Privacy Notice

QED Legal LLP  (”We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

Our Group means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, our associated companies as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006 (our Group)

This notice sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) is a new regulation which replaces the Data Protection Regulation (Directive 95/46/EC) The Regulation aims to harmonise data protection legislation across EU member states, enhancing privacy rights for individuals and providing a strict framework within which commercial organisations can legally operate.

Even though the UK has expressed its intention to leave the EU in March 2019, the GDPR will be applicable in the UK from 25th May 2018. The Government intends for the GDPR to continue in UK law post Brexit and has also introduced a Data Protection Bill to replace the current Data Protection Act in due course.

Your new rights under the GDPR are set out in this notice but will only apply once the GDPR becomes law on 25th May 2018.

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

For the purposes of data protection legislation in force from time to time the data controller QED Legal LLP of registered office address 17 Hanover Square Mayfair London

Our nominated Data Protection Officer is Lisa Williamson

Who we are and what we do

We are a recruitment agency and recruitment business as defined in the Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 (our business).  We collect the personal data of the following types of people to allow us to undertake our business;

• Prospective and placed candidates for permanent or temporary roles;
• Prospective and live client contacts;
• Supplier contacts to support our services;
•  Employees, consultants, temporary workers;

We collect information about you to carry out our core business and ancillary activities.

Information you give to us or we collect about you.

This is information about you that you give us by filling in forms on our websites www.qedlegal.com; www.qedlegalit.com and www.qedlegalmarketing.com (“our sites”) or by corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise. It includes information you provide when you register to use Our Sites, to enter our database, subscribe to our services, attend our events, participate in discussion boards or other social media functions on Our Sites, enter a competition, promotion or survey and when you report a problem with Our Sites.

The information you give us or we collect about you may include your name, address, private and corporate e-mail address and phone number, financial information, compliance documentation and references verifying your qualifications and experience and your right to work in the United Kingdom, curriculum vitae and photograph, links to your professional profiles available in the public domain e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, business Facebook or corporate website 

Information we collect about you when you visit our website.

With regard to each of your visits to Our Sites we will automatically collect the following information

• technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information if applicable, browser type and version,
• information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL), clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for’ page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page, and any phone number used to call our customer service number.

Information we obtain from other sources.

This is information we obtain about you from other sources such as LinkedIn, corporate websites, job board websites, online CV libraries, your business card, personal recommendations, Twitter, Facebook, The Law Society or other Professional Body. In this case we will inform you, by sending you this privacy notice, within a maximum of 30 days of collecting the data of the fact we hold personal data about you, the source the personal data originates from and whether it came from publicly accessible sources, and for what purpose we intend to retain and process your personal data.

We are working closely with third parties including [companies within our Group, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, professional, payment and other services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies, professional advisors. We may receive information about you from them for the purposes of our recruitment services and ancillary support services.

Purposes of the processing and the legal basis for the processing

We use information held about you in the following ways:

To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts we intend to enter into or have entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us or we think will be of interest to you because it is relevant to your career or to your organisation.

Our legal basis for the processing of personal data is our legitimate business interests. described in more detail below.

 We will in some circumstances rely on consent for particular uses of your data and you will be asked for your express consent, if legally required.  Examples of when consent may be the lawful basis for processing include permission to introduce you to a client (if you are a candidate).

Our Legitimate Business Interests

Our legitimate interests in collecting and retaining your personal data is described below:

As a recruitment business and recruitment agency we introduce candidates to clients for permanent employment, temporary worker placements or independent professional contracts.  The exchange of personal data of our candidates and our client contacts is a fundamental, essential part of this process.

For us to support our candidates career aspirations and our clients resourcing needs we require a database and for this to remain relevant and therefore useful in meeting the needs and expectations of our clients and candidates it needs to contain both past and present information.

Consent

Should we want or need to rely on consent to lawfully process your data we will request your consent orally, by email or by an online process for the specific activity we require consent for and record your response on our system.  Where consent is the lawful basis for our processing you have the right to withdraw your consent to this particular processing at any time.

Other Uses we will make of your data:

• Use of our website;
• to notify you about changes to our service;
• to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.

 We will use this information:

• to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;

• to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;

• to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so;
• as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
• to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
• to make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our site about goods or services that may interest you or them.

Cookies 

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.

Disclosure of your information inside and outside of the EEA

We will share your personal information with:

Any member of our group both in the EEA and outside of the EEA.

Selected third parties including:

• clients for the purpose of introducing candidates to them ;
• candidates for the purpose of arranging interviews and engagements;
• clients, business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance and compliance obligations of any contract we enter into with them or you;
• subcontractors including email marketing specialists, event organisers, payment and other financial service providers
• analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site;
• credit reference agencies, our insurance broker, compliance partners and other sub-contractors for the purpose of assessing your suitability for a role where this is a condition of us entering into a contract with you.

We will disclose your personal information to third parties:

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of QED Legal LLP, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

The lawful basis for the third party processing will include:

• Their own legitimate business interests in processing your personal data, in most cases to fulfil their internal resourcing needs;
• satisfaction of their contractual obligations to us as our data processor;
• for the purpose of a contract in place or in contemplation;
• to fulfil their legal obligations.

Where we store and process your personal data   

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Retention of your data

We understand our legal duty to retain accurate data and only retain personal data for as long as we need it for our legitimate business interests and that you are happy for us to do so.

Your rights  

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes and we will collect express consent from you if legally required prior to using your personal data for marketing purposes.

You can exercise your right to accept or prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can exercise the right at any time by contacting our Data Protection Officer on lisa@qedlegal.com

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

The GDPR provides you with the following rights. To:

• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party in certain formats, if practicable.
• Make a complaint to a supervisory body which in the United Kingdom is the Information Commissioner’s Office. The ICO can be contacted through this link:  https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Access to information  

The Data Protection Act 1998 and the GDPR give you the right to access information held about you.  We also encourage you to contact us to ensure your data is accurate and complete.

 Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act (and the GDPR once it is in force). A subject access request should be submitted to lisa@qedlegal.com  No fee will apply once the GDPR comes into force.

Changes to our privacy notice  

Any changes we make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy notice.

Contact  

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy notice are welcomed and should be addressed to lisa@qedlegal.com who will respond within 30 days of receipt of your email. If you are not satisfied with the way in which your correspondence has been handled then you may refer your complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Their address is Head Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.