APPENDIX A:
PRIVACY NOTICE issued by Chart Accountancy Limited
Introduction
The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) impose certain legal obligations in connection with the processing of personal data.
Chart Accountancy Limited is a data controller within the meaning of the GDPR, and we process personal data. The firm’s contact details are as follows:
Chart Accountancy Limited
5 Merchant Square, London
United Kingdom
W2 1AY
T: 0118 449 2321
Email: [email protected]
We may amend this privacy notice from time to time. If we do so, we will supply you with and/or otherwise make available to you a copy of the amended privacy notice.
Where we act as a data processor on behalf of a data controller (for example, when processing payroll), we provide an additional schedule setting out required information as part of that agreement. That additional schedule should be read in conjunction with this privacy notice.
The purposes for which we intend to process personal data
We intend to process personal data for the following purposes
- to enable us to supply professional services to you as our client
- to fulfil our obligations under relevant laws in force from time to time (eg the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLR 2017))
- to comply with professional obligations as an ACCA member.
- to use in the investigation and/or defence of potential complaints, disciplinary proceedings and legal proceedings
- to enable us to invoice you for our services and investigate/address any attendant fee disputes that may have arisen
- to contact you about other services we provide which may be of interest to you if you have consented to us doing so
- direct marketing – to conduct and analyse our marketing activities. To deliver timely market insights and speciality knowledge including tailor-made online experience we believe is welcomed by our business clients, subscribers and individuals who have interacted with us.
- monitor our IT systems – Prevent fraud or criminal activity and protect our IT systems.
- corporate responsibility – comply with our corporate and corporate social responsibility commitments.
Legal Basis for Processing
We are required to identify and verify our clients for the purposes of the UK anti-money laundering legislation. We cannot start work until this requirement has been met. We may request from you, and retain, such information and documentation as we require for these purposes and/or make searches of appropriate databases including ID verification software.
We rely on the following legal bases:
- Contractual necessity: Processing is required to provide our services
- Legal obligation: Processing is required to comply with law (e.g., MLR 2017)
- Legitimate interests: Processing is necessary for business operations, risk management, and service improvement
- Consent: For marketing communications or where required by law
Failure to provide requested personal data may prevent us from providing services.
What categories of personal data do we collect?
We may obtain the following categories of personal data about individuals through direct interactions with us, or from information provided through client engagements, from applicants, our suppliers and through other situations including those described in this Privacy Notice.
- Personal data. Here is a list of personal data we commonly collect to conduct our business activities.
- Contact details (e.g., name, company name, job title, work and mobile telephone numbers, work and personal email and postal address).
- Professional details (e.g., job and career history, educational background, professional memberships, and published articles).
- Family details tax planning and advisory services (e.g., names and dates of birth).
- Financial information (e.g., taxes, payroll, investment interests, pensions, assets, bank details).
- Special Categories of Personal Data. We typically do not collect special categories of personal data about individuals other than our own employees. In some circumstances it is necessary for Chart Accountancy to process special categories of personal data of our employees and other third parties. Other than where such personal data is made public by the individual themselves, such processing would only be undertaken as necessary for Chart Accountancy to exercise its rights and obligations as an employer (including for occupational health purposes), protect the vital interests of individuals, establish or defend legal claims or with the explicit consent of the individual(s) concerned. Examples of special categories of personal data we may obtain, or otherwise hold, include:
- Personal identification documents that may reveal race, religion or ethnic origin, biometric data of private individuals, beneficial owners of corporate entities, or applicants.
- Expense receipts submitted for individual tax or accounting advice that reveal affiliations with trade unions or political opinions.
- Adverse information about potential or existing clients and applicants that may reveal criminal convictions or offences information.
- Information provided to us by our clients in the course of a professional engagement.
- Health data where the processing is necessary to assess, monitor and control spread of infectious diseases and to provide a safe environment for our employees, clients, and suppliers.
- Child data. We may process personal data relating to children where this is necessary as part of providing our professional services, for example in relation to tax returns, payroll, or family-related tax matters.
In such cases, we only process children’s personal data where it is provided by a parent, guardian, or authorised client contact, and only where it is necessary for the purposes of the engagement.
- Location-based data. We may process general location information (such as country or city) derived from your use of our website for analytics and service improvement purposes.
How We Collect Personal Data
We collect personal data through direct interactions with clients, employees, suppliers and third parties, as well as through our systems, website, and publicly available sources.
Do we share personal data with third parties
We may occasionally share personal data with trusted third parties to help us deliver efficient and quality services. These recipients are contractually bound to safeguard the data we entrust to them. We may engage with several or all of the following categories of recipients:
- Parties that support us as we provide our services (e.g., providers of telecommunication systems, mailroom support, IT system support, archiving services, document production services and cloud-based software services).
- Professional advisers, including lawyers, auditors, and insurers.
- A potential buyer, transferee, merger partner or seller and their advisers in connection with an actual or potential transfer or merger of part or all of our business or assets, or any associated rights or interests, or to acquire a business or enter into a merger with it.
- Parties that support as with anti-money laundering, client conflicts and independence checks.
- Law enforcement or other government and regulatory agencies (e.g., Companies House, HMRC, NCA) or to other third parties as required by, and in accordance with, applicable law or regulation.
- Health government bodies and external service providers (health, facilities, estate management) to assess, monitor and control the spread of infectious diseases.
- Licensed insolvency practitioners (IPs)
- Payment and marketing services providers.
- Subcontractors
- Any third parties with whom you require or permit us to correspond
- An alternate appointed by us in the event of incapacity or death
- Professional indemnity insurers
- Our professional body ACCA and/or the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervisors (OPBAS) in relation to practice assurance and/or the requirements of MLR 2017 (or any similar legislation)
If the law allows or requires us to do so, we may share your personal data with:
- the police and law enforcement agencies
- courts and tribunals
- the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
- National Crime Agency (NCA)
We may need to share your personal data with the third parties identified above in order to comply with our legal obligations, including our legal obligations to you. If you ask us not to share your personal data with such third parties, we may need to cease to act.
The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
We may use AI to:
- Analyse data for service improvement
- Streamline operations
- Provide tailored content
All AI processing complies with applicable law, maintaining privacy, fairness, and transparency
Retention of personal data
When acting as a data controller and in accordance with recognised good practice within the tax and accountancy sector, we will retain all of our records relating to you as follows:
- Where tax returns have been prepared, it is our policy to retain information for seven years from the end of the tax year to which the information relates.
- Where ad hoc advisory work has been undertaken, it is our policy to retain information for seven years from the date the business relationship ceased.
- Where we have an ongoing client relationship, data that is needed for more than one year’s tax compliance (eg claims and elections submitted to HMRC) is retained throughout the period of the relationship, but will be deleted seven years after the end of the business relationship unless you as our client ask us to retain it for a longer period.
Our contractual terms provide for the destruction of documents after seven years and therefore agreement to the contractual terms is taken as agreement to the retention of records for this period, and to their destruction thereafter.
You are responsible for retaining information that we send to you (including details of tax computations and claims and elections submitted), and this will be supplied in the form agreed between us. Documents and records relevant to your tax affairs are required by law to be retained by you as follows:
Individuals
- with trading or rental income: five years and 10 months after the end of the tax year
- otherwise: 22 months after the end of the tax year.
Companies, and other corporate entities
- six years from the end of the accounting period.
Where we act as a data processor as defined in DPA 2018, we will delete or return all personal data to the data controller as agreed with the controller at the termination of the contract.
Requesting personal data we hold about you (subject access requests)
You have a right to request access to your personal data that we hold. Such requests are known as ‘subject access requests’ (SARs).
Please provide all SARs in writing marked for the attention of Teodora Dimitrova FCCA.
To help us provide the information you want and deal with your request more quickly, you should include enough details to enable us to verify your identity and locate the relevant information. For example, you should tell us:
- your date of birth
- previous or other name(s) you have used
- your previous addresses in the past five years
- personal reference number(s) that we may have given you, for example your national insurance number, your tax reference number or your VAT registration number
- what type of information you want to know.
If you do not have a national insurance number, you must send a copy of:
- the back page of your passport or a copy of your driving licence and
- a recent utility bill.
DPA 2018 requires that we comply with a SAR promptly and in any event within one month of receipt. There are, however, some circumstances in which the law allows us to refuse to provide access to personal data in response to a SAR (eg if you have previously made a similar request and there has been little or no change to the data since we complied with the original request).
We will not charge you for dealing with a SAR.
You can ask someone else to request information on your behalf – for example, a friend, relative or solicitor. We must have your authority to respond to a SAR made on your behalf. You can provide such authority by signing a letter that states that you authorise the person concerned to write to us for information about you and/or receive our reply.
Where you are a data controller and we act for you as a data processor (eg by processing payroll), we will assist you with SARs on the same basis as is set out above.
Do we transfer your personal data outside the UK or European Economic Area (EEA)?
We store personal data on servers located in the UK and EEA. We may transfer personal data to reputable third-party organisations situated inside or outside the UK and EEA when we have a business reason to engage these organisations. Each organisation is required to safeguard personal data in accordance with our contractual obligations and data protection legislation.
Putting things right (the right to rectification)
You can ask us to correct our records if you believe they contain incorrect or incomplete information about you. You also have a right to have any incomplete personal data that we hold about you completed. Should you become aware that any personal data that we hold about you is inaccurate and/or incomplete, please inform us immediately so we can correct and/or complete it.
Deleting your records (the right to erasure)
In certain circumstances, you have a right to have the personal data that we hold about you erased. Further information is available on the ICO website (ico.org.uk). If you would like your personal data to be erased, please inform us immediately and we will consider your request. In certain circumstances, we have the right to refuse to comply with a request for erasure. If applicable, we will supply you with the reasons for refusing your request.
The right to restrict processing and the right to object
In certain circumstances, you have the right to ‘block’ or suppress the processing of personal data or to object to the processing of that information. Further information is available on the ICO website (ico.org.uk). Please inform us immediately if you want us to cease to process your information or you object to processing so that we can consider what action, if any, is appropriate.
Obtaining and reusing personal data (the right to data portability)
In certain circumstances, you have the right to be provided with the personal data that we hold about you in a machine-readable format, eg so that the data can easily be provided to a new professional adviser. Further information is available on the ICO website (ico.org.uk).
The right to data portability only applies:
- to personal data an individual has provided to a controller
- where the processing is based on the individual’s consent or for the performance of a contract
- when processing is carried out by automated means.
We will respond to any data portability requests made to us without undue delay and within one month. We may extend the period by a further two months where the request is complex or a number of requests are received but we will inform you within one month of the receipt of the request and explain why the extension is necessary.
Withdrawal of consent
Where you have consented to our processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Please inform us immediately if you wish to withdraw your consent.
Please note:
- the withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing
- if you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to continue to provide services to you
- even if you withdraw your consent, it may remain lawful for us to process your data on another legal basis (eg because we have a legal obligation to continue to process your data).
Right to Object to Direct Marketing including Profiling
You can object to our use of your personal data for direct marketing purposes, including profiling. We may need to keep some minimal information to comply with your request to cease marketing to you.
Automated decision-making
You can ask us to review any decisions made about you which we made solely based on automated processing, including profiling, which produced legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affected you.
What about personal data security?
We have put appropriate technical and organisational security policies and procedures in place to protect personal data (including sensitive personal data) from loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction. We aim to ensure that access to your personal data is limited only to those who need to access it. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information. We may apply pseudonymisation, de-identification and anonymisation techniques in efforts to further protect personal data.
If you have access to parts of our websites or use our services, you remain responsible for keeping your user ID and password confidential. Please be aware that the transmission of data via the Internet is not completely secure. Whilst we do our best to try to protect the security of your personal data, we cannot ensure or guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.
Complaints
If you have requested details of the information we hold about you and you are not happy with our response, or you think we have not complied with the GDPR or DPA 2018 in some other way, you can complain to us. Please send any complaints to .
FAO: Teodora Dimitrova FCCA
Chart Accountancy Limited
5 Merchant Square, London
United Kingdom
W2 1AY
If you are not happy with our response, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the ICO (ico.org.uk).