Privacy Policy

Who we are:

SARAC is a charity authorised and regulated by the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

The information we use and where we get it from:

SARAC is committed to providing a confidential service to its clients.

Most of the information about you, that we process, will have been provided by you. We also process information about you, when we talk to other statutory agencies on your behalf and with your explicit consent.

We only collect the minimum amount of data that we need, to offer an effective service. We process various categories of personal information such as contact details and information about housing, employment, benefits, immigration, finance and relationships. All of the information is relevant to the services that we access on your behalf.

We are counsellors so we may process certain special categories of information, such as information about health and criminal convictions. We also process data for our funders about your age, gender, which ethnic group you belong to and if you have any disabilities. These special types of information are counted for statistical purposes to ensure compliance with the Equality Act 2010.

We also process personal information about our staff. This information is processed on the basis of contractual requirements or our legitimate interests to manage our human resources.

You are able to leave messages on our telephone systems. Those messages will include your personal information.

How we use your information:

We use client information, on the basis of consent, to primarily enable us to offer our support services. At our first meeting, we will obtain your permission to contact you, so that we may advise you or keep you informed about the status of advice, that we are giving to you.

With regard to our employee personal data, the legal basis we rely on for processing your personal data, is processing necessary for the performance of a contract or to take steps, before entering a contract.

All personal data is processed entirely within the EEA.

Sharing your information:

Our clients receive a confidential service and we take that commitment very seriously, so nothing that you tell us will be shared with any other organisation or individual without your express permission.

We use third parties to provide specific services for us. They act as data processors on our behalf and we have written contracts in place with them. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. They will not share your personal information with any organisation apart from us. They will hold it securely and retain it for the period we instruct.

How long we will keep your information:

We retain our client’s personal data for a period of six years beyond the end of the support relationship.

Human resource data will be kept for 4 years after the employee leaves the organisation. Personal information supplied as part of job applications will be kept for one year before it is destroyed.

Your telephone messages are usually deleted after the message has been retrieved. This is usually 24-48 hours but could be up to 3 weeks, if the office is closed for the Christmas holidays.

Security:

As part of our data protection responsibilities, we have implemented appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure that your information is kept secure and confidential.

Your rights:

You have certain legal rights to control what we do with your information. You have the right to get access to your information; to request that we correct or update your information; to object about or request that we restrict processing your data in some circumstances and to receive your information in a portable format. You also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time or to request that we delete your information.

You should understand that exercising your rights could mean that we are no longer able to provide you with access to our services. If you withdraw your consent, it will not affect the lawfulness of processing that took place prior to the withdrawal.

If you think we have breached your rights, in any way then, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.  They can be contacted via their website at www.ico.org.uk or by telephoning their helpline on 0303 123 1113.