Aurora Family Mediation is committed to processing your data securely and transparently in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This privacy notice sets out the types of data that we hold on you as a user of our service, how we use that information, how long we keep it for and other relevant information about your data.

1. Data controller details

Aurora Family Mediation is a data controller, meaning that it determines the processes to be used when using your personal data. Our contact details are: Nicolette Zarka, Aurora Family Mediation, 7 Paynes Park Hitchin Hertfordshire SG5 1EH.

2. Data protection principles

In relation to your personal data, we will:

• process it fairly, lawfully and in a clear, transparent way
• collect your data only for justifiable reasons in ways that have been explained to you

• only use it in the way that we have told you
• ensure it is correct and up-to-date
• keep your data for only as long as we need it

• process it in a way that ensures it will not be used for anything that you are not aware of or have consented to (as appropriate), lost or destroyed

3. Types of data we process

Our mediation clients (and prospective mediation clients) provide us directly with almost all the data we process.

 

The only exceptions are;

• when data is provided by solicitors or some other professionals (at the clients’ request or with their consent)
• when someone who is interested in resolving an issue by mediating provides us with an email address or other contact information so that we can offer the other person a meeting to explore whether mediation might be a good way forward.

4. Why we process your data

The law on data protection allows us to process your data for certain reasons only:

• in order to perform a contract that we are party to
• in order to carry out legally required duties
• in order for us to carry out our legitimate interests
• to protect your interests and
• where something is done in the public interest
  
  

All of the processing carried out by us falls into one of the permitted reasons.

4.1 People who use our services:

Aurora Family Mediation offers family mediation; We collect information, including your personal data, so that we deal effectively with your case or query. We only collect information that is relevant to the service that we are providing; this may include your name, address, telephone(s) or email address.

 

During mediation you may also provide information about your family or financial circumstances or information relating to any current or previous legal proceedings concerning you and your family.

 

If you contact us with an enquiry, we will process the correspondence about the enquiry and the contact details you provided only for the purpose of answering that enquiry.

 

The legal basis we rely on to process your personal data is because it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests. We do not share any information with third parties unless

• We consider a child to be at significant risk of harm
• You have agreed to a referral to a third party eg independent financial adviser.

 

Sometimes you may provide information which is classed as ‘special category data’ in the course of using our services. The legal basis we rely on to process any information you may provide requires us to seek your specific consent. Please see section 5 ‘Special Categories of Personal Data’ below for more information.

4.2 Visitors to our website:

When you use our website we may collect the following information about you in addition to any information you may provide in order for us to deal with your enquiry or manage your case:

 

Technical information including IP address, operating system, browser type and related information regarding the device you used to visit the website, the length of your visit and your interactions with the website. This enables us to maintain and monitor the performance of our website and to improve the site and the services it offers to our users.

 

We may monitor your use of the website through ‘cookies’ and similar tracking technologies. We may also monitor traffic, location and other data and information about users of the Website. However, some of this data will be aggregated or statistical, which means that we will not be able to identify you individually.

 

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that is downloaded on to your computer when you visit a website. Cookies are used by many websites and can do a number of things, e.g. remembering your preferences, recording what you have put in your shopping basket, and counting the number of people looking at a website.

 

We do not disclose aggregated, anonymous information (i.e. information from which you cannot be personally identified), or insights based on such anonymous information, to third parties except to assist us in the improvement and optimisation of the website. We do not disclose any information which can identify you personally.

 

The legal basis we rely on to process your personal data is because it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests.

4.3 Subscribers to our e-bulletin:

Our purpose for collecting the information is so we can provide you with a service and let you know about upcoming events and developments in our field of work. We collect your name and email address, we use this information only to provide the service to you.

 

The legal basis we rely on for processing your personal data is your consent.

4.4. People who make a complaint:

If you make a complaint about AURORA FAMILY MEDIATION, we need to process your personal data in order to progress your complaint. We collect information that is relevant to the issues that you have raised and to enable us to investigate and resolve matters. This may include your name, address, telephone number or email address. It will also include information about the nature and background of your complaint and any correspondence with you about the complaint.

 

The legal basis we rely on to process your personal data is because it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests.

5. Special categories of data

Special categories of data are data relating to your:

• health
• sex life
• sexual orientation
• race and ethnic origin
• political opinion
• religion.

 

We must process special categories of data in accordance with more stringent guidelines, mainly when one of the following alternatives applies:

• you have given explicit consent to the processing
• we must process the data in order to carry out our legal obligations
• we must process data for reasons of substantial public interest
• you have already made the data public.

 

We will use your special category data:

• to provide our services to you

 

We do not need your consent if we use special categories of personal data in order to carry out our legal obligations. However, we may ask for your consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If this occurs, you will be made fully aware of the reasons for the processing. As with all cases of seeking consent from you, you can decide whether to give or withhold consent and, if given, you may withdraw it at any time without any adverse consequences.

6. Criminal conviction data

We will only collect criminal conviction data where it is appropriate given the nature of the services we are providing and where the law permits us. This may for instance be where information is relevant to your discussions in mediation.

We rely on the lawful basis of consent to process this data.

7. If you do not provide your data to us

If you do not provide us with the personal data we need, we may not be able to provide you with some or all of our services. For instance we cannot offer legally aided mediation if you do not provide financial information such as payslips or bank statements to enable us to complete the application form.

8. Protecting your data

We take the security of your data seriously and have internal processes to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.

9. How long we keep your data for

In line with data protection principles, we only keep your data for as long as it is necessary, which will be at least for the duration of us providing services to you. In some cases we will keep your data for a period after we have provided our services where there is a legal obligation for us to do so.

• Mediation Services: 6 years after we close your file for a full mediation and one year for an initial meeting unless it is a legal aid matter in which case it would be stored for 6 years.
• Visitors to our website: indefinite

10. Automated decision making

No decision will be made about you solely on the basis of automated decision making (where a decision is taken about you using an electronic system without human involvement) which has a significant impact on you.

11. Your rights in relation to your data

The law on data protection gives you certain rights in relation to the data we hold on you. These are:

• The right to be informed. i.e. we must tell you how we use your data, and this is the purpose of this privacy notice
• The right of access. i.e. to the data that we hold on you. To do so, you should make a subject access request as outlined in our Subject Access Request policy
• The right for any inaccuracies to be corrected. You can ask us to correct any data which is incomplete or inaccurate
• The right to have information deleted. You can ask us to delete data from our systems where you believe there is no reason for us to continue processing it
• The right to restrict the processing of the data. e.g. if you believe the data we hold is incorrect, we will stop processing the data (whilst still holding it) until we have ensured that the data is correct
• The right to portability. You may transfer the data that we hold on you for your own purposes
• The right to object to the inclusion of any information. i.e. object to the way we use your data where we are using it for our legitimate interests
• The right to regulate any automated decision-making and profiling of personal data. i.e. not to be subject to automated decision making in way that adversely affects your legal rights.

 

Where you have provided consent to our use of your data, you also have the unrestricted right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent means that we will stop processing the data that you had previously given us consent to use and may also mean that we are unable to continue providing our services to you. In some cases we may continue to use the data where we have a legitimate reason for doing so.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights explained above, please contact Nicolette Zarka at Aurora family mediation on info@aurorafamilymediation.com

12. Making a complaint

The supervisory authority in the UK for data protection matters is the Information Commissioner (ICO). If you think your data protection rights have been breached in any way by us, you are able to make a complaint to the ICO.