Privacy Policy

This privacy policy is for this website; www.sarahbentleysolicitors.co.uk and served by Sarah Bentley Solicitors, 1 Mead Way, Ribble Court Padiham, BB12 7NG and governs the privacy of its users who choose to use it. It explains how we comply with the UK GDPR (UK General Data Protection Regulation), the DPA (Data Protection Act) and the PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations).

This policy will explain areas of this website that may affect your privacy and personal details, how we process, collect, manage and store those details and how your rights under the UK GDPR, DPA & PECR are adhered to. Additionally, it will explain the use of cookies or software, advertising or commercial sponsorship from third parties and the download of any documents, files or software made available to you (if any) on this website. Further explanations may be provided for specific pages or features of this website to help you understand how we, this website and its third parties (if any) interact with you and your computer / device to serve it to you. Our contact information is provided if you have any questions.

The DPA & UK GDPR

We and this website complies to the DPA (Data Protection Act 2018) and to the UK GDPR (UK General Data Protection Regulation)

Use of Cookies

This website uses cookies to better the users experience while visiting the website. As required by legislation, where applicable this website uses a cookie control system, allowing the user to give explicit permission or to deny the use of and saving of cookies on their computer/device.

What are Cookies?

Cookies are small files saved to the user's computer's hard drive that track, save and store information about the user's interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website.

Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this website on to their computers hard drive they should take necessary steps within their web browsers security settings to block all cookies from this website and its external serving vendors or use the cookie control system if available upon their first visit.

Visitors to Our Websites

When someone visits www.sarahbentleysolicitors.co.uk we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.

Downloads & Media Files

Any downloadable documents, files or media made available on this website are provided to users at their own risk. While all precautions have been undertaken to ensure only genuine downloads are available users are advised to verify their authenticity using third party antivirus software or similar applications.

We accept no responsibility for third party downloads and downloads provided by external third-party websites and advise users to verify their authenticity using third party anti-virus software or similar applications.

Contact & Communication With Us

Users contacting us through this website do so at their own discretion and provide any such personal details requested at their own risk. Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until a time it is no longer required or has no use.

Where we have clearly stated and made you aware of the fact, and where you have given your express permission, we may use your details to send you products/services information through a mailing list system. This is done in accordance with the regulations named in 'The policy' above.

External Website Links & Third Parties

Although we only look to include quality, safe and relevant external links, users are advised to adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this website.

Shortened URL's; URL shortening is a technique used on the web to shorten URL's (Uniform Resource Locators) to something substantially shorter. This technique is especially used in social media and looks like this (example: http://bit.ly/zyVUBo). Users should take caution before clicking on shortened URL links and verify their authenticity before proceeding.

We cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite our best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk, and we cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Social Media Policy & Usage

We adopt a Social Media Policy to ensure our business and our staff conduct themselves accordingly online. While we may have official profiles on social media platforms users are advised to verify authenticity of such profiles before engaging with or sharing information with such profiles. We will never ask for user passwords or personal details on social media platforms. Users are advised to conduct themselves appropriately when engaging with us on social media.

There may be instances where our website features social sharing buttons, which help share web content directly from web pages to the respective social media platforms. You use social sharing buttons at your own discretion and accept that doing so may publish content to your social media profile feed or page.

Complaints or Queries

We try to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. We take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our procedures.

If you want to make a complaint about the way we have processed your personal information, you can contact our Data Protection Officer, Trish Hassell, by telephone on 01282 729808, by email to thassell@sarahbentleysolicitors.co.uk or in writing to Trish Hassell, 1 Mead Way, Ribble Court Padiham, BB12 7NG.

Access to Personal Information

We try to be as open as we can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a 'subject access request' under the Data Protection Act 2018. If we do hold information about you, we will:

  • give you a description of it.
  • tell you why we are holding it.
  • tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
  • let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

To make a request for any personal information that we may hold about you, or to ask us to correct any mistakes in the data we hold about you, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Trish Hassell, using the contact details below.

Disclosure of Personal Information

In many circumstances we will not disclose personal data without consent. However, when we investigate a complaint, for example, we will need to share personal information with the organisation concerned and with other relevant bodies, such as the SRA or Legal Ombudsman.

You can also get further information on:

  • agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information.
  • circumstances where we can pass on personal data without consent for example, to prevent and detect crime and to produce anonymised statistics.
  • our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete personal data; and
  • how we check that the information we hold is accurate and up to date.
Changes to This Privacy Notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated on 3rd May 2023.

How to Contact Us

If you want to request information about our privacy policy, you can telephone us on 01282 792808, email us at office@sarahbentleysolicitors.co.uk or write to:

Sarah Bentley Ltd
1 Mead Way
Ribble Court
Padiham
Lancashire
BB12 7NG