Privacy Policy

McCarthy Solicitors Ltd (the ‘Firm’). Registered Office: 5 Chancery Lane, London, EC4A 1BL. Registered in England and Wales with company number 14300891 and is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under number 8002190.

References on the Website to ‘McCarthy Solicitors’, ‘the Firm’, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ mean the Firm.

The Firm is the ‘Controller’ for data protection purposes. This means that the Firm collects and holds your information and decides what it will be used for. The Firm is subject to the requirements of data protection legislation applicable to the UK and must use your personal data in accordance with the law.

Mr Dion McCarthy is our Data Protection Manager and you can contact him to discuss this privacy notice any data protection related issues or queries Mr Dion McCarthy dion@mccarthy.co.uk or 195a Barrack Road, Christchurch, Dorset, BH23 2AR.

When you visit our website, we use Google Analytics (a third-party service) to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this so that we can find out how people use our website e.g. how many people visit our website and which areas they look at.

We have anonymised this information by ensuring that your IP address cannot be identified.

The information generated by Google Analytics is transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google agrees to the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) for data protection which put it under an obligation to meet certain data protection and security standards required by UK law. Google will use the information on behalf of the firm for the purposes of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for us and providing us with other services relating to website activity and internet usage.

You may refuse the use of the cookies used by Google Analytics via the settings in your browser (see cookies section below). To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Our lawful basis for using your information in this way will be two-fold: 1) For our legitimate interests in understanding how our website is used; and 2) Your consent to our use of cookies via our cookies consent bar which appears when you first visit the homepage of our website.

How we use cookies: Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. In effect, our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies. A persistent cookie consists of a text file sent by us to your computer and will be stored on your computer until its set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date). A session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when you leave our site. All data relating to the Cookies are stored on Google’s servers.

We use cookies on this website. You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:

The Cookies above may store your IP address and user agent (operating system and browser) and geographical location.

You block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Except for essential cookies, all cookies will expire after 6 months.

Please note that other third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.

Our lawful basis for using your information in this way will be two-fold: 1) For our legitimate interests in understanding how our website is used; and 2) Your consent to our use of cookies via our cookies consent bar which appears when you first visit the homepage of our website.

If you submit your personal details to us by completing and submitting our contact form, we will use your information to: Contact you to respond to your request for contact. Send information to you about the firm and its services, where you have given us express authority to do so.

We will add your contact details to our electronic database and keep them for as long as you provide your consent for us to use your contact details in this way.

Our lawful basis for using your information in this way will be two-fold: 1) For our legitimate interests in marketing our services; and 2) Upon your express consent (where required by law).

Will not share information received through our contact form with any third party unless you expressly authorise us to do so or we are required by law.

We record all incoming and outgoing telephone calls and video calls for training and monitoring purposes.

Where you make an enquiry to our firm but do not instruct us following that enquiry, we will hold details of your enquiry on our systems for up to 12 months. This is for our legitimate interests in being able to ensure that we can recall your enquiry should you revisit the matter with us some weeks or months later, therefore improving your experience with us, and to ensure that we can call upon it if any complaint is made about the way that we handled your enquiry. After this time, the record of your enquiry to us, along with your personal data that you provided to us, will be permanently deleted from our systems.

If we seek consent from you to send details of our services that we may think may interest you in the future, then we will hold your contact details on our marketing database until you ask us to stop sending such materials. Where this is by email, you can unsubscribe from our marketing at any point using the unsubscribe facility in each and any marketing email that we send to you. Your details will be removed from our systems as soon as possible after receipt of a notification from you that you no longer wish to receive our marketing material, and no longer than one month after receipt of your notice.

If you are an individual, you have the following rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR): (a) Right to access personal data – you can request details from us of the personal data that we hold about you. (b) Right to object to processing – you can tell us that you want us to stop processing your personal data. (c) Right to object to automated individual decision making including profiling – you can object to us making decisions about you solely by using a computer system without any human consideration. We do not currently do this. (d) Right to rectification – you can ask us to correct personal data that we hold because you believe it is inaccurate. (e) Right to erasure – you can ask us to delete the personal data that we hold about you. (f) Right to restrict processing – you can tell us that you only want us to use the personal data for a specific reason.

Please note that these rights are not absolute rights (they are not rights that will be automatically granted), as we have to consider whether there are any reasons why we cannot meet your request. For example, we will not be able to delete data that we are legally obliged to keep. We will let you know if we are not able to meet your request and the reason why (where it is appropriate to disclose this information to you).

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are not happy with the way that we handle your personal data. You can contact the ICO at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF or by calling the ICO’s helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Please note that where you provide consent to us using your personal data, you are entitled to withdraw that consent at any time. You can do this by informing your file handler or contacting our designated Data Protection Manager.

This Privacy Notice does not cover any links to other websites that have been included on our website. Please read the Privacy Notices on the other websites that you visit.