Privacy policy

Privacy Notice
Last Updated 22 January 2020

Beacon Insolvency Practitioners Limited and Beacon Licensed Insolvency Practitioners LLP T/A Beacon is dedicated to protecting the confidentiality and privacy of information entrusted to us in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK Data Protection Act 2018. Please read this Privacy Notice to learn about your rights, what information we collect, how we use and protect it.

We are committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

1. How do we collect personal data?

Directly - We obtain personal data directly from individuals in a variety of ways, including obtaining personal data from individuals who provide us with their business card(s), complete our online forms, attend meetings or events we host, visit our offices or for recruitment purposes. We may also obtain personal data directly when, for example, we are establishing a business relationship or performing professional services through a contract.

Indirectly - We obtain personal data indirectly about individuals from a variety of sources, including recruitment services and our clients. We may attach personal data to our customer relationship management records to better understand and serve our business clients and individuals, satisfy a legal obligation, or pursue our legitimate interests.

Public sources - Personal data may be obtained from public registers (such as Companies House), news articles, sanctions lists, and internet searches.

2. What categories of personal data do we collect?

We may obtain the following categories of personal data about individuals through direct interactions with us, or from information provided through client engagements, from applicants, our suppliers and through other situations including those described in this Privacy Notice.

Personal data - Here is a list of personal data we commonly collect to conduct our business activities:

Contact details (e.g., name, company name, job title, work and mobile telephone numbers, work and personal email and postal address).

Professional details (e.g., job and career history, educational background and professional memberships, published articles).

Family and beneficiary details for insurance and pension planning services (e.g., names and dates of birth).

Financial information (e.g., taxes, payroll, investment interests, pensions, assets, bank details, insolvency records).

Sensitive personal data. We typically do not collect sensitive or special categories of personal data about individuals other than our own employees. When we do need to process sensitive personal data from data subjects who are not our employees, it is either on the instructions of a third party, with the express consent of the individuals or as required by law. Examples of sensitive personal data we may obtain, or otherwise hold, include:

Personal identification documents that may reveal race, religion or ethnic origin, possibly biometric data of private individuals, beneficial owners of corporate entities, or applicants.

Expense receipts submitted for individual tax or accounting advice that reveal affiliations with trade unions or political opinions.

Adverse information about potential or existing clients and applicants that may reveal criminal convictions or offences information.

Information provided to us by our clients in the course of a professional engagement.

Location-based data. We may process geographical locations you enter when seeking an office near you.

3. What lawful reasons do we have for processing personal data?

We may rely on the following lawful reasons when we collect and use personal data to operate our business and provide our services:

Contract – We may process personal data in order to perform our contractual obligations owed to (or to enter into a contract with) the relevant individuals.

Consent - We may rely on your freely given consent at the time you provided your personal data to us.

Legitimate interests – We may rely on legitimate interests based on our evaluation that the processing is fair, reasonable and balanced. This may include:

Legal obligations – We may process personal data in order to meet our legal and regulatory obligations or mandates.

4. Why do we need personal data?

We aspire to be transparent when we collect and use personal data and tell you why we need it, which typically includes:

Providing professional advice and delivering reports related to our tax, advisory, audit and assurance, pension scheme administration, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions and other professional services. Our services may include reviewing client files for quality assurance purposes, which may involve processing personal data for the relevant client.

Promoting our professional services, products and capabilities to existing and prospective business clients.

Administering, maintaining and ensuring the security of our information systems, applications and websites.

Authenticating registered users to certain areas of our sites.

Processing online requests, including responding to communications from individuals or requests for proposals and quotations.

Contacting journalists regarding company press releases, highlighting messages that may be of interest on specific industry topics.

Travel arrangement assistance.

Complying with legal and regulatory obligations relating to anti-money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud and other forms of financial crime.

Compiling health and safety data (directly or indirectly) following an incident or accident. Indirect data can take many forms including an incident report, first aider report and witness statements.

5. Do we share personal data with third parties?

We may occasionally share personal data with trusted third parties to help us deliver efficient and quality services. These recipients are contractually bound to safeguard the data we entrust to them. We may engage with several or all of the following categories of recipients:

Parties that support us as we provide our services (e.g., providers of telecommunication systems, mailroom support, IT system support, archiving services, document production services and cloud-based software services).

Our professional advisers, including lawyers, auditors and insurers.

A potential buyer, transferee, merger partner or seller and their advisers in connection with an actual or potential transfer or merger of part or all of our business or assets, or any associated rights or interests, or to acquire a business or enter into a merger with it.

Payment services providers.

Marketing services providers.

Law enforcement or other government and regulatory agencies (e.g., HMRC) or to other third parties as required by, and in accordance with, applicable law or regulation.

Recruitment services providers.

6. How do we use cookies?

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website. You can also switch cookies off by using the tool located in the bottom left of the window.

7. What are your data protection rights?

Access – You can ask us to verify whether we are processing personal data about you, and if so, to provide more specific information.

Correction – You can ask us to correct our records if you believe they contain incorrect or incomplete information about you.

Erasure – You can ask us to erase (delete) your personal data after you withdraw your consent to processing or when we no longer need it for the purpose it was originally collected.

Processing restrictions – You can ask us to temporarily restrict our processing of your personal data if you contest the accuracy of your personal data, prefer to restrict its use rather than having us erase it, or need us to preserve it for you to establish, exercise, or defend a legal claim. A temporary restriction may apply while verifying whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to process it. You can ask us to inform you before we lift that temporary processing restriction.

Data portability – In some circumstances, where you have provided personal data to us, you can ask us to transmit that personal data (in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format) directly to another company if is technically feasible.

Right to Withdraw Consent – You can withdraw your consent that you have previously given to one or more specified purposes to process your personal data. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. It may mean we are not able to provide certain products or services to you and we will advise you if this is the case.

If you would like to exercise your Data Subject Rights, you can email info@beaconllp.com. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information or to exercise any of your other rights. This helps us to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. No fee is required to make a request unless your request is clearly unfounded or excessive. Depending on the circumstances, we may be unable to comply with your request based on other lawful grounds.

8. What about personal data security?

We have put appropriate technical and organisational security policies and procedures in place to protect personal data (including sensitive personal data) from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction.

We aim to ensure that access to your personal data is limited only to those who need to access it. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information.

We may apply pseudonymisation, de-identification and anonymisation techniques in efforts to further protect personal data.

If you have access to parts of our websites or use our services, you remain responsible for keeping your user ID and password confidential. Please be aware that the transmission of data via the Internet is not completely secure. Whilst we do our best to try to protect the security of your personal data, we cannot ensure or guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.

9. How long do we retain personal data?

We retain personal data to provide our services, stay in contact with you and to comply with applicable laws, regulations and professional obligations that we are subject to.

Unless a different time frame applies as a result of business need or specific legal, regulatory or contractual requirements, where we retain personal data in accordance with these purposes, we retain such personal data for seven years.

10. Do we link to other websites?

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

11. How do we control your personal information?

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.

You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998. A small fee will be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please write to:

Beacon LIP Limited
BizSpace Steel House
4300 Solent Business Park
Fareham
Hampshire
PO15 7FP

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to or email us as soon as possible, at the above address. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.

12. Do we change this Privacy Notice?

We regularly review this Privacy Notice and will post any updates to it on this webpage. This Privacy Notice was last updated on 22 January 2020.