Privacy policy

Domestic Violence Assist (DV ASSIST) will collect and process your data in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

We are only entitled to hold and process your data where the law allows us to. The current law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons for which we may collect and process your personal data.

The type of information we collect & why

When you are initially referred to us or you self-refer we will store your information on our internal systems. The main purpose for holding your data is to provide you with the right support based upon your circumstances. We may also need to process your data with partner organisations like our panel solicitors and process servers. This information will be provided to us by the initial referrer, a support worker or yourself.

Under the UK general data protection regulation, the lawful basis we rely on processing this data is that we have a legitimate interest.

The data we obtain will include contact information (address, email and telephone number), Identity information (first name, last name, marital status, gender, date of birth etc) and profile information (the personal reason why you are in contact with us and the circumstances leading to this).

We do not record telephone calls.

Your data continues to be processed on a legitimate basis however as directed by the courts or other parties we may additionally have a legal obligation to process your data.

We utilise ‘Legitimate Interest’ as one of our core bases for processing personal data in compliance with UK GDPR regulations.

In accordance with our data protection obligations, we have undertaken a legitimate interest assessment via a 3-step process:

Identifying a Legitimate Interest
Carrying out a Necessity Test
Carrying out a Balancing Test

We have identified a clear legitimate interest in processing the personal data of data subjects that are likely to use our services. All the services provided by us have direct relevance to the data subject.

This processing is considered as necessary in pursuit of the interests above. We have examined alternative legal bases but have concluded that Legitimate Interest is the only basis that allows us to deliver an effective, high quality service to our users. We have also conducted a balancing test to ensure that our interests do not override those of data subjects and conclude that the provisions have been met.

Keeping your data safe

DV ASSIST takes appropriate organisational and technological steps to ensure your data is secure and never processed without a lawful basis.

How long do we keep your data

We will keep the data we hold for you for a period of 60 months after which it will be securely erased or anonymised. We retain this data for this length of time for a number of reasons; on occasion we will help with an extension to an injunction that will increase the life of the original order. Holding these records will also help us to provide you and other authorised parties with updates and create a stronger application to the courts if your original order expires.

Once our retention period has expired we may retain an anonymised record for statistical purposes. We do this to contribute to various campaigns regarding the issue of domestic abuse and to improve our services; no individual can be identified with these files.

We will retain Injunction Orders documents in perpetuity to assist the police with domestic abuse related death reviews (previously known as Domestic homicide reviews).

Third Parties

We use third party service providers to help us to fulfil our engagements with you. We have joint data processor agreements in place with solicitors and Data Processor agreements with Process Servers.

We will never sell your data and we will never knowingly provide your data to any organisation that will use it for marketing purposes.

Breaching confidentiality without approval

On very rare occasions DV ASSIST may be required to breach confidentiality without first obtaining your approval:

If you or a third party are at high and immediate risk of serious physical harm or death
If we receive information that a child is being abused or neglected
If we receive a court order to do so
If we receive information relating to terrorist activities or a bomb threat
When a member of DV ASSIST staff is threatened

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information
Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate
Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
Your right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights.

You can exercise your rights by making a request to support@dvassistorg.uk and this request will be passed to our data administrator, we have one month to respond to you, although we will endeavour to be quicker than this in our response. We are registered with the Information Commissioner (ZA234208).

Further information regarding data protection and privacy is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

When you visit our website we may collect information to help us understand how victims and referrers use our site. This information can consist of which browser you are using, IP Address, the time of your visit and which pages you downloaded. We cannot use this information to find out other information about you and will not provide this to any third party unless we are required by law. We obtain this information using a cookie, a cookie is a small text file placed on your device. You can manage these manually using your browser settings.

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at support@dvassist.org.uk.

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House, Water Lane

Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

Last Updated: 11/03/24