Privacy Policy

Please read the following privacy policy to understand how we use and protect the information that you provide to us.

Our organisation is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information and is registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), in order to make transparent our data handling practices and complies with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) effective from May 2018.

Debt Plans Direct may choose to amend the content of this policy on occasion which will be posted on this website. Please visit this policy on a regular basis to make sure you understand what we do with your information.

By registering on this site, you consent to the collection, use and transfer of your information under the terms of this policy.

HOW WE MAY CONTACT YOU

Unless you state otherwise Debt Plans Direct and our third-party partners (including Insolvency Practitioners) may contact you via telephone, email, post, SMS, automated messages, fax and WhatsApp.

HOW YOU CONTACT US

If you contact us by telephone using the specified numbers on our website or advertising/marketing correspondence, your call may be recorded for training, quality and regulatory purposes. If you contact us via email, webchat, WhatsApp or post this information may be held securely by ourselves for training, quality and regulatory purposes.

INFORMATION THAT WE COLLECT FROM YOU

We may obtain personal information from you through websites, mobile applications or other similar devices, channels or applications operated by or on behalf of any of the following brands: Debt Plans Direct and www.debtplansdirect.co.uk.

When you visit, register or access services on www.debtplansdirect.co.uk you may be asked to provide certain information about yourself including your name, contact details, email address and telephone number. In the course of providing the services to you, we may also store information about how you use our sites, for example the pages viewed, the website from which you came to visit our site, details of your financial circumstances including the level of your debt and amount you can afford towards repaying your debts. We may also collect information about your usage of our Website as well as information about you from messages you post to the website and e-mails or letters you send to us. Note that it is your responsibility to check and ensure that all information, content, material or data you provide on the sites is correct, complete, accurate and not misleading and that you disclose all relevant facts.

If you are providing us with another person’s information you should first ask them to read this Privacy Policy. By giving us information about another person you are confirming that they have given you consent to provide the information to us and that they understand how their details will be used.

USE OF YOUR INFORMATION

We will only collect and use your personal information in accordance with data protection laws. Our grounds for processing your personal information are as follows:

1. CONSENT

Where necessary we will only collect and process your personal information if you have given your consent for us to do so, for example, we will only send you certain marketing emails and process any sensitive information about you if we have your consent.

2. LEGITIMATE INTERESTS

We may use and process some of your personal information where we have sensible and legitimate business grounds for doing so. Under European privacy laws there is a concept of “legitimate interests” as a justification for processing your personal information. Our legitimate interests for processing your personal information are to:

• Verify your identity and credit standing to enable us to provide debt counselling.
• Assist in completing your application for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA).
• Extract certain information for the purpose of generating statistics for our own internal purposes (including credit and/or behaviour scoring, and market product analysis).
• Detect, prevent and investigate actual and potential fraud and related activities.
• Develop, manage and market products and services to meet your needs and to contact you for products and services that may be of interest.
• Determine your eligibility for different products and services that you may be interested in.
• Contact you in connection with your enquiry.
• Update this website to better meet your needs in the future.

From May 2018, you will have a right to object to our use of your personal information for these legitimate interests including where we may use your personal information to create a profile to inform customer demographics. If you raise an objection we will stop processing your personal information unless very exceptional circumstances apply, in which case we will let you know why we are continuing to process your personal information. Please contact our Compliance Manager at info@debtplansdirect.co.uk should you wish to exercise this right.

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION

The information you provide to us will be held on our computers and may be accessed by or given to third parties and our staff for the purposes set out in this policy or for other purposes approved by you. Those parties process information and provide support services on our behalf. We may also pass aggregate information on the usage of our site to third parties, but this will not include information that can be used to identify you.

Information may be transferred to third parties who may be located outside the European Economic Area. We will ensure that your personal information is protected to the level of standards in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations. If your information is shared with a third party, we will instruct and state restrictions as to will protect your information. Our third-party partners will also have their own privacy policies, which we recommend you refer to.

If our business enters into a joint venture with or is sold to or merged with another business entity, your information may be disclosed to our new business partners or owners.

We may share your data with The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and/or other regulatory bodies, for the purposes of compliance monitoring. Unless required to do so by law, we will not otherwise share, sell or distribute any of the information you provide to us without your consent.

COOKIES

Cookies are small amounts of information which we store on your computer. Unless you have indicated your objection when disclosing your details to us, our system will issue cookies to your computer when you log on to the site. Cookies make it easier for you to log on to and use the site during future visits. They also allow us to monitor website traffic and to personalise the content of the site for you. You may set up the browser on your computer to reject cookies although, in that case, you may not be able to use certain features on our Website. If you do not wish to receive cookies in the future, please let us know.

SECURITY AND DATA RETENTION

The amount of time we hold your information depends on the basis it was provided. Please see the following examples:

1. If you request that we do not contact you for advertising and marketing reasons, we may still need to keep your information as this would reflect your preferences.

2. Information is also kept relating to any transactions you may enter via our website. This information will be kept for a minimum of six years, which will commence at the end of the relationship. We are required to do so to ensure that if any disputes or complaints are raised, we have your information to enable us to address the complaints or disputes. Your information will be kept purely for business needs.

3. In order to provide you with a service, we will be required to keep your information for however long this may take us.

4. Another reason for us to keep information about you is for legitimate business needs (where relevant), so we can comply with the law.

We employ security measures to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage. We will retain your information for a reasonable period or as long as the law requires.

We will take all reasonable steps to protect your personal information but cannot guarantee the security of any data you provide online. By using our Website and not advising us to the contrary, you agree to our using data in the way set out above and to accept the inherent security risks of providing information online without holding us responsible for any breach of security unless due to our negligence or wilful default.

ACCESSING AND UPDATING

You are entitled to see the information held about you and you may ask us to make any necessary changes to ensure that it is accurate and kept up to date. If you wish to do this, please contact us. Any access request is not subject to a fee unless the request is unreasonable in which case a fee may be charged and will be disclosed at the time of request.

CONTACT

All comments, queries and requests relating to our use of your information are welcomed and should be addressed to The Compliance Manager, Debt Plans Direct. 17 Winsmoor Drive, Hindley. Wigan. WN2 3SP.

From May 2018 you will have the following rights:

(i) Right to access: the right to request copies of your personal information from us;

(ii) Right to correct: the right to have your personal information rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete;

(iii) Right to erase: the right to request that we delete or remove your personal information from our systems;

(iv) Right to restrict our use of your information: the right to ‘block’ us from using your personal information or limit the way in which we can use it;

(v) Right to data portability: the right to request that we move, copy or transfer your personal information;

(vi) Right to object: the right to object to our use of your personal information including where we use it for our legitimate interests or where we use your personal information to carry out profiling to inform our market research and customer demographics.

To make enquiries, exercise any of your rights set out in this Privacy Policy and/or make a complaint please contact our Compliance Manager at info@debtplansdirect.co.uk. If you are not satisfied with the way any complaint you make in relation to your personal information is handled by us, then you may be able to refer your complaint to the relevant data protection regulator which in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office.

This Privacy Policy shall be governed and construed in all respects in accordance with the laws of England and Wales.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to amend or modify this Privacy Policy at any time and any changes will be published on the Sites. The date of the most recent revision will appear on this page. If we make significant changes to this policy, we may also notify you by other means such as sending an email.

Where required by law we will obtain your consent to make these changes. If you do not agree with any changes, please do not continue to use the site.