We are committed to protecting your privacy.

 

Privacy Notice

 

Introduction

West Dunbartonshire CAB (also referred to as ‘the Bureau’, ‘we’, ’our’, or ‘us’) is the Data Controller for any personal data we process about you for the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice. Our ICO registration number is Z7469524.

This Privacy Notice describes how we collect and process the personal data of people who engage with our Bureau (this notice does not cover personal data we process about our staff, workers, trustees, volunteers, supporters, or donors). It also explains people’s rights and how to contact us - Please send any questions about how we use personal information to gareth@wdcab.co.uk.

 

About Us

Citizens Advice Bureaux in Scotland along with Citizens Advice Scotland form Scotland’s largest independent advice network. We are charities working and our advice is free, independent, confidential and impartial. We also advocate for changes to legislation and social policy that will improve people’s circumstances locally and across Scotland.

West Dunbartonshire Citizens Advice Bureau is a member of the Scottish Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (operating as Citizens Advice Scotland or CAS), a network of independent Citizens Advice Bureaux. We use a case management system called CASTLE and are Joint Controllers for the personal data held on systems managed by CAS. You can find more information on the CAS Privacy Notice.

 

Information we collect about you

Personal data is any information that identifies or relates to a specific person. This may include:

• Personal details such as name, contact information, and date of birth
• Details about your enquiry
• Information about your circumstances such as financial circumstances, benefits you receive, employment and housing status
• Demographics data that you provide us with
• If you have agreed to be contacted for feedback or communications
• Personal data of people in your household, for example, if you have children or are a carer
• If someone is seeking advice on your behalf, we may collect their details too
• Details of your donation, if you donate to us  

We may also collect special category data or other sensitive information when necessary:

• information that may inform the advice we provide, such as health conditions
• Demographics data that you provide us with
• criminal activity data that may inform the advice and support we provide 

If you do not want us to keep a record of the advice we provide, we can help you as best we can, but advice will be limited and general rather than specific to your circumstances.

 

How we collect your information

We may collect your information:

• When you contact us including in person, by phone, videocall, webchat, email, letter or through our website
• From systems we use to support our work, such as appointment booking systems
• When you, or a third party, provides us with documentation
• From an organisation that referred you
• From someone acting on your behalf
• When you complete a survey or provide us feedback
• on any CCTV when you attend our premises
• via cookies on our website (see Appendix 1)
• when you make a donation to us, including through fundraising sites, such as JustGiving

We use social media to raise awareness of our services and promote our impact, and we are occasionally contacted this way with queries. To protect your personal information, we encourage you to contact us via other methods and we will seek agreement from you to transfer your personal information from social media to our systems.

 

How we use your information

We may use your information to:

• Contact you to support with your enquiry and explain how we can help
• Keep a record of our conversations and actions to inform your advice and support needs
• Support you in accessing our services, such as through British Sign Language or interpretation services
• Keep records for audit, standards, and insurance purposes
• Share information with other organisations, such as for referrals
• Report statistics or anonymised case studies to funders
• Develop and improve our services
• Manage donations
• Send communications
• Ask for your feedback on our services 

We may also use your data to monitor the issues that are impacting the people we help. This informs our work advocating for changes to legislation and social policy. We do this through data analysis; however, we may use your experiences to inform our case studies. These will be anonymised. Occasionally we may ask to share your story to bring awareness to an issue, we will only do this when you have given consent.

 

Our lawful basis for using your information

We only process your personal data when there is a lawful basis for us doing so. We may rely upon:

• legitimate interests, such as for maintaining records of advice and support, to defend legal claims, and to maintain a high-quality service
• public task, when we are delivering a statutory service
• legal obligation, when we need to process your data to meet a legal obligation
• your consent, such as when we contact you for feedback or refer you to another support organisation

Where we process special category data (such as health information), we may rely upon:

• substantial public interest conditions
• defence of legal claims
• archiving, research and statistics
• your explicit consent

When relying on substantial public interest conditions in Schedule 1 Part 2 of the DPA 2018 we are required to have an Appropriate Policy Document in place.

 

Who we share your information with

We only share your personal data when necessary and in line with data protection laws.

• if we need to share your information with CAS or other Bureaux
• with professional advisors such as insurers and legal professionals
• with auditors to maintain standards, such as for CAS Membership Standards audits, or with the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) for Scottish National Standards accreditation
• with funders as part of audit and compliance, or for research and reporting purposes. We anonymise this where possible
• to meet any legal and regulatory obligations
• If we use external service providers, we put in place contracts to ensure they follow data protection rules

We may share information with the following, only when you have consented:

• If we refer you to another organisation for support
• If someone is acting on your behalf, we may share your information with them when necessary
• If we engage with an organisation on your behalf, we may have to share information with them
• with funding partners to obtain feedback on our service provision
• with HMRC if you make a Gift Aid declaration as part of your donation 

In exceptional circumstances, where there is a high risk of harm to an individual, information may be shared with third parties. We have strict Safeguarding procedures in place for when this may occur.

 

Will we share your information outside of the UK?

We only store personal data in the UK or the EU.

However, some of our suppliers may be based in other countries. If we need to share your data with these companies, we take steps to make sure your data is protected.

 

How long we keep your information

We will only keep your data for as long as is necessary. For most people we keep your data for a maximum of seven years. This is from the point of last contact. 

In certain circumstances we are required to keep records for longer, for example, if you have arranged a debt remedy solution, your records are kept for the duration this is active.

In rare cases, we might keep your data for longer if there is a legal reason, such as an on-going complaint or legal case.

More details are available in our Data Retention Policy.

 

National Projects

National Projects are projects delivered by Bureaux across the Citizens Advice Network and managed by CAS. Where you seek support from one of these projects, you may receive advice from an adviser based in a Bureaux somewhere else in Scotland. Some projects have a Privacy Notice which supplements this one.

 

Your rights

You have rights over your personal data. Your query may be passed to the CAS Data Protection Team to resolve.

You can:

• Request a copy of your personal information
• Ask us to update anything that’s no longer accurate
• Request that we delete your personal data. There are some exceptions, and we may need to keep some of your data, for example to defend legal claims
• Object to how we use data in some situations
• Request to restrict processing
• Withdraw your consent

We do not use any automation or profiling to make decisions.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please refer to our Complaints Process in the first instance. If, after following this process, you continue to be unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can submit a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk.

 

Changes

We reserve the right to amend this privacy notice from time to time.

 

Last updated: May 2026

 

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Appendix 1:

 

What happens when you visit our website?

When you use this website, we take measures to ensure your information is private and secure.

When browsing our website, we collect 'cookies' to help us understand more about how our site is used by
visitors, and to develop and enhance our services to you - A 'cookie' is a bit of information kept on your computer. It tells us things like what device you're using and what pages you click on.

We use cookies to:

• track aspects of user visits, including the length of a user's visit, their browser, geographic location and the use of the search facility on this website
• remember users selected contrast and/or text resizing style preferences for this website
• When we would use your information without your permission

 

Security

Information you submit via this website is secure and is never shared to a third party unless as authorised by law. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have created physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard the information we collect online.

Browser cookies

Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either for the duration of your visit (using a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (using a ‘persistent cookie’). New legislations means your website must make users aware if you use cookies and prompt them not to use cookies when viewing your site.

Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, and generally improving your experience of a website. Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website doesn’t use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site. This can have an impact on sites that have log in areas where the user would need to create a new log in every time they moved from page to page.

Some websites will also use cookies to enable them to target their advertising or marketing messages based for example, on your location and/or browsing habits. Cookies may be set by the website you are visiting (‘first party cookies’) or they may be set by other websites who run content on the page you are viewing (‘third party cookies’). Websites which use Google Analytics to track visitor numbers are using cookies to monitor this information.

What is in a cookie?

A cookie is a simple text file that is stored on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server and only that server will be able to retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. It will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. It allows a website to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.

What to do if you don’t want cookies to be set?

Some people find the idea of a website storing information on their computer or mobile device a bit intrusive, particularly when this information is stored and used by a third party without them knowing. Although this is generally quite harmless you may not, for example, want to see advertising that has been targeted to your interests. If you prefer, it is possible to block some or all cookies, or even to delete cookies that have already been set; but you need to be aware that you might lose some functions of that website.

How can I control cookies?

Web browser cookies - if you don’t want to receive cookies, you can modify your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can also delete cookies that have already been set. If you wish to restrict or block web browser cookies which are set on your device then you can do this through your browser settings; the Help function within your browser should tell you how. Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of desktop browsers.

 

Contacting us through LiveChat or our Social Media channels

In addition to our privacy policy, if you are contacting us on through our webchat service or through our social media channels, please familiarise yourself with their privacy and data retention policies before providing any personal or sensitive information, or if you have concerns about how your information will be used: LiveChat (www.livechat.com/legal/privacy-policy)  Facebook/Instagram (www.facebook.com/privacy/policy) X (formerly Twitter) (https://privacy.x.com/en)

Links to other sites

This website contains links to external websites. Privacy policies on these sites may vary and, as such, we are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of these sites.