Privacy and Cookies

Privacy

At Citizens Advice we collect and use your personal information to help solve your problems, improve our services and tackle wider issues in society that affect people’s lives.

We only ask for the information we need. We always let you decide what you’re comfortable telling us, explain why we need it and treat it as confidential.

When we record and use your personal information we:

Only access it when we have a good reason
Only share what is necessary and relevant
Don’t sell it to anyone.

At times we might use or share your information without your permission. If we do, we’ll always make sure there’s a legal basis for it. This could include situations where we have to use or share your information:

To comply with the law – for example, if a court orders us to share information. This is called ‘legal obligation’
To protect someone’s life – for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a client was unwell at our office. This is called ‘vital interests’
To carry out our legitimate aims and goals as a charity – for example, to create statistics for our national research. This is called ‘legitimate interests’
For us to carry out a task where we’re meeting the aims of a public body in the public interest – for example, delivering a government or local authority service. This is called ‘public task’
To carry out a contract we have with you – for example, if you’re an employee we might need to store your bank details so we can pay you. This is called ‘contract’
To defend our legal rights – for example, sharing information with our legal advisors if there was a complaint that we gave the wrong advice.

We handle and store your personal information in line with the law – including the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

You can check our main Citizens Advice policy for how we handle most of your personal information.

This page covers how we, as your local charity, handle your information locally in our offices.

You give your permission for us to collect your data by

Completing and signing a Client Permission and Consent Form, for example when visiting one of our offices
Sending us an email using one of the Contact Form on this website

To find out what information we ask for, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy.

To find out how we use your information, see our national Citizens Advice privacy policy.

When you give us authority to act on your behalf, for example to help you with a Universal Credit claim, we’ll need to share information with that third party.

Paper records are kept in locked cabinets at the Dorchester, Sherborne, North Dorset and Weymouth & Portland offices.

We also securely store information electronically.

We may share your information with third parties, partner organisations and funders for the services we deliver. We will obtain your explicit written or verbal consent to do this when you consult us about your problem.

The national Citizens Advice charity and your local Citizens Advice operate a system called Casebook to keep your personal information safe. This means they’re a ‘joint data controller’ for your personal information that’s stored in our Casebook system.

Each local Citizens Advice is an independent charity, and a member of the national Citizens Advice charity. The Citizens Advice membership agreement also requires that the use of your information complies with data protection law.

You can find out more about your data rights on the Information

Contact your local citizens advice office about your information

Please contact your local office if you would like to

Find out what personal information we hold about you
Correct your information if it’s wrong, out of date or incomplete
Request we delete your information
Ask us to limit what we do with your data – for example, ask us not to share it if you haven’t asked us already
Ask us to give you a copy of the data we hold in a format you can use to transfer it to another service
Ask us stop to using your information.

If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, please contact your local office.

Contact details and opening times for our offices and outreaches can be found on the Dorchester , Gillingham , Sherborne and Weymouth & Portland contact pages.

Cookie Policy

Any information that we collect through the use of cookies is completely anonymous and not personally identifiable. Our systems will not store your name, address, telephone number, or email address unless volunteered to us by you. This shall be treated as proprietary and confidential; we do not sell or share your details with any third parties. Additionally, none of the cookies we use gather any information that can be used to advertise services or products to you from our or any other website.

The law

The EU Cookie Law (The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2011) is a piece of privacy legislation that requires visitors to give consent before allowing a website to store or retrieve any information from any device through the use of cookies. By educating visitors on how information about them is collected through the use of cookies, and allowing them to decide for themselves if they wish to allow it to take place, the aim is to protect online privacy for everyone.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files, downloaded to your computer by the browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox etc.) whenever you access a website. They enable websites to store such information as user preferences and login details. They may also be used to record how long you spend browsing each page on a site or what pages you visit most. Cookies can be thought of as providing a “memory” for the website, enabling it to recognise you and respond appropriately. Generally, cookies are most beneficial to you, the visitor, making your interaction with frequently-visited sites smoother and easier than they would be without them.

How this website uses cookies

Website statistics

We use a third party service which creates its own set of cookies for the purpose of compiling a number of statistical reports. The information gathered is completely anonymous and is used to assess a wide variety of website activities, including how our site is navigated and what pages are most popular.

Social media

We may also use a number of third party, social media plug-ins including but not limited to Google’s ‘+1′ button, Facebook’s ‘Like Box’, Twitter’s ‘Follow Button’ and LinkedIn’s ‘Share’ and ‘Follow’ buttons. We use these services for the convenience of our visitors, allowing them to access up to the minute information as well as recommend our services to others.

To learn more about each organisations’ privacy policies, please visit the links provided below:

How to disable cookies?

By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of cookies as described above. However you can still disable cookies at a browser level if you wish although you may experience reduced functionality if you choose to do so.

The settings that decide how your browser handles cookies will typically be found in the ‘Options’ or ‘Preferences’ menu of your browser. In order to understand these settings, the following links may be helpful; otherwise you should use the ‘Help’ option in your browser for more details.

This cookies policy only covers centraldorsetca.org.uk and its subdomains.

Any websites we link to should have their own cookies policy.