Privacy Notice

Hillhouse  is Recognised as a Scottish charity. Charity no SC013482 registered in Scotland and having our registered office and principal place of business at 11 Hill Street, Kilmarnock,
KA3 1HA  (“Hillhouse” or “we”, “our” or “us”) is committed to protecting the security and privacy of all personal information or data collected from you. We therefore conduct our business in compliance with applicable laws on data privacy protection and data security. This privacy notice tells you what to expect when we collect and process your personal information.

We try to meet the highest standards when processing your personal information. The data controller who is responsible for how we handle your personal information is Hillhouse. Any queries you have in relation to the same should be directed to mairi@hillhousehelps.co.uk

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.

We may process certain types of personal data about you as follows:

• Identity Data may include your first name, maiden name, last name, username, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.

• Contact Data may include your billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.

• Financial Data may include your bank account and payment card details.

• Transaction Data may include details about payments between us and other details of purchases made by you.

• Technical Data may include your login data, internet protocol addresses, browser type and version, browser plug-in types and versions, time zone setting and location, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this site.

• Profile Data may include your username and password, purchases or orders, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.

• Usage Data may include information about how you use our website, products and services.

• Marketing and Communications Data may include your preferences in receiving marketing communications from us (and our third parties) and your communication preferences.

We may also process Aggregated Data from your personal data but this data does not reveal your identity and as such in itself is not personal data. An example of this is where we review your Usage Data to work out the percentage of website users using a specific feature of our site. If we link the Aggregated Data with your personal data so that you can be identified from it, then it is treated as personal data.

Sensitive Data

We do not collect any Sensitive Data about you. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us, and you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to deliver goods or services to you). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a product or service you have ordered but if we do, we will notify you at the time.

We collect data about you through a variety of different methods including:

• Direct interactions: You may provide data by filling in forms on our site (or otherwise) or by communicating with us by post, phone, email or otherwise, including when you:

• order our products or services;

• create an account on our site;

• subscribe to our service or publications;

• request resources or marketing be sent to you;

• enter a competition, prize draw, promotion or survey; or

• give us feedback.

• Automated technologies or interactions: As you use our site, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and usage patterns. We collect this data by using cookies, server logs and similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites that use our cookies. Please see our cookie policy below for further details.

• Third parties or publicly available sources: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
• Technical Data from third parties such as Google based outside of the EU. 
• Identity and Contact Data from publicly availably sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the EU.

We will only use your personal data for the purpose it was collected for or a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary. For more information on this, please email mairi@hillhousehelps.co.uk . If we need to use your details for an unrelated new purpose, we will let you know and explain the legal grounds for processing.

We intend to process your personal data for the following purposes:

We will retain your personal information for as long as is necessary in line with the purposes for which it was originally requested or collected or where we are required to do so for legal or reporting purposes. Namely:

• Where tax returns have been prepared it is our policy to retain information for two 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 one year from the date the business relationship ceased.
• Where we have an ongoing client relationship, data which is needed for more than one year's tax compliance (e.g. capital gains base costs and claims and elections submitted to HMRC) is retained throughout the period of the relationship but will be deleted one year after the end of the business relationship unless you as our client ask us to retain it for a longer period.
• Where we are required by law to keep records for six years after the end of the year in which the last transaction occurred. This means we are required to keep some information even though our relationship with you may have ceased.

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above:

• Other companies in our group who provide IT and system administration services and undertake leadership reporting.
• Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
• Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors, marketeers and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance, marketing and accounting services.
• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United Kingdom and other relevant jurisdictions who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
• Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.

We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.

Where third party service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA), we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission; or

• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or

• Where we use providers based in the United States, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US.

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

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 such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breaches and will notify you, and any applicable regulator, of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

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 requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

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

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further statement to you.

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to:

• Request access to your personal data.

• Request correction of your personal data.

• Request erasure of your personal data.

• Object to processing of your personal data.

• Request restriction of processing your personal data.

• Request transfer of your personal data.

• Right to withdraw consent.

You can see more about these rights at:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy statement of every website you visit.

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our Cookie Policy below.

Cookie Policy

What's a cookie?

A "cookie" is a piece of information that is stored on your computer's hard drive that records how you navigate your way around a website so that, when you revisit that website, it can present tailored options based on the information stored about your last visit. Cookies can also be used to analyse traffic and for advertising and marketing purposes.

Cookies are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system.

If you want to check or change what types of cookies you accept, this can usually be altered within your browser settings. You can block cookies at any time by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

How do we use cookies?

We use cookies to track your use of our website. This enables us to understand how you use the site and track any patterns with regards how you are using our website. This helps us to develop and improve our website as well as products and/or services in response to what you might need or want.

Cookies are either:

• Session cookies: these are only stored on your computer during your web session and are automatically

Deleted when you close your browser – they usually store an anonymous session ID allowing you to browse a website without having to log in to each page, but they do not collect any personal data from your computer; or

• Persistent cookies: a persistent cookie is stored as a file on your computer and it remains there when

you close your web browser. The cookie can be read by the website that created it when you visit that website again. [We use persistent cookies for Google Analytics.

Cookies can also be categorised as follows:

• Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are essential to enable you to use the website effectively, such

as when buying a product and / or service, and therefore cannot be turned off. Without these cookies, the services available to you on our website cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you have been on the internet.

• Performance cookies: These cookies enable us to monitor and improve the performance of our website.

For example, they allow us to count visits, identify traffic sources and see which parts of the site are most popular.

• Functionality cookies: These cookies allow our website to remember choices you make and provide

enhanced features. For instance, we may be able to provide you with news or updates relevant to the services you use. They may also be used to provide services you have requested such as viewing a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect is usually anonymised