Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes the type of information that the firm’s data controllers collect from you, how that information may be used or disclosed and the safeguards used to protect it. We will only process personal information about you or provided by you in accordance with the current Data Protection Legislation.

If you click on a link that takes you to a third-party website that is not ours, we will not be responsible for how they use your personal data. You should read its own privacy policy to understand how they may use your personal data.

If you have any questions or queries about this Privacy Policy or about or how we use your personal data, you can contact us or our Data Protection Officer using the contact details below:

Data Protection Officer
Hudson Weir Insolvency Practitioners
58 Leman Street
London E1 8EU

Email: [email protected]
Tel.: 020 7099 6086

Hudson Weir Limited (registered company number for England & Wales 09477593; data protection registration ZA214060)

The insolvency practitioners associated with the firm are Mr Hasib Howlader (data registration ZA177571) and Mr Nimish Patel (data registration Z2474692). Both insolvency practitioners are licensed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and are bound by their regulations and Code of Ethics.

This privacy policy will apply to you if you provide your personal information to us, even if you decide not to go ahead with any product or service we offer. Within this privacy policy, we have set out how Hudson Weir will use your personal data to provide our service to you. Through the continued use of this site, you agree to and are bound by our policies.

The information we collect from you depends on the product or service you apply for, or the service that we provide to you, and falls into two categories:

• Insolvency assignments
• Marketing/business clients

We will only collect information that we actually need, where we’re required to collect the information to enable us to perform our legal, regulatory or contractual obligations necessary to provide you with the products or services, or where we have your permission.

This may include the collection of:

• your personal details (e.g. name, date of birth)
• address details
• contact details (e.g. phone number, email)
• special personal information* (e.g. health information)
• financial information
• employment information
• information on how you use our website(s) and products and services
• any information relating to your company such as directorship and addresses

Special personal information

Data protection law defines some personal information as “special categories of data”. This includes information about physical or mental health, sexual life, religious beliefs, race or ethnic origin, political opinions, trade union membership or biometric data. This information may be necessary to collect when understanding the reason for your financial circumstances, or where it may help us to provide a better service to you.

Where we need to collect and process this type of data about you, by providing this information to us you give your explicit consent for us to process this special data as set out in this privacy policy. Special category data will not be passed to any third party providers unless we have a legal obligation to process this type of data or with your explicit consent.

Any personal information about you relating to criminal convictions or offences may only be used by us when authorised by law.

How do we collect your personal information?

We collect your information in a number of ways.

• When you make an application or enquiry to us either by phone, email, our website, by a third party or by any other means
• Information received from a third party, for example a creditor providing information about an account you hold with them, or where you have previously agreed for your information to be shared with us, for example, if you have been introduced to us by another company
• By adding reviews or interacting with us using social media such as Twitter or Facebook etc
• When you use online platforms, such as an online portal for document collection like Content Snare
• When we may need to obtain up to date information about you to meet our legal or regulatory obligations

Insolvency Assignments

We will hold information and data about data subjects in order to properly administer formal assignments subject to insolvency legislation in the UK. As this type of assignment is subject to law e.g. the Insolvency Act 1986 (as amended) and Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016, such data is held for legal and legitimate interest purposes, specifically to allow us to properly administer such assignments.

Personal data held is general employee information, to enable us to calculate redundancy entitlements and claims, creditor and shareholder information, to enable creditors to claim in the respective estates, to receive information regarding the progress of an assignment and to receive dividends and client customer information to ensure that any debts due to the insolvent entity can be collected.

Such information is held in our general assignment files, retained in paper form and/or electronically.

It should be noted that the Statement of Affairs documentation required by statute includes personal data in the form of the names and addresses of individual creditors, together with the amounts owed to them. Directors are required to include this information in the Statement of Affairs, and send a copy to all known creditors, by virtue of section 99 and 100 of the Insolvency Act 1986 and rules 6.3, 6.4 and 6.14 of the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016. As a result, this is a valid use of the personal data of individual creditors, and it is not a breach of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Marketing & General Business Database

Where we are legally required to obtain your explicit consent to provide you with marketing materials, we will only provide you with such marketing materials if you have provided consent for us to do so.

We keep the records about you that we need for doing business with you, but no more. We are likely to have:

• Your name.
• Who you work for, and what you do there.
• Your business contact details.
• Dates and times when we contacted you.
• Preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We are likely to keep some of any additional written information you give us in (in emails, for example) while we consider you to be an active business contact.

We may also put your name on our marketing database, but:

• Only if the contact details we have for you include your business email address; and
• Only if we think you are likely to be interested in receiving marketing information from us.

You will always be able to ask us not to contact you with marketing information.

We can only use your personal information where it falls into one or more of the following categories:

• it is necessary to enter into or fulfil a contract we have with you;
• you have provided your consent;
• we have a legal or regulatory obligation to do so;
• it is necessary to carry out a task that is in the public interest;
• it is necessary to protect your vital interests; or
• it is in our legitimate interest to do so and it is not against your rights.

In a formal insolvency situation this information is held for legal purposes.

To help us keep you up to date about the products and services that we provide to you, and to ensure that you’re kept fully informed, we may contact you by letter, telephone, email, text message, push notifications, social media or may send you messages by any online customer platforms or other electronic means.

If you start an application for a product or service through us we will attempt to contact you shortly after if you were unable to complete your application for whatever reason.

If you do not want to be contacted in a particular way then you can request this at any time, but if we are providing a service to you, we do need to be able to send you communications. This can often be due to a legal or regulatory requirement.

It is important that you keep us up to date when you change your contact details to ensure that we use your up to date contact information.

If you do not go ahead with any product or service with us, your personal information will normally be deleted after 12 months unless we have another reason to keep your personal information, for example, if you have given your consent to receive marketing information from us. We will delete your information sooner if you ask us to.

Insolvency assignments:

We will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil our legislative and regulatory requirements. We review our data retention obligations to ensure we are not retaining data for longer than we are legally obliged to.

As an insolvency practice, together with other legislation, we are governed by the Insolvency Practitioners Regulations 2005 (as amended). This legislation requires us to preserve records as follows:

• Our case files (all appointment types) – for a period of 6 years following the Insolvency Practitioner’s release or discharge,
• Company books and records:
  • Liquidation and Administration – for a period of approximately 15 months after the closure of the case (12 months after the dissolution of the company by companies house which will follow 3 months after the closure of a liquidation or administration),
  • Bankruptcy – for a period of 12 months after closure subject to there being no other legal requirements.
  • Voluntary Arrangements – where records are held, these will be returned to the Entity or Debtor who provided the information.

Other non insolvency assignments

In relation to this type of information, we may hold personal data to complete our contractual obligations as part of an informal or advisory assignment. The data will be retained for a period of 6 years after the end of the assignment.

Any information about you that we use for marketing purposes will be kept with us for as long as is necessary and relevant, or until consent is withdrawn.

We may also share your personal information with the following organisations:

• IT Service Providers who provide IT platforms or other IT services
• Communication providers (e.g. telephone line providers, and email and text service providers)
• Printers who print the letters and information packs which we send to you
• Advertisers and social media companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter for our social media accounts or where we can contact you using your social media account
• Third parties who may have introduced you to our services

These companies help us to provide our services to you. We will have a contract in place with any provider who directly provides us with such direct services to ensure that they comply with their data protection obligations and ensure that they have appropriate security measures in place.

We may also share your personal information where we have your consent to do so or where we’re required to do so under a legal or regulatory obligation or court order, such as the police, local authorities or the courts.

As part of our legitimate interest to develop our business and our products we will use your personal information to assess our performance as a business and for statistical analysis. We will use as little personal data as we can to achieve this. We may also share this analysis or personal data with third parties who provide us with services including conducting research for us and/or where we have a contractual obligation to do so.

Overseas: Hudson Weir Ltd includes companies outside of the European Economic Area namely; Insolve Assist (Pty) Ltd as well as Bangladesh branch of Howlader and Co Ltd our linked Chartered Accountancy firm. Both Companies are ultimately owned and controlled by Hasib Howlader – Director and 50% owner of Hudson Weir. These companies provide back-office support for our insolvency solutions. These companies comply with the same legislation as our UK based companies, as well as local law. Any contractors in these jurisdictions have signed, explicit, detailed confidentiality agreements and only have access to the UK server. Your data is processed and protected in the same way as it is in the UK and your rights to access, correct, delete and restrict the data used remain the same.

We might share some of your information with the emergency services if you are considered to be in any immediate danger

The personal information we have collected from you may be shared with law enforcement agencies and fraud prevention agencies who will use it to prevent fraud, money-laundering and terrorist financing and to verify your identity.

We use publicly available social media platforms to promote our services, to provide updates and to share any news and promotional updates. We may collect personal information from these social media platforms, for example, if you post a message on our Facebook page. By providing any of your information to us through these platforms you should be aware that:

• the social media web pages are publicly available and you must not provide any personal or sensitive information on our pages that are accessible to the public, such as your account information. We may ask you for your account information via a private message to identify you and to service any request you make
• each social media platform will process any personal information you provide through the platform and will be processed in accordance with its own privacy policy. The privacy policies are available to view on each social media platform.

We take the protection of personal information very seriously and we will maintain appropriate measures to maintain the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the information you have provided. Such measures include:

• Company security policies and standards
• staff security awareness
• role-based and biometric access controls to prevent unauthorised access to the information
• encryption
• anti-malware technologies
• security monitoring
• security testing
• secure archiving and deletion
• compliance with industry regulation and legislation

When you visit our website or similar websites Google may use our advertisements promoting our products and services which may appear another third-party websites you visit across the internet for remarketing purposes, including cross-device remarketing. Google and other third parties will use cookies to tailor advertisements for website users based on their previous visit to our website. More information about cookies can be found below.

We do not have any control over the advertisements you see on other third-party websites however you can request to opt out or customise these advertisements by using the Google Ads Preference Manager.

Under certain circumstances you have the following rights in law:

Access to your personal information

• You have the right to request from us a copy of the personal information that we may hold about you. This is often called a “Data Subject Access Request”. You can request this information by contacting us as set out below.

Right to have your personal information corrected

• If the personal information we hold about you is incorrect you have the right to request that we correct this.

Right to stop or limit the processing of the data we carry out

• You may request that your personal information is deleted or that we stop processing the information if we’re no longer entitled to process it. There may be occasions where we are unable to delete the data due to our legal regulatory obligations. We will however discuss this with you if you request for your information to be deleted.

Portability

• In some cases, you may be able to request for your information to be provided to you or to another company in a format that can be processed electronically by you or the other company. If you want to request this, you’ll need to contact us.

Withdrawal to consent

where you have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing.  You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

If you consider any information that we hold about you to be incorrect or incomplete, or wish us to remove any such data, you should write to us or email us at [email protected]  with your request.

If you are not happy with how we process your personal information please contact [email protected]  in the first instance.

If you’re not happy with how we have dealt with your complaint you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can find their details on their website at https://ico.org.uk/. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

The Insolvency Practitioners linked to the practice are authorised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW). Any complaints in relation to regulated insolvency work should be referred to our complaints partner in the first instance at [email protected] / 020 7099 6086.  If we are unable to resolve your issue you may issue a formal complaint through the Complaints Gateway at the Insolvency Enquiry Line (https://www.gov.uk/complain-about-insolvency-practitioner).

Contact details are:

[email protected]
Telephone: 0300 678 0015
Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm

When using this website, some information may be collected automatically using ‘cookies’. These are small text files that facilitate the processing of your data and enable us to analyse how the website is being used. Cookies can be temporary or permanent.

Temporary cookies form part of the security process while you are using the website; permanent cookies identify the link you used to find our website, check your browser so that we can make sure that our website and services work well with your computer and to help us monitor traffic on our website.

Why are cookies used?

They help visitors. Cookies allow sites to do things like provide personalised content and remember their log-in details and settings. You can turn them off– this won’t stop a website from working, but it might mean it won’t work as well as it could, or that you have to do the same thing more than once.

They help website owners. Cookies tell website owners things like: what search engine a visitor used to find the website, how often they’ve visited it, how long they’ve spent on it, and so on.

We’ve set out below the cookies that we may use and those that are set by third parties on our website.

Except for essential cookies, all cookies will expire after 10 years.

Disabling/Enabling Cookies

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings on your browser and by clicking on the disable button below. Please remember though that disabling certain cookies may affect the functionality of our website.

None of the features of our website will be affected – giving you the full experience.

If you are using Microsoft Windows Explorer:

1. Open ‘Windows Explorer’
2. Click on the ‘Search’ button on the tool bar
3. Type ‘cookie’ into the search box for ‘Folders and Files’
4. Select ‘My computer’ in the ‘Look In’ box
5. Click ‘Search Now’
6. Double click on the folders that are found
7. Select any cookie file
8. Use the ‘Delete’ button on your keyboard

We reserve the right to modify or amend this privacy statement at any time and for any reason.  Nothing contained herein creates or is intended to create a contract or agreement between us and any user visiting the website or providing identifying information of any kind.

Any updates to this privacy policy will be found on this page. If we make any important or significant changes to the way we may collect and use your personal information we will endeavour to notify you of this change.

Updated: 1 September 2024