the Personal Data we collect; how we handle or process such Personal Data and who we may share it with. This Privacy Policy also provides information on your legal rights in relation to your Personal Data. We collect and process your Personal Data in accordance with applicable law. This includes, without limitation, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679) and the UK Data Protection Act 2018 together with other applicable UK and EU laws that regulate the collection, processing and privacy of your Personal Data (together, ‘Data Protection Law‘).

The Personal Data about you that we may collect and use includes the following:

a) your name, email address and other contact details;
b) your job;
c) details of any feedback you give us or queries or complaints we receive;
d) information provided in any form submitted to us as part of a request for support (including your date of birth, qualifications, career history, information relating to your family, health and financial circumstances);
e) other Personal Data relating to you or others that you provide, when you contact us;

If you apply for support, we may not be able to progress your application unless you provide all of the information requested in the relevant application form.

Some of the Personal Data you supply and that we process may include what is known as ‘special category’ or ‘sensitive’ data about you, for example, information regarding your ethnic origin or political, philosophical and religious beliefs, health or sex life. Other data relating to criminal convictions and offences may also be processed.

Please ensure that any Personal Data you supply to us which relates to third party individuals is provided to us with their knowledge of our proposed use of their Personal Data.

Other than as stated above, we may use your Personal Data for one or more of the following purposes:

a) to provide you with direct marketing communications about what we are doing as well as products, services and/or campaigns which may be of interest to you by post or phone. If required under applicable law, where we contact you by email, social and/or any other electronic communication channels for direct marketing purposes, this will be subject to you providing your express consent. You can object or withdraw your consent to receive direct marketing from us at any time, by contacting us using the email address below;
b) to determine whether an application for support meets our eligibility criteria;
c) where applications meet our eligibility criteria, to verify details provided, and to consider facts and decide on what support the Association can provide;
d) to administer and to record details of support provided;
e) to record unsuccessful applications;
f) to administer event attendance;
g) to better understand the use of our website and how it could be improved;
h) to establish, enforce and/or defend any of our legal claims or rights; and/or
i) for any other purpose required by applicable law, regulation, the order of any court or regulatory authority.

We process your Personal Data for the above purposes relying on one or more of the following lawful grounds:

a) where you have freely provided your specific, informed and unambiguous consent for particular purposes (which you can withdraw in the future, although this will not affect lawful previous use);
b) where we agree to provide services to you, in order to take any pre-contract steps at your request and/or to perform our contractual obligations to you;
c) where we need to use your Personal Data for legitimate purposes relevant to us being able to promote the organisation and raise funds, assess applications for funding, protect the organisation from dishonest or fraudulent behaviour, run the organisation and its activities efficiently, and keep records of our activities. We will always seek to pursue these legitimate interests in a way that does not unduly infringe on your other legal rights and freedoms and, in particular, your right of privacy;
d) where we need to protect your vital interests or those of someone else (such as in a medical emergency) and/or;
e) where we need to collect, process or hold your Personal Data to comply with a legal obligation.

If we process ‘special category’ or ‘sensitive’ data, we will only do this with your explicit consent; or, to protect your vital interests (or those of someone else) in an emergency; 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.

We may need to disclose your Personal Data to certain third party organisations who are handling that data only on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions under contract (called ‘data processors‘) such as companies and/or organisations that act as our service providers (e.g. IT suppliers) or professional advisers; and companies that assist us in making payments (e.g. payment processors).

We may also disclose your Personal Data to third parties who make their own determination as to how they process your Personal Data and for what purpose(s) (called ‘data controllers‘), such as those whose names you provide as referees during the support application process.

The third party data controllers external to us with whom we deal as described above will handle your Personal Data in accordance with their own chosen procedures and you should check the relevant privacy policies of these companies or organisations to understand how they may use your Personal Data. Since these controller organisations are acting outside of our control, we have no responsibility for their data processing practices.

Other than as described above, we will treat your Personal Data as private and will not disclose your Personal Data to third parties without you knowing about it, except where necessary in relation to legal proceedings or where we are legally required to do so and cannot tell you;

In all cases we always aim to ensure that your Personal Data is only used by third parties for lawful purposes and in compliance applicable Data Protection Law.

We will keep your Personal Data while you as long as you have a relationship with us. Thereafter, we will keep your personal information for as long as is necessary: to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf; to show that we treated you fairly, or as is required by applicable law.

We have a data retention policy that sets out the different periods we retain data for in respect of relevant purposes in accordance with our duties under Data Protection Law. The criteria we use for determining these retention periods is based on various legislative requirements; the purpose for which we hold data; and guidance issued by relevant regulatory authorities including but not limited to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Personal Data we no longer need is securely disposed of and/or anonymised so you can no longer be identified from it.

We employ appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your Personal Data from being accessed by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage.

We also endeavour to take all reasonable steps to protect Personal Data from external threats such as malicious software or hacking. However, please be aware that there are always inherent risks in sending information by public networks or using public computers and we cannot 100% guarantee the security of all data sent to us (including Personal Data).

Under Data Protection Law, you have certain rights in relation to the Personal Data that we hold about you. These rights include a right to:

To exercise any of the above rights, or if you have questions regarding our privacy practices, please contact us at the address below.

There may be circumstances in which we are not required to comply with a request due to an applicable legal exemption (e.g. we have a compelling legitimate reason or legal obligation to retain Personal Data which means that we cannot erase it). We may also ask you to verify your identity or ask for evidence of authority if you are making a request for someone else, before we can respond.

You may also have a right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office – see: www.ico.org.uk if you think we have used your personal data in breach of Data Protection Law. If you have any such concern, we ask that you to contact us first at the email address above so that we can investigate and respond.

The Association will occasionally change the way we use your Personal Data and update this Privacy Statement.

Please check that you have seen the latest version. If the changes to this Privacy Statement are significant we may inform you by email.

If you have any queries regarding this Privacy Statement or wish to exercise your rights in relation to your Personal Data as described above, please contact us.

Last updated: 1 November 2023