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Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Policy tells you what will happen to any personal data that you provide to us as a result of using this website. The information is written for the benefit of general visitors to the website.  If following initial contact, you pursue a contractual relationship with us we will collect and process a wider range of personal data, you will be provided with a specific Privacy Notice during the engagement process.

Who We Are

  • Our Site is owned by Somek & Associates Ltd.
  • We do not have a Data Protection Officer
  • Our Data Protection Co-Ordinator is Richard Somek who can be contacted by:
    • Email: dataprotection@somek.com
    • Telephone: 01494 792711
    • Post: Somek & Associates Ltd, 9 Chess Business Park, Moor Road, Chesham, HP5 1SD

Personal Data You Provide

Your privacy is important to us. By providing personal information such as your name and e-mail address via the forms on this website, you agree to us contacting you with regard to the information provided.

Please see our page regarding our use of Cookies and similar technologies at https://www.somek.com/site/help/cookie_details.html

Upon use of our site we record certain data:

  • Information about how you use our site
  • Marketing preference
  • IP address
  • Web browser type and version
  • Operating system
  • URLs starting with a referring site, your activity on our site, and the site you exit to
  • Time zone settling and location
  • Other technology on the devices you use to access our site

Upon use of our Client Forms we record the following:

  • Name
  • Firm Name
  • Email
  • Telephone
  • Case reference number (if applicable)
  • Expert Type required
  • Comments
  • How you heard about us

Upon use of our Expert Form we record the following:

  • Name 
  • Profession
  • Qualification Year
  • Specialist Area
  • Location Description
  • Email
  • Telephone

How We Use Your Personal Data

We use the data you provide via this website to:

  • communicate with you, for example: we use contact details such as email address or phone number when responding to enquiries made via online forms
  • monitor website trends, for example: we use Google Analytics to help us aggregate traffic so we can monitor how the website is being used
  • operate our business more effectively, for example: we seek feedback and use this to help improve our service

We retain site visitor records for 90 days.

Your Rights

  • As a data subject, you have rights under the GDPR, which this Policy and our use of personal data have been designed to uphold.
  • If you wish to exercise any of the rights please contact us using the details provided in the above section "Who we are".
  • 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. 

Our "Lawful Reasons" For Processing Your Personal Data

The "General Data Protection Regulation" (GDPR) is the primary piece of legislation defining your rights over our processing of your personal information. The GDPR requires us to declare which of six "lawful reasons" we are relying on when we are processing your personal data: we operate on the basis of "consent" when sending newsletters (you won't get sent a newsletter unless you have explicitly opted in to receive one).... and we operate on the basis of "legitimate interest" when communicating with you in other ways (e.g. when responding to your enquiry).

How Long We Keep Personal Data

Personal data may be stored by the website for a period of up to 90 days after which time it is removed automatically.

Transfer of Personal Data

From time to time we may pass personal data such as your name and email address to other services that we use to send out newsletters and other communications (both electronic and print). However, your personal data will remain in the EU or countries considered by the EU to have equivalent policies such as Jersey, Guernsey, Switzerland, New Zealand and Canada. Companies based in the USA that have certified with the EU-US Privacy Shield programme are also considered to be permitted destinations by the EU (this includes popular US products like Gmail, DropBox and MailChimp).

Questions or Complaints

In the first instance we hope you will contact us directly with any questions or complaints (contact details are displayed prominently on this website). However, legal rights regarding privacy are the remit of the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and you will find more information about how to complain here: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Our Use of Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to monitor how our website is being used so we can make improvements. Our use of Google Analytics requires us to pass to Google your IP address (but no other information) - Google uses this information to prepare site usage reports for us, but Google may also share this information with other Google services. In particular, Google may use the data collected to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network. Related information: