At Citizens Advice Plymouth, we collect and use your personal information to help solve your problems, improve our services and tackle wider issues in society that affect people’s lives.

We only ask for the information we need. We always let you decide what you’re comfortable telling us, explain why we need it and treat it as confidential.

When we record and use your personal information we:

• only access it when we have a good reason
• only share what is necessary and relevant
• ensure it is accurate and up to date
• only retain it for as long as necessary
• don’t sell it to anyone

We handle and store your personal information in line with the law – including the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018. You can check our main Citizens Advice policy for how we handle most of your personal information.

How we use your data for advice

This section covers how we use your data to provide you with advice.

For general advice and nationally funded advice programmes please see the national Citizens Advice privacy notice.

How Citizens Advice Plymouth collect your information

This will depend on which service you are accessing; for national services please see the national Citizens Advice privacy notice. If you contact our service directly, we will ask you for information about yourself to provide you with tailored advice.

If you have been referred to our Utilities services by your energy provider, with your permission we will access your account information so that we can effectively advise you. All other information would be provided by you directly during your contact with us. 

If you have been referred to our Local services by another organisation, they will provide some information to us about you and your enquiry with your permission. We have data sharing agreements in place with our partners to ensure this is done securely. All other information would be provided by you directly during your contact with us. 

What information we collect

We’ll only ask for information that’s relevant to your problem. Depending on what you want help with, this might include: 

• your name and contact details – so we can keep in touch with you about your case 
• personal information – for example about family, work, or financial circumstances, or if you’re vulnerable or at risk of harm 
• details about services you get that are causing you problems – like energy or post 
• details of items or services you’ve bought and traders you’ve dealt with 
• information like your gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation 

We occasionally ask for details about someone else like a neighbour or your partner so we can deal with an enquiry. We’ll only do this if we have a legitimate interest in the information, or we need it to protect someone’s life. 

If you don’t want to give us certain information, you don’t have to. For example, if you want to stay anonymous, we’ll only record information about your problem and make sure you’re not identified.  

However, we may be limited in the advice we can provide you without certain information, for instance, when advising on benefit eligibility and entitlement, we require details of any health conditions or disabilities. 

What we use your information for

The main reason we ask for your information is to help solve your problem.

We collect anonymised data to improve services, monitor trends, and meet funding requirements. Any data shared for research is anonymised to protect your identity. We process this under legitimate interests, ensuring opt-out options where consent is required– for example:

• for training and quality purposes
• to investigate complaints
• to get feedback from you about our services
• to help us improve our services

If you have any questions about how your information is collected or used, you can contact Citizens Advice Plymouth on DPA@citizensadviceplymouth.org.uk

National Citizens Advice covers their use of data for this purpose in their privacy notice.

Working on your behalf

When you give us authority to act on your behalf we may need to share information with relevant third party organisations. For example, when helping you with council tax issues we may need to share information with Plymouth City Council, or when helping you with issues regarding your benefits we may need to share information with the DWP or our partner organisation Improving Lives Plymouth.

We only share information with relevant organisations if we have received your permission to do so.

How Citizens Advice Plymouth store your information

The national Citizens Advice charity and your local Citizens Advice operate a system called Casebook to keep your personal information safe. This means they’re a ‘joint data controller’ for your personal information that’s stored in our Casebook system.

Each local Citizens Advice is an independent charity, and a member of the national Citizens Advice charity. The Citizens Advice membership agreement also requires that the use of your information complies with data protection law.

You can find out more about your data rights on the Information Commissioner’s website.

In addition, Citizens Advice Plymouth uses Microsoft 365 as its productivity suite. When using the Self Referral form our website, our policy is to minimize all data collected and we aim to transfer all personal information to Casebook during the course of your case.

Your personal information

When you provide us with personal information, for example, when using the email advice service, we take steps to ensure that your information is treated securely from the time we receive it. Citizens Advice Plymouth makes every effort to ensure the security and integrity of emails on our systems. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information after we’ve received it, Citizens Advice Plymouth cannot ensure or guarantee the security of information when it is being transmitted.

How long we keep you data for

Citizens Advice Plymouth (we) do not keep personal data for longer than required.

• We keep personal data only as long as the given purpose requires us to.
• Our standard retention periods are cited below for the main categories of data which we collect and wherever possible comply with documentation requirements.
• We periodically review the data held, and erase or anonymise it when we no longer need it.
• Our clients have a right to erasure if we no longer need or are required to hold it as deemed by law or the third party with whom we are engaging to help you resolve your problems, concerns or applications.
• We only keep personal data for longer if it is in the public interest, scientific or historical research, or statistical purposes.

Note

This privacy policy only covers this website www.citizensadviceplymouth.org.uk; other websites linked from this website are not covered by this policy. Once you have accessed another website via one of our links you will be subject to the security and privacy policy of that site.

Updates to this policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review to ensure it remains accurate and up to date.

The policy was last reviewed on 15/10/2025 to reflect changes to our lawful basis for processing data for advice purposes as well as improving the format of the policy.