Beansprout Consultancy Ltd. and hence-forth referred to as ‘Beansprout‘ is a limited company. Our postal address is: Capability House, B31 Wrest Park, Silsoe, Bedfordshire, MK45 4HR. Beansprout Consultancy Ltd. is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 14959795.

Our website address is: https://bean-sprout.co.uk

Beansprout is committed to providing an honest, clear and transparent service to everyone we interact with. We are committed to meeting all legal requirements for processing data, including those set out in the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Any data we collect is to assist with providing the services we offer and is never disclosed to any third parties. We encourage you to read this policy carefully and contact us with any questions or concerns about out privacy practices.

The Data Protection officer is Helen Christopher, who can be contacted about anything to do with your personal data and data protection, including to make a subject access request, using the following details:

Email address: helen@bean-sprout.co.uk
Postal address: Capability House, B31 Wrest Park, Silsoe, Bedfordshire, MK45 4HR
Telephone number: 01525 306920

The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires organisations that process personal data to meet certain legal obligations. We are a data controller within the meaning of the Act and we process personal data.

We are committed to complying with the requirements of the DPA and GDPR. As a result, we confirm that personal information we process will only be held (or otherwise processed) to the extent necessary to provide the agreed professional services and for any other purpose specifically agreed.

We are entering into a contract with you and will be processing data in order to fulfil our contractual obligations. In order to provide the agreed services, we need to collect, retain and process personal data about you. This data is needed in order to:

1. Take you on and retain you as a client according to the provisions of UK laws and professional regulations (eg anti-money laundering requirements).
2. Prepare and file accounts and tax returns.
3. Provide advice on tax and national insurance liabilities.
4. Provide ad hoc advice.

If the information required is not provided, we may not be able to provide the required services which would trigger the disengagement provisions in the terms and conditions.

The personal data that we will collect, and process will include:

1. Names and addresses
2. Email addresses
3. Telephone numbers
4. Information held by HMRC.
5. Information required to prepare tax returns.
6. Information required to prepare your accounts.
7. Correspondence between us

We collect information that is supplied about you from:

1. You
2. A spouse/partner
3. HMRC
4. Your organisation
5. Electronic ID verification providers
6. Other third parties (e.g. banks, investment managers etc) as authorised by you.

We may use information we hold about you:

1. To provide services under the contract in force between us
2. To contact you about other services we provide which may be of interest to you if you have consented to us doing so.
3. To meet other legal and regulatory requirements.
4. For other legitimate interests.

We will retain records based on our retention policy so that we can defend ourselves against potential legal claims or disciplinary action which can be brought within statutory time limits.

We may also use information from other people or organisations when carrying out these activities.

There is no automated decision-making involved in the use of your information and therefore no automatic data portability.

Where we use subcontractors, they will comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements.

Personal data may be processed on a contract basis under the engagement letter and provision of services agreements.

Personal data may be processed on a consent basis when meeting clients’ wider expectations of my/our professional relationship.

Personal data may be processed on the legal obligations and/or public interest bases to comply with legal requirements.

Personal data may be processed to further our legitimate interests.

We will not transfer the personal data we collect about you outside of the UK.

In order for us to provide the agreed services, we may provide personal data about you to:

1. HMRC
2. other third parties you require us to correspond with (for example, finance providers, pension providers (including auto-enrolment) and investment brokers.
3. subcontractors who are bound by the same professional and ethical obligations as the principals and employees of the practice.
4. an alternate appointed by us in the event of incapacity or death. Details of the name and address of this individual will be provided on request.
5. tax insurance providers
6. professional indemnity insurers
7. our professional body or an external reviewer in relation to quality assurance.

We need to give information to these other parties in order to fulfil our contractual obligations to you and therefore it is not possible to opt out of the provision of information to these parties. If you ask us not to provide information we may need to cease to act.

If the law allows or requires during the period of our contractual arrangements or after we have ceased to act we may give information about you to:

1. the police and law enforcement agencies
2. courts and tribunals
3. the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

In addition, after we have ceased to act we may give information about you to:

1. our professional indemnity insurers or legal advisers where we need to defend ourselves against a claim.
2. our professional disciplinary body where a complaint has been made against us in order to defend ourselves against a claim.
3. your new advisers or other third parties you ask us to give information to.

We have put in place appropriate and proportionate security measures to address the risk of personal data being lost, used, altered or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to personal data to those who have a business need to access it, and who will only process the personal data on our instructions.

Nevertheless, no data transmission over the internet, or any other network, can ever be regarded as wholly secure, and we have in place measures to deal with any suspected breach of data security. Those measures include policies and procedures, which are periodically reviewed to ensure they are effective and fit for purpose.

When acting as a data controller and in accordance with recognised good practice within the tax and accountancy sector we will retain all of records relating to you as follows:

1. Where tax returns and accounts have been prepared it is our policy to retain information for seven years from the end of the tax year to which the information relates.
2. Where ad hoc advisory work has been undertaken it is our policy to retain information for seven years from the date the business relationship ceased.
3. Where we have an ongoing client relationship permanent information (the data supplied by you and others which is needed for more than one year’s tax and accounts compliance) including, for example, capital gains base costs and claims and elections submitted to HMRC, are retained throughout the period of the relationship but will be deleted seven years after the end of the business relationship unless we are asked to retain it for a longer period by our clients.
4. Under the Money Laundering Regulations (MLR 2017) personal data must normally be destroyed within specified time limits but where contractual agreement is in place this is taken as agreement under Regulation 40 (5) MLR 2017 to retain records for the longer period of seven years.

Requests to see records and other related information that the firm holds about you are known as ‘subject access requests’ (SAR). We have set out further details on SARs below.

Please provide all requests in writing to the individual at the top of this notice.

To help provide the information on a timely basis you may need to provide copies of id and proof of address.

You can ask someone else to request information on your behalf – for example, a friend, relative or solicitor. We must have your authority to do this. This is usually a letter signed by you stating that you authorise the person concerned to write to for information about you, and/or receive our reply.

The law allows us to refuse your request for information in certain circumstances – for example, if you have previously made a similar request and there has been little or no change to the data since the original request.

The law also allows us to withhold information were, for example, release would be likely to:

1. prejudice the prevention or detection of crime.
2. prejudice the apprehension (arrest) or prosecution of offenders.
3. prejudice the assessment or collection of any tax or duty.
4. reveal the identity of another person, or information about them.
5. Where we are unable to consent to your request, we will set out the reasons in writing.

Should information you have previously supplied to us be incorrect, please inform us immediately so we can update and amend the information we hold.

In certain circumstances it is possible for you to request us to erase your records and further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). If you would like your records to be erased, please inform us immediately and we will consider your request. In certain circumstances we have the right to refuse to comply with a request for erasure and if applicable we will supply you with the reasons for refusing your request.

In certain circumstances you have the right to ‘block’ or suppress the processing of personal data or to object to the processing of that information. For further information refer to the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). Please inform us immediately if you want us to cease to process your information or object to processing so that we can take the appropriate action.

Where you have consented for us to contact you with details of other services, we provide we may continue to process your data and contact you for that purpose after our contractual relationship ends. You may withdraw consent for the firm to contact you in relation to details of other services we provide at any time during the performance of the contract or thereafter. We will then cease to process your data but only in connection with contacting you with details of other services we provide. Note that the withdrawal of consent does not make the other bases on which we are processing your data unlawful. We will therefore continue to process your data under the terms of our contract and for other reasons set out in this privacy notice.

The right to data portability only applies:

1. to personal data an individual has provided to a controller.
2. where the processing is based on the individual’s consent or for the performance of a contract; and
3. when processing is carried out by automated means

You may be able to request your personal data in a format which enables it to be provided to another organisation. We will respond to any requests made without undue delay and within one month. We may extend the period by a further two months where the request is complex, or several requests are received but we will inform you within one month of the receipt of the request and explain why the extension is necessary.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding our processing of personal data, you can complain to us as set out in the terms and conditions. If you are dissatisfied with the response, then you can refer to the ICO.

Information Commissioner’s Office Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

You can also complain to our professional body – as set out in the terms and conditions.

Along with our Privacy notice outlined above, you can also view specifics outlined below pertaining to your use and rights when browsing our site online. 

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service Privacy Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Our Cookie Policy explains what cookies are and how we use them. You should read this policy to understand what cookies are, how we use them, the types of cookies we use i.e, the information we collect using cookies and how that information is used and how to control your cookie preferences.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

I have read, understand and accept the basis on which my information will be dealt with as set out in the privacy notice provided.

I agree to your appointed alternate having access to my records in the event of your illness or permanent incapacity.

I understand that you will communicate or transfer data with me using any or all the following:

1. Post/Hard-copy documents
2. Password-protected emails
3. Encrypted emails
4. Unencrypted emails (without attachments)
5. Secure Portals
6. Cloud-based software

I accept the risks of you corresponding with me by email that is not encrypted, or password protected.