Privacy Policy

Who we are

Sterling & Vance Solicitors LLP ("the firm", "we", "us") is a firm of solicitors with its registered office at 30 St Mary Axe, London EC3A 8EP, United Kingdom. For the purposes of UK data protection law, the firm is the data controller of the personal information described in this policy.

If you have any questions about this policy or about how we handle your personal information, you can contact us by email at enquiries@vancelegalchambers.com or by telephone on +44 (0)20 7946 0301.

Information we collect

We collect personal information in the following ways:

• Contact form and enquiries. When you contact us through this website, by email or by telephone, we collect the details you provide — typically your name, email address, telephone number and the details of your enquiry.
• Correspondence. We keep a record of correspondence between you and the firm, including emails and letters.
• Client-matter information. If you instruct us, we collect the information necessary to provide legal services on your matter. Depending on the nature of the work, this may include identity documents, financial information and information about other parties involved.

How we use your information and our lawful bases

We use personal information only where the law allows us to. The purposes and lawful bases on which we rely are:

• Responding to enquiries. We use your contact details and enquiry information to reply to you and to discuss whether we can assist. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interests in responding to people who contact the firm.
• Providing legal services. Where you instruct us, we use your information to carry out your instructions and administer your matter. Our lawful basis is the performance of our contract with you, or steps taken at your request before entering into that contract.
• Regulatory and anti-money-laundering obligations. We use identity and related information to comply with our professional, regulatory and anti-money-laundering obligations. Our lawful basis is compliance with a legal obligation.

Client confidentiality

Information you provide to us as a client is additionally protected by the solicitor's professional duty of confidentiality and, where applicable, by legal professional privilege. These protections operate alongside, and in addition to, data protection law.

Sharing your information

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for marketing purposes. We share personal information only:

• with service providers who support the operation of the firm, such as hosting and IT providers, who act on our instructions and are subject to appropriate obligations of confidentiality;
• with our regulators, where they are entitled to require it; and
• where we are required to do so by law, by a court order or by another obligation that applies to the firm.

Third-party services on this website

This website uses two third-party services provided by Google: an embedded Google Maps map on our contact page and the Google Fonts service, which supplies the typefaces used across the site. When your browser loads these services, Google may process your IP address and related technical information. Google's handling of that information is described in the Google Privacy Policy.

Cookies

This website does not set its own tracking or analytics cookies. Embedded third-party content, such as the Google Maps map on our contact page, may set cookies of its own; those cookies are controlled by the third party concerned, not by us.

Data retention

We keep personal information only for as long as it is needed for the purpose for which it was collected. Enquiry details that do not lead to an instruction are kept for a limited period and then deleted. Client files are retained after a matter concludes in line with our regulatory requirements and professional guidance, after which they are securely destroyed.

Security

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against loss, misuse and unauthorised access, alteration or disclosure. Access to client information within the firm is restricted to those who need it for the purposes described in this policy.

Your rights under UK GDPR

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation you have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

• Access — to ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• Rectification — to ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• Erasure — to ask us to delete your information in certain circumstances;
• Restriction — to ask us to limit how we use your information in certain circumstances;
• Objection — to object to our use of your information where we rely on legitimate interests; and
• Portability — to ask us to transfer information you have provided to you or to another organisation in a structured, machine-readable format.

Some of these rights are qualified — for example, our professional duty of confidentiality and legal retention obligations may limit the information we can delete. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at enquiries@vancelegalchambers.com or on +44 (0)20 7946 0301. We will respond within the timescales required by law.

Complaints to the ICO

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, we would ask that you raise it with us first so that we can try to resolve it. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or via its helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or in the law. The current version will always be published on this page, with the date of the most recent update shown at the top.