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    Privacy Policy

    Privacy Policy

    The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) will collect and process your data in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

    We are only entitled to hold and process your data where the law allows us to. The current law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons for which we may collect and process your personal data.

    The type of information we collect & why

    When you are initially referred to us or you self-refer we will store your information on our internal systems. The main purpose for our holding your data is to provide you with the right support based upon your circumstances. We may also need to process your data with partners organisations like our panel solicitors and process servers. This information will be provided to us by the initial referrer, a support worker or yourself.

    Under the UK general data protection regulation, the lawful basis we rely on processing this data is that we have a legitimate interest.

    The data we obtain will include contact information (address, email and telephone number), Identity information (first name, last name, marital status, gender, date of birth etc) and profile information (the personal reason why you are in contact with us and the circumstances leading to this).

    We may record telephone calls and we do this in the interests of offering a good service. If you opt out, we will not record the call.

    Your data continues to be processed on a legitimate basis however as directed by the courts or other parties we may additionally have a legal obligation to process your data.

    We utilise ‘Legitimate Interest’ as one of our core bases for processing personal data in compliance with UK GDPR regulations.

     

    In accordance with our data protection obligations, we have undertaken a legitimate interest assessment via a 3-step process:

     

    • Identifying a Legitimate Interest
    • Carrying out a Necessity Test
    • Carrying out a Balancing Test

     

    We have identified a clear legitimate interest in processing the personal data of data subjects that are likely to use our services. All the services provided by us have direct relevance to the data subject.

     

    This processing is considered as necessary in pursuit of the interests above. We have examined alternative legal bases but have concluded that Legitimate Interest is the only basis that allows us to deliver an effective, high quality service to our users. We have also conducted a balancing test to ensure that our interests do not override those of data subjects and conclude that the provisions have been met.

    Keeping your data safe

    NCDV take appropriate organisational and technological steps to ensure your data is secure and never processed without a lawful basis.

    How long do we keep your data

    We will keep the data we hold for you for a period of 60 months after which it will be securely erased or anonymised. We retain this data for this length of time for a number of reasons; on occasion we will help with an extension to an injunction that will increase the life of the original order. Holding these records will also help us to provide you and other authorised parties with updates and create a stronger application to the courts if your original order expires.

    Once our retention period has expired we may retain an anonymised record for statistical purposes. We do this to contribute to various campaigns regarding the issue of domestic abuse and to improve our services; no individual can be identified with these files.

    We will retain ASSIST documents in perpetuity to assist the police with domestic abuse related death reviews (previously known as Domestic homicide reviews).

    We retain police contact information when documents are downloaded from the Assist database.

    Third Parties

    We use third party service providers to help us to fulfil our engagements with you. We have joint data processor agreements in place with solicitors and Data Processer agreements with Process Servers.

    We will never sell your data and we will never knowingly provide your data to any organisation that will use it for marketing purposes.

    Marketing

    NCDV run a newsletter which provides valuable updates on our services and the issue of domestic violence. When making a referral you will be asked whether you wish to receive this. For us to provide this to you we will need to retain your email address. If you inform us that you wish to receive this and then change your mind you use the unsubscribe option on every newsletter.

    We use Mailchimp to run our referrers newsletter. Mailchimp store data outside of the European Union, they have committed to the US-Swiss Data Protection Frameworks and have embraced current European data protection regulations.

    Breaching confidentiality without approval

    On very rare occasions NCDV may be required to breach confidentiality without first obtaining your approval.

    If you or a third party are at high and immediate risk of serious physical harm or death. If we receive information that a child is being abused or neglected.
    If we receive a court order to do so. If we receive information relating to terrorist activities or a bomb threat. When a member of NCDV staff is threatened.

    Your data protection rights

    Under data protection law, you have rights including:

    • Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
    • Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate.
    • Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
    • Your right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

    You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights.

    You can exercise your rights by making  a request to [email protected]  and this request will be passed to our data administrator, we have one month to respond to you, although we will endeavour to be quicker than this in our response.

    We are registered with the Information Commissioner (ref: ZA350936).  Further information regarding data protection and privacy is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

     

    Cookies

    When you visit our website we may collect information to help us understand how victims and referrers use our site. This information can consist of which browser you are using, IP Address, the time of your visit and which pages you downloaded. We cannot use this information to find out other information about you and will not provide this to any third party unless we are required by law. We obtain this information using a cookie, a cookie is a small text file placed on your device. You can manage these manually using your browser settings.

    How to complain

    If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at [email protected]

    You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

    The ICO’s address:

    Information Commissioner’s Office

    Wycliffe House, Water Lane

    Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

    Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

    ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

    Last Updated: 11/03/24

    By Fiona Bawden, Times Online (8th May 2007)

    “Steve Connor, a student at City Law School, is a man on a mission. Six years ago he was a fairly directionless 27-year-old. Today, as well as taking the Bar Vocational Course, he is chairman of the National Centre for Domestic Violence, a ground-breaking organisation that he dragged into existence after a friend could not get legal help to protect her from an abusive partner.

    Connor’s route to the Bar has been circuitous. In 2001 he returned from a year in Australia (he says that he would not dignify describing it as a gap year), and took a job as a process server in South London. The job (“I just saw it advertised in the paper”) was not quite as dull as it sounds. On one occasion he was threatened with a machete, on another, he was nearly stabbed by a man he had arranged to meet on Clapham Common to serve with a non-molestation order: “He’d seemed really friendly on the phone…”

    The turning point in his life came when a friend, who was being abused by her partner, turned to him for support. Connor went with her to the police. She did not want to press criminal charges so the police suggested that she visit a solicitor to take out a civil injunction. “We must have seen 12 solicitors in a morning. We just went from one to the next to the next to the next. Everyone was very eager to help until we sat down to fill in the forms for the legal aid means test,” he says. The woman, who had a small child, did not qualify for public funding. But, Connor says, her financial situation as it appeared on paper did not bear any relation to her financial situation in reality. “She had a part-time job and she and her partner owned their home. Yet she didn’t have any money. Her boyfriend was very controlling and controlled all the money; he kept the chequebooks and didn’t let her have access to the bank account.”

    The injustice of the situation got under Connor’s skin. “I just couldn’t believe that there was no help available to people who did not qualify for public funds but could not afford to pay.

    I just kept feeling that this must be able to be sorted if only someone would address it.”That “someone” turned out to be him.

    In 2002, thanks entirely to Connor’s doggedness, the London Centre for Domestic Violence was formed. It started out with him and a friend, but is now a national organisation, covering 27 counties, and has helped approximately 10,000 victims last year to take out injunctions against their partners.

    NCDV now has nine full-time staff, 12 permanent volunteers and has trained over 5000 law and other students as McKenzie Friends to accompany unrepresented victims into court. We have also trained over 8000 police officers in civil remedies available regarding domestic violence. The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) has branches in London, Guildford and Manchester and is on track to have branches in 16 areas within the next two years.

    NCDV specialises exclusively in domestic violence work and could be characterised as a cross between McDonald’s and Claims Direct. The high degree of specialisation means that its processes are streamlined: clients can be seen quickly and the work is done speedily and cheaply. “Sometimes, we will have one of our trained McKenzie Friends at a court doing 10 applications in one day,” Connor says.

    Clients are not charged for the service. NCDV staff take an initial statement: clients who qualify for legal aid are referred to a local firm; those that don’t get free help from the centre itself. It runs on a shoestring, heavily reliant on volunteers and capping staff salaries at £18,000 a year.

    Steve expects to qualify as a barrister this summer and hopes that having a formal legal qualification will give the centre added clout. “We are already acknowledged as experts and consulted at a high level, so I thought it would be helpful if I could back that up by being able to say I’m a barrister,” he says. He is just about to complete a one-year full-time BVC course at the City Law School (formerly the Inns of Court Law School) and, all being well, should be called to the Bar in July. Although Connor sees his long-term future as a barrister, he says that he has no immediate plans to practise. “I want to get NCDV running on a fully national level. Then I may take a step back and have a career at the Bar.”