Privacy policy

Purpose

This privacy notice sets out the standards that you can expect from the Ministry of Justice and HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) when we process personal information (‘personal data’) about you in the context of Help with Fees applications; how you can get access to a copy of your personal data; and what you can do if you think the standards are not being met.

HMCTS is an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). MoJ is the data controller for the personal data held. HMCTS also collects and processes personal data for the exercise of its own and associated public functions and legal obligations.

This privacy notice does not apply to the processing of personal data which is collected and controlled by the court/tribunal and their judges when they are acting in their judicial capacity. The judiciary are independent from MoJ and HMCTS and data protection law applies differently to them as a result. For more information, see www.judiciary.uk/data-privacy-notices/data-privacy.

About personal data

Personal data is information that relates to a living individual who can be identified from the data.

It does not include information relating to dead people, groups or communities of people, organisations or businesses. It can be your name, address or telephone number. It can also include information about your gender, your financial circumstances, your cultural background or your social status.

We know how important it is to protect the privacy of all individuals involved in proceedings and to comply with data protection laws. We will safeguard your personal data and will only disclose it where it is lawful to do so, or with your consent.

Personal data that we collect

We collect the following data when you use this service:

• your full name
• your postal address
• your email address
• your National Insurance number
• your marital status
• your date of birth and that of your partner
• your partner’s full name
• your partner’s National Insurance number
• how much you and your partner have in savings and investments
• whether you receive qualifying benefits for Help with Fees
• the number and age of dependent children you have
• the number of dependent children you have
• the type and amount of total monthly income you and your partner receive
• If relevant, your Home Office reference number
• If relevant, the name and address of your Litigation Friend or the name, position, company and address of your Legal Representative

How we use your personal data

The legal basis on which we collect the data is for the administration of justice and, anonymously, for research and statistical purposes. We use your personal data to complete a claim for Help with Fees. Any email address you supply to us will be used by HMCTS to contact you with regards to your application. We may also use your details to contact you for research purposes or to prevent or detect fraud. Your personal data may be shared with Other Government Departments, specifically the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs, for the purpose of validating or assisting you in progressing your application.

This online service contains free-text fields in which you’re invited to enter certain types of information. This includes sensitive data such as, but not limited to, financial data. Please only enter the information specifically requested.

How we use non-personal data

Separately from the data entered by those using this service, we also collect site-usage data, which allows us to see how the service is being used in order to allow us to improve it. This data does not contain any personal data. See cookies for more information on how we collect of site usage data.

The service also offers the opportunity to provide feedback that helps us make targeted improvements. The feedback is anonymous and does not collect personally identifiable information (PII). The surveys contain free-text fields in which you’re invited to enter feedback. You should not enter sensitive data into these free-text fields, for example, financial data. There are also some questions such as age range and ethnic group. These questions are optional and are only used to better understand the feedback that we receive.

We’ll only ever collect data that will help us make the site work better for you; data that will let us contact you if you’ve asked us to, let us give you accurate data if you need it, and give us a sense of how people are using this service, so we can keep improving it.

It includes:

• questions, queries or feedback you leave, including your email address if you send a message via feedback
• your truncated IP address (with the trailing octet removed), and details of which version of web browser you used
• data on how you use the site, using cookies and page tagging techniques to help us improve the website

This helps us to:

• improve the site by monitoring how you use it
• respond to any feedback you send us, if you’ve asked us to
• provide you with information about local services if you want it

We cannot identify you personally using your site usage data.

To see how we use cookies, and to choose which cookies you're happy for us to use, see the cookies policy.

How your personal data is stored

MOJ takes data security very seriously and we take every step to ensure that your data remains private and secure. All data collected by this service and stored in our secure database is kept entirely within the United Kingdom. MOJ use the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to store your data. By submitting your data, you consent to the Microsoft Azure Terms and Conditions.

We will ask for your permission to use your email address to send you emails using GOV.UK Notify. This system processes emails only within the UK until the point where emails are handed over to the email provider you use.

We’ll never share your data with other organisations for their marketing, market research or commercial purposes, and we don’t pass on your personal data to any other websites.

Keeping your data secure

Transmitting information over the internet is generally not completely secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of your data. We do however use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption to encrypt all data transferred to and received from our server. We take data security very seriously and we take every step to ensure that your data remains private and secure. We have procedures and security features to try and keep your data secure once we receive it.

Disclosing your data

We may share your personal data if we have a legal obligation to do so.

Access to personal information

You can find out if we hold any personal data about you by making a ‘subject access request’. You can make a subject access request by emailing: data.access@justice.gov.uk.

You can get more details on:

• Agreements we have with other organisations for sharing personal data;
• Circumstances where we may share your personal data without telling you, for example, to help with the prevention or detection of crime or to produce anonymised statistics;
• Our instructions to staff on how to collect, use or delete your personal data;
• How we check that the personal data we hold is accurate and up-to-date;
• How to make a complaint.

For more information about the above issues or for any other queries, please contact our Data Protection Officer by emailing: DPO@justice.gov.uk.

Refer to GOV.UK privacy policy here.

Complaints

When we ask you for information, we will keep to the law. If you consider that your information has been handled incorrectly by MoJ or HMCTS, you can contact the Information Commissioner for independent advice about data protection. You can contact the Information Commissioner here:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113
www.ico.org.uk