Scottish National Standards for Information and Advice Providers (SNSIAP) – Audit Privacy Policy

Information about how the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) processes your personal data if you are a member of staff or a volunteer with an organisation applying for accreditation under the Scottish National Standards for Information and Advice Providers’ (SNSIAP) accreditation model.

Data Protection Officer
Scottish Legal Aid Board
Thistle House
91 Haymarket Terrace
Edinburgh
EH12 5HE.

Email:                            DPO@slab.org.uk.
Direct Dial:                    0131 240 2071.
Switchboard:               0131 226 7061.

SLAB will process a range of information about you, which includes:

• your name
• your location details
• the qualifications, competencies, knowledge and experience of advisers
• performance management records for advisers
• HR records for advisers (for hours worked or volunteered and training records only)
• training records and ongoing continuous professional development records of advisers.

Data requested about you will not include the more sensitive data known as “special categories of personal data”.

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by your employer or you. SLAB will process your data to support the SNSIAP accreditation model, which is designed to improve and assure the quality of advice in Scotland.

SNSIAP is the accepted quality framework for any agency providing advice on housing, money/debt and welfare benefits issues. The SNSIAP contains both organisational standards and competences for an agency.

As part of the accreditation model, SLAB requires to audit the qualifications and competencies of an organisation’s staff in relation to the agency’s provision of advice.

Your data is shared only with those SLAB staff who need access to deliver and support the purposes described above.

Whilst reports are shared with Scottish Government, your personal data is not shared.

We consider the processing of your personal data for these purposes to be necessary as part of the steps that SLAB is required to take in maintaining its statutory functions under the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1986, so its lawful basis for processing data is that it is SLAB carrying out a task in the public interest.

We keep your personal data both electronically and, in limited situations depending on how your organisation provide the requested information, in paper format. Retention locations will be:

• our online ‘ShareFile’ (SLAB’s client-server software for creating and using file hosting services)
• direct access to your organisation’s Case Management System or other digital format as necessary
• in paper form.

This data will then be copied to a unique folder held on SLAB’s systems for a period of five years (retention period). We will then dispose of your information by digital deletion from our systems or through a secure and efficient confidential information destruction service.

Under the UK GDPR, you have rights including:

• Your right of access – the right to ask us for copies of your personal information
• Your right to rectification – the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate and the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete
• Your right to erasure – the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances
• Your right to restriction of processing – the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
• Your right to object to processing – the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
• Your right to data portability – the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

If you have any questions about how your data is used, or to request your personal data, you should contact SLAB’s Data Protection Officer using the details provided above.

Subject Access Request

If you are unhappy with the response you get from us, you can ask us to look again at your request – you can contact us at SAR@slab.org.uk or our postal address, with correspondence marked “Subject Access Request”.

At any time, you are entitled to ask the Information Commissioner to review our decision or to go to court to enforce your rights.

You can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), or to the Scottish Regional Office for the ICO, if you are unhappy with how we have used your data using the below contact details.

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

Website:                         www.ico.org.uk.
Telephone:                    0303 123 1113.

Information Commissioner’s Office – Scotland
Queen Elizabeth House
Sibbald Walk
Edinburgh
EH8 8FT.

Website:                         www.ico.org.uk/scotland-office.
Telephone:                    0303 123 1115.

We keep this privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated on 23 September 2024.