Privacy notice

Who we are

SEND Advocates is a trading name of TM Advocacy Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company no. 12113793, of Suite 9, Dalton House, 60 Windsor Avenue, London SW19 2RR. We are the data controller for the personal data described in this notice, and we are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office. Questions about this notice, or about your data, go to [email protected].

What we collect, and why

When you book a call or send an enquiry, we collect your name, contact details, and whatever you choose to tell us about your situation. We use this to run the call, assess whether we can help, and reply to you. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in responding to enquiries about our services (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR), and taking steps at your request before entering a contract (Article 6(1)(b)).

When you instruct us, we collect and work with your case papers. In a SEND appeal these necessarily include information about your child: their education, health, disability, and the professional reports written about them. Some of this is special category data under Article 9 UK GDPR, and it deserves particular care. Our lawful basis for processing it is Article 6(1)(b) (performing our contract with you) together with Article 9(2)(f), because the processing is necessary for the establishment and exercise of legal claims, namely your appeal before the First-tier Tribunal. The client care letter also asks for your written confirmation, at the point of instruction, that you understand and agree to this use of your child's information.

For invoicing and accounts, we process your name, address and payment records. Our lawful bases are the performance of our contract and our legal obligation to keep financial records.

We do not use your data for marketing, we do not sell it, and we make no automated decisions about you.

Your child's data

Most of the sensitive information we hold is about a child, shared with us by you as their parent or carer. We use it only to advance their case, we share it only as the case requires, and we hold it under the arrangements described in this notice. Case papers are exchanged after instruction through the secure channel we agree with you, not through this website. Where a young person aged 16 or over instructs us in their own right, this notice applies to them directly and we take our instructions from them.

Who we share it with

As part of running a case, your information goes where the case requires: to the First-tier Tribunal, to the local authority and any other party to the appeal, and to any independent expert or professional we instruct on your behalf with your agreement. That sharing is part of the service you instruct us to provide.

Our service providers, who process data on our instructions under contract, are Microsoft (email, calendar, bookings and document storage) and Cloudflare (website hosting and domains). Where their processing involves any transfer outside the UK, it takes place under UK adequacy regulations or the safeguards UK GDPR requires, such as the international data transfer agreement.

How long we keep it

Enquiries that do not lead to an instruction are deleted within 12 months. Case files are kept until the later of 6 years from the conclusion of the case and the child's 25th birthday, because limitation periods for a child's own claims run from adulthood, then deleted. Financial records are kept for 6 years as tax law requires. If you ask us to delete data sooner, we will, unless a live case or one of those legal obligations requires us to keep it, and if so we will tell you which one.

Your rights

You can ask to see the personal data we hold about you or your child, have it corrected, deleted or restricted, object to processing based on legitimate interests, ask for a copy in a portable format, and withdraw any consent you have given, at any time (where consent is the basis we rely on for that processing). Some rights are qualified while a case is live or while we are under a duty to keep records, and we will explain the position whenever that applies. To exercise any right, email [email protected]; we respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would welcome the chance to put it right first.

Cookies

This site sets no analytics or tracking cookies, which is why there is no cookie banner. The booking calendar loads content from Microsoft only after you click to open it, and any cookies it then sets are Microsoft's, covered by their own notice.