This is the privacy policy of Ridge and Partners LLP (“Ridge”), a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales (number OC370344) whose registered office is at The Cowyards Blenheim Park, Oxford Road, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, OX20 1QR.

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This privacy policy explains what personal information we collect and how we will use it.

When do we collect personal information and what personal information do we collect 

We may collect the personal information about you as follows:

• If you contact us by any means (e.g. email or telephone), we may keep a record of that contact and information you provide to us at the time.
• If you appoint us to provide professional services, we may collect personal information from you in order for us to fulfil the performance of such services.
• If you request to be added to our marketing database (e.g. by signing up to our website), we will collect your name, the name of your organisation and email address and your preferences as to what types of marketing information you would like to receive from us.
• We may collect personal data relating to third parties in the course of providing professional services to our clients, including contact information, information relating to persons involved in the relevant project or transaction and contact details of suppliers or subcontractors of us or our clients.
• If you visit any of our offices, then we may collect images of you via the CCTV cameras positions outside our premises and/or in our reception area. More information about this is as set out in our CCTV policy which is available upon request.

Other information collected via our website and cookies

If you visit our website, we will collect information about your visit, namely the IP address, traffic data, location data and the resources that you access.

For more information about the cookies we use on our website, please see our cookie policy.

Links to other websites

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to other websites which may be of interest to you.  If you follow a link, please note that the other website will have its own privacy policy and you should check this before you submit any personal information to that website. We are not responsible for the content of other websites or their use of your personal information.

How do we use your personal information?

• If you visit our website, we will use your information about your visit to help us make our website experience as user-friendly as possible for as many visitors as possible on the basis that we have a legitimate reason to do so.
• If you contact us by any means (e.g. email or telephone), we use the information you provide to respond to your enquiry on the basis that we have a legitimate interest to do so.
• If you ask to be added to our marketing database, we will use the information you provide to send you information about our organisation and services in accordance with your stated preferences. You can stop receiving marketing information from us at any time as these communications provide easy ways to unsubscribe or update your preferences.
• Occasionally we may send marketing information to clients and contacts on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in doing so but any such communications we send to you will include easy ways to unsubscribe or update your preferences.
• If you appoint us to provide professional services, we will use the information you provide to carry out contractual obligations to you and to fulfil our legal obligations arising from such appointment. This may include sharing the information with trusted third-party suppliers we use to help us provide our services. Information will only be shared if we have adequate safeguards in place to ensure your information is kept confidential and secure and is only processed in accordance with our instructions.
• We will use any third-party personal data collected in the course of providing professional services on the basis we have a legitimate interest to do so, namely to carry out our contractual obligations to our client and to fulfil our legal obligations arising from such instructions.
• We will not use your personal information for any purpose not explained in this privacy policy, our terms of business and/or the privacy notices that apply to our staff, job candidates and work experience placements.

Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

How do we share your personal information

We may disclose your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share it in order to comply with any legal obligation (for example our auditors, our insurers or HMRC) or if we have a legitimate interest in doing so (for example if personal information about you is disclosed to us by or on behalf of a client and we need to disclose it to a third party to fulfil our contractual obligations to our client) or with your consent.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International Transfers

We may transfer your personal data to service providers that carry out certain functions on our behalf. This may involve transferring personal data outside the UK to countries which have laws that do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK law.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK to service providers, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring that the following safeguards are in place such as specific standard contractual terms approved for use in the UK which give the transferred personal data the same protection as it has in the UK

How long will we keep your personal information for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. For example, personal information collected for the purpose of invoicing or paying clients and suppliers will be retained for financial reporting purposes for a period of 7 years. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information.

Your Legal Rights

You have a number of rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal data in certain circumstances. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for that particular use of your data (including carrying out profiling based on our legitimate interests). In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.
• You also have the absolute right to object at any time to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in one of the following scenarios:

– If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy;

– Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;

– Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or

– You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Contact Details

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or about the use of your personal data or you want to exercise your privacy rights, please contact our DPO in the following ways:

• Email address: privacy@ridge.co.uk
• Postal address: The Cowyards Blenheim Park, Oxford Road, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, OX20 1QR
• Telephone number: 01993 815000

Complaints

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes 

We keep our privacy policy under regular review.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us, for example a new address or email address.