East Ayrshire Advocacy Services

Privacy Notice

Who are we?

At East Ayrshire Advocacy Services, we are committed to supporting people to be as independent as possible and to have choice and control over their lives. East Ayrshire Advocacy Services is the data controller. This means it decides how your Personal Data is processed and for what purposes. The processing of Personal Data is governed by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) data protection law.

Personal Data

Personal Data we collect includes details such as your name, postal and/or email address, date of birth, telephone number, any benefits you may receive and what legislation you may be subject to. You will have given us this information the first time we speak to you, or the person referring you to our service will have given it to us to enable us to contact you and provide advocacy support.

Sensitive Personal Data

UK GDPR data protection law recognises that some categories of Personal Data are more sensitive. Sensitive Personal Data can include information about a person’s health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. You, or the person referring you, may choose to provide details regarding your situation which are of a sensitive nature.

How do we process your data?

East Ayrshire Advocacy Services complies with its obligations under the UK GDPR by keep Personal Data up to date; by storing it and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; by protecting Personal Data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure, and by ensuring that technical measures are in place to protect Personal Data.

We use your Personal Data for the following purposes:

  • To enable us to provide independent advocacy services in East Ayrshire, as specified in our Memorandum and Articles of Association (Constitution);
  • To share information with other agencies involved in your situation, such as NHS and the local authority;
  • To administer referral records;
  • To manage our employees;
  • To maintain our own accounts and records;
  • To record monitoring and evaluation information for our funders;
  • To operate the East Ayrshire Advocacy Services website and deliver the services that individuals have requested.

What is the legal basis for processing your Personal Data?

In some cases, we will only use your Personal Data where we have your consent, such as responding to a request for information about our services. However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your Personal Data and one of those is called ‘legitimate interests’. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for East Ayrshire Advocacy Services to process your information to help us support you to be as independent as possible and to have choice and control over your life.

Whenever we process your Personal Data under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your Personal Data if we feel that there is an imbalance. Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your Personal Data are where we record information about your situation to enable us to provide advocacy support, to monitor and evaluate our services in line with the requirements of our funders, for our legal purposes (such as dealing with complaints), or for complying with charity legislation.

For employees of East Ayrshire Advocacy Services, the lawful basis for processing your Personal Data is due to legal obligations (for example, tax purposes), and contract purposes (for example, HR activities).

Sharing your Personal Data

Your Personal Data will be treated as strictly confidential, and will be shared only with other agencies involved in your situation (such as NHS and local authority) with your permission. All our advocates will respect your confidentiality unless there are extreme circumstances when they may have to speak to someone else in order to protect your safety or that of someone else. They would not do this without telling you.

We will never sell or share your Personal Data with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities.

Keeping your information safe

We take looking after your Personal Data very seriously. We’ve implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the Personal Data we have under our control from improper access, uses, alteration, destruction and loss.

How long do we keep your Personal Data?

We keep your Personal Data for no longer than reasonably necessary, for a period of 5 years after your case/referral is closed, in order for us to satisfy monitoring and evaluation requirements of our funders.

Your rights and your Personal Data

Unless subject to an exemption under UK GDPR data protection law, you have the following rights with respect to your Personal Data:

  • The right to request a copy of your Personal Data which East Ayrshire Advocacy Services holds about you;
  • The right to request that East Ayrshire Advocacy Services corrects any Personal Data if it is found to be inaccurate or out of date;
  • The right to request your Personal Data is erased where it is no longer necessary for East Ayrshire Advocacy Services to retain such data;
  • The right, where there is a dispute in relation to the accuracy or processing of your Personal Data, to request a restriction is placed on further processing;
  • The right to object to the processing of Personal Data where processing is based on legitimate interests;
  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Further processing

If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Privacy Notice, then we will provide you with a new notice explaining this new use prior to commencing the processing and setting out the relevant purposes and processing conditions. Where and whenever necessary, we will seek your prior consent to the new processing.

Cookies and our website

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. Your IP address will also be logged when you visit our website. Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies and this is done through the internet browser settings. To find out more about cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

Our website may contain links to other websites which you may choose to visit. This privacy notice applies only to the EAAS website. When you follow a link to another website, you should read their privacy notice.

Contact details

To exercise all relevant rights, queries or complaints please in the first instance contact our office on 01563 574442 or info@eaas.org.uk.

You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office by phone on 0303 123 1115, by email at scotland@ico.org.uk, or by post at the Information Commissioner’s Office, 45 Melville Street, Edinburgh EH3 7HL.

Last updated: July 2023