Together with our terms and conditions, this page sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. By visiting www.porterdodson.co.uk (our site) you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in the notices and policies on this page.

Any changes we make to our privacy or cookie policies will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any changes to our policies.

Information we may collect on this website

 

Our cookie policy below explains what data we collect when you visit this website. Only where you interact with the site via one of our forms and provide personal data about you such as name, address and phone number, can you be identified. How we then handle your data is set out in our privacy notice below. This is a summary of our full privacy policy (which is written with clients and potential clients in mind).

Privacy notice

Who we are	We are Porter Dodson LLP, a limited liability partnership incorporated in England & Wales. We are a ‘data controller’ under Data Protection law.
How you are protected	Legal & regulatory protection You are protected by the law and by our professional duty of confidentiality. Our commitments We take seriously your privacy and the security of the information we hold about you. We will never sell or share your personal information outside Porter Dodson for marketing purposes.
Obtaining data about you	What we obtain and from where We may obtain a variety of information about you, mostly directly from you but sometimes from others involved in work you ask us to do. We ask only for what we need and use it in limited ways. Our reasons Most of the information we obtain is needed to be able to do work you have asked us to do (or quote for), or to fulfil our legal/regulatory obligations. We may process your personal information for our own purposes, such as for administrative reasons, or to promote our services to you (see ‘Marketing’ below). We will be happy to justify to you why we need any piece of information about you and what we are going to do with it.
Sharing your data with others	Sharing only if we need to We only share information about you if we need to, or if the law requires it. Examples Our privacy policy contains examples of the types of organisations with whom we may need to share information about you. Marketing If you are or become a client, we may tell you about services related to work you have asked us to do if it is in your best interests to do so. If you are or become a client, or make enquiries about becoming a client, we may tell you about any of our services (or those provided by others) if we believe they may be relevant or of interest to you.We are allowed in law to do so because we have a legitimate interest in promoting our business to these groups of people. We will never sell or share your personal information outside Porter Dodson for marketing purposes. If you do receive marketing information from us (because you have asked us to send it or we have sent it to you because you are a client or have shown interest in becoming one), you can tell us at any time that you want us to stop sending this.
Keeping your data	How long we may keep your data We keep information about work we have done for clients for at least 7 years (in electronic and paper form). We will keep other data only for as long as necessary. We will delete it when we are satisfied that no queries or disputes will arise from it and we will not breach any legal or regulatory obligations by doing so.
Other	Contacting us We have a Data Privacy Partner, who can be contacted at Porter Dodson LLP, The Quad, Blackbrook Park Avenue, Taunton, TA1 2PX. Your right to complain You can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO, www.ico.org.uk), but please contact us first, as we would like to try to resolve complaints ourselves. Other rights The law gives you other rights, so you can be in control of the information you provide. Further details are in our privacy policy (and are available from the ICO).

We use the term ‘data’ to mean any information about you which we obtain (either directly from you or from other sources).

Need to know more?

Further details can be found in our privacy policy.

Cookie Policy

Summary

We use cookies for the following purposes:

• Strictly necessary cookies are cookies that are required for the operation of our site.

• Functionality cookies are used to recognise you when you return to our site. This enables us to personalise our content for you and remember your preferences.

• Analytical/performance cookies allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our site works, for example by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. We use Google Analytics and HubSpot for this purpose. Click on the links to find out more.

If you do not consent to us storing cookies in your browser:

• You can click the button in the banner at the top of the page on our website to tell us you decline cookies.

• You can remove them from your device if you wish via your browser.

• You can change your browser settings so that it either blocks cookies altogether or asks you if you would like to accept them from some websites.

• Some of our cookies are essential for our site to work properly (the interactive parts, such as enquiry and contact forms).

 

More detailed information

 

What is a cookie?

 

• A cookie is a small text file that our website places and stores in the browser on your device.

• Cookies contain a combination of letters and numbers which identifies each visitor to our website as a unique user.

• Cookies do not contain any personal information about the visitor, so in that sense they are anonymous, but they do allow the website to recognise you when you re-visit it.

• Cookies are not programmable and cannot carry viruses or other malware.

 

How we use cookies

We use three types of cookies:

1. Strictly necessary cookies;

2. Functionality cookies;

3. Analytical/performance cookies.

 

1. Strictly necessary cookies

 

These are used to:

• Make our website easier for you to use by enabling you to move around it;

• Help stop automated programs from abusing our online forms to send spam;

• Remember your choice of whether you accept or decline cookies.

These cookies do not gather data which could be used to market to you or track your internet usage.

If you disable cookies, the parts that rely on them will not work correctly. These are the interactive parts of the site: enquiry forms, contact forms etc.

2. Functionality cookies

 

These are used to:

• Distinguish you from other users of our website;

• Remember your preferences, and personalise our content for you (where such functionality is present on our website).

3. Analytical/performance cookies

 

1. These are used to monitor how each part of our website is used and how users navigate through it. This helps us identify trends and improve the site.

2. These cookies only collect anonymous data – no data is gathered which could identify you, unless you complete one of the interactive forms on this site. If you choose to provide identifying information in this way, we will be able to build up a profile of you. We will only use such profile data in accordance with our privacy policy.

3. We use two programs to track usage: Google Analytics, and HubSpot. We have set out below a brief summary of what these programs do but you can find out more about the way they use cookies by clicking on the links below.

4. Google Analytics is the industry standard way of tracking visits to websites.

5. HubSpot is the platform on which this website is built. It also provides CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools for managing the interactive parts of our site for marketing purposes (subject to our privacy policy).

6. Together, these programs use cookies to help us find out:

   • how many people visit our site;

   • how they got to it;

   • which pages and parts are most popular;

   • how long people spend in each area; and

   • what information people are searching for.

 

Further information

The internet industry body, the Internet Advertising Bureau, has set up a website to provide information and advice on cookies: www.youronlinechoices.com/uk. Another source which gives information about how to delete and control cookies is www.aboutcookies.org.

[Last updated on 25 May 2018]