Bryars & Co Privacy Notice

Bryars & Co gathers and processes your personal information in accordance with this privacy notice and in compliance with the relevant data protection regulation and law. This notice provides you with the necessary information regarding your rights and obligations, and explains how, why and when we collect and process your personal data.  This notice and its contents are provided under the terms of the UK General Data Protection Regulation.
 
Bryars & Co of Cloverfield, Houghton Down, Stockbridge SO20 6JR act as the data controller in the collection, use, storing, protection and transfer of your personal information. The designated Appointed Person for the organisation is Martin Bryars, and can be contacted via email:  martin@mbryars.com or on 01264 513 040.

Information That We Collect

We process your personal information to meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations and to provide you with our services. We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and do not process your information in any other way than specified in this notice.

The personal data that we collect from you is:

• Name
• Date of Birth
• Nationality
• Home Address
• Personal Email
• Business Email
• Home Telephone Number
• Work Telephone Number
• Mobile Telephone Number
• National Insurance Number
• Passport Number and passport photo page
• Driver’s License Number
• Unique Tax Reference number
• Bank account details
• Any additional information required for Anti Money Laundering purposes

We also collect data to allow us to carry out our services to you and such information may include personal data such as bank or other financial statements, pension or benefit details and so on.  

We may use the information we hold to use electronic verification services for Anti Money Laundering purposes.

We collect information in the ways described below

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you or, in the case of new clients, by your previous accountant. When you contact us through our website, or by calling or e-mailing us, we may collect personal data such as your name, telephone number and e-mail address.

Additional personal data is usually collected through our initial meeting with you or through e-mail correspondence and through our secure client portal service through IRIS OpenSpace.  In particular, we collect data to enable us to know and identify you as a client (including company directors and partners who are not personal clients of Bryars & Co).  We also collect personal information to enable us to carry out our services such as preparation of tax returns and payrolls.

We may collect personal data from third party sources when carrying out anti-money laundering procedures.  We may also obtain personal data from HMRC in those cases where we are acting as authorised agent for you.

How We Use Your Personal Data

We take your privacy very seriously and will never disclose, share or sell your data without your consent, unless required to do so by law. We only retain your data for as long as is necessary and for the purposes specified in this notice. In general, we destroy data after seven years.  Where we consider that information or additional services may be of use to you, we may contact you with details through newsletters or direct e-mailshots, you are free to withdraw such consent to such contact at any time.

Your personal data will largely be held on electronic records at our place of business.  Back-ups of that data, and cloud services we use for tax, accounts and payroll purposes may be stored in the UK, the EEA or the USA.  where physical files are kept, the files are kept at our premises.

The purposes and reasons for processing your personal data are detailed below:

• We collect your personal data in the performance of a contract to provide a service to clients relating to their personal tax and business affairs
• We collect and store your personal data as part of our legal obligation for business accounting and tax purposes
• We collect and store your personal data as part of our procedures for knowing and identifying clients
• We have a legal obligation to share your personal data with HM Revenue & Customs when submitting returns prepared on your behalf
• We have a legal obligation to share your personal data with your personal pension provider or insurance provider where we are required to do so by law
• We have a legal requirement to share your personal data with the National Crime Agency where we are required to do so by law

We also process personal information for certain legitimate business purposes, including providing communications by post or otherwise which we think will be of interest to you. Whenever we process data for these purposes we will ensure that we always keep your Personal Data rights in high regard and take account of those rights.

Your Rights

You have the right to access any personal information that we process about you and to request information about: -

• What personal data we hold about you
• The purposes of the processing
• The categories of personal data concerned
• The recipients to whom the personal data has/will be disclosed
• How long we intend to store your personal data for
• If we did not collect the data directly from you, information about the source

If you believe that we hold any incomplete or inaccurate data about you, you have the right to ask us to correct and/or complete the information and we will strive to update/correct it as quickly as possible, unless there is a valid reason for not doing so, at which point you will be notified.

You also have the right to request erasure of your personal data or to restrict processing in accordance with the data protection law, as well as to object to any direct marketing from us and to be informed about any automated decision-making that we use.

If we receive a request for any of the above rights, we may ask you to verify your identity before acting on the relevant request; this is to ensure that your data is protected and kept secure.

Sharing and Disclosing Your Personal Information

We do not share or disclose any of your personal information without your consent, other than for the purposes specified in this notice or where there is a legal requirement. We use third-parties to provide the below services and business functions, however all processors acting on our behalf only process your data in accordance with instructions from us and comply fully with this privacy notice, the data protection laws and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

IRIS Open Space

We use IRIS OpenSpace to provide a secure File Sharing service for our clients. They provide a secure cloud based service where files are stored and can only be accessed by ourselves and the specific client to which they relate. Access is through password protection and IRIS themselves have no access to the files uploaded into the service.

For more information about IRIS OpenSpace, please read their Privacy Notice at https://www.irisopenspace.co.uk/

BrightPay Connect

We use the BrightPay Connect service to provide a secure File Sharing service for our payroll clients who wish to provide secure electronic payslips and forms P60 to their employees.  The service is a web based application hosted on the Microsoft Azure platform using servers in Ireland.  All data transmitted to and from the service is secured using SSL over HTTPS.  Payroll data is uploaded to, and stored in, the cloud in encrypted form using AES with a 256 bit key.  Access to the cloud service is protected by username and password. 

For more information about the BrightPay Connect service, please read their Privacy Notice at https://brightsg.com/en-gb/privacy-notice

Safeguarding Measures

We take your privacy seriously and take every reasonable measure and precaution to protect and secure your personal data. We work hard to protect you and your information from unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction and have several layers of security measures in place, including:

• To prevent unauthorised access, maintain accuracy, and ensure proper use of information, we have employed physical, electronic, and managerial processes to safeguard and secure the information we collect.
• All our employees and data processors who have access to, and are associated with the processing of personal data, are obliged to respect the confidentiality of our clients’ personal data.
• We use leading technologies and encryption software to safeguard your data, and set strict security standards to prevent any unauthorised access to it.

Consequences of Not Providing Your Data

You are not obligated to provide your personal information to us, however, as this information is required for us to provide you with our services, we will not be able to offer all, or probably any, of our services without it.

How Long We Keep Your Data

We only ever retain personal information for as long as is necessary and we have strict review and retention policies in place to meet these obligations. We are required under UK tax law to keep your personal data for a minimum of 6 years after we cease acting for you, after which time it will be destroyed.  Data kept on paper records is shredded either by ourselves or external commercial services.  Data kept electronically is deleted.  For ongoing clients, we generally destroy data after 7 years, but may keep certain data for longer periods, at our discretion, where we believe that it may be necessary for future use in connection with your tax affairs or where it is necessary for client identification.

Lodging A Complaint

We only process your personal information in compliance with this privacy notice and in accordance with the relevant data protection laws. If, however, you wish to raise a complaint regarding the processing of your personal data or are unsatisfied with how we have handled your information, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority.
 
Bryars & Co
Appointed Person: Martin Bryars
Cloverfield, Houghton Down, Stockbridge, SO20 6JR
Telephone: 01264 513 040
E-mail: martin@mbryars.com 
 
Supervisory Authority 
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
 
Changes to the Privacy Notice
 
This Privacy Notice may be changed by us at any time. 

This Privacy Notice was last updated on 23rd May 2023.