Introduction and Purpose

Donald McLaren Ltd (‘we’, ‘our’, ‘us’) are committed to protecting the privacy and security of personal information. This policy describes how we collect and use personal information about you.

Donald McLaren Ltd is a ‘data controller’. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information. We are required under data protection laws to notify you of the information contained in this policy.

This policy applies to the personal information of past and present customers.

If you are a past or present employee, we will hold further personal information about you. For details please contact us or speak to your line manager or supervisor.

This policy does not form part of any contract that you may have with us. It is provided for information purposes only and we retain the right to update this policy at any time. For information about the cookies that we use on our website, please see our Cookie Policy.

The Data Protection Principles

We will comply with data protection law. The law says that the personal information that we hold must be:

1. Used in a lawful, fair and transparent way.
2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained and not used in any way that is
3. incompatible with those purposes.
4. Relevant to the purposes for which it was collected and limited only to those purposes.
5. Accurate and kept up to date.
6. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected.
7. Kept securely.

Information that we hold

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about a living individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (such as anonymous data).

There are some ‘special categories’ of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.

We collect, store and use some or all of the following categories of personal information:

1. The funeral applicant information: title, name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address and date of birth
2. Pre-paid funeral plan applicant information: title, name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address and date of birth
3. Funeral Wishes information: title, name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address and date of birth
4. Memorial purchaser information: title, name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address and date of birth
5. Next of kin, executor or personal representative’s details
6. Information relating to funeral arrangements as part of a funeral arrangement, or pre-paid funeral plan application.
7. Information contained in a final or proposed memorial inscription: name, qualifications, date of birth
8. Financial information: bank account details, payment methods, details of payments made, your financial position.
9. Website and Social Media Information: username, account details, email address, information included in comments posted on our website, IP addresses of comments posted, and engagement details (likes, retweets, shares, reactions, comments).

We may also collect, store and use ‘Special Category Data’ relating to religious or similar beliefs.

How we collect Personal Information

We may request personal information about you and we may ask for information which enables us to provide a personalised service to you. We may collect personal information about you from the following sources:

• Directly from you at the outset of and/or during the funeral or memorial arrangement.
• From your family at the outset of and/or during the funeral or memorial arrangement.
• Organisations or other businesses that introduce you to us, such as from ministers, police, nursing homes, hospitals and solicitors.
• Publicly available resources.
• The internet and social media platforms when you engage with our social media accounts.
• Intermediaries with whom you are also a client.
• CCTV footage if you visit our offices.

We sometimes supplement the information that you provide with information that is received from third parties. For instance, if inaccurate postcodes are received, we will use third party software or websites to fix them (for example, Royal Mail’s postcode finder).

How we use personal information

We will only use personal information lawfully. We do not share with, nor sell nor distribute your Personal Data to unrelated third parties for marketing purposes. The law says that we must identify a lawful basis for each use of personal data. In order for us to provide you with the best service possible, we need to collect personal information. Some of these purposes may include:

• To provide our funeral or memorial services
• To process your funeral plan
• For the purposes of accounting
• To keep our records up to date
• To process your request for information or advice
• To process your job application

Below, we have set out specific purposes for which we use personal data as part of the regular services we provide, and the lawful bases which are relevant to those purposes.

• The funeral applicant information: We this information for communicating with you in the course of our engagement. This includes taking your instructions, providing advice and our services and invoicing our costs and disbursements. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to perform the contract for funeral services that we have with you. It is also in our legitimate interest to run our business, to provide you with professional funeral services and advice, and to keep our records up to date.
• Pre-paid funeral plan applicant information: We use this information for communicating with you in the course of our engagement and to provide our services at the time of need. This includes taking your instructions, providing advice and our services, and completing your funeral plan application. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to perform the contract for funeral services that we have with you. It is also in our legitimate interest to run our business, to provide you with professional funeral services and advice, and to keep our records up to date.
• Funeral Wishes information: Many clients choose to confirm their funeral arrangements with us simply to be held on file but without making any payment for peace of mind. We use this information for communicating with you in the course of our engagement and to provide our services at the time of need. This includes recording your instructions and providing advice and our services. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract. It is also in our legitimate interest to run our business, to provide you with professional funeral services and advice, and to keep our records up to date.
• Memorial purchaser information: We this information for communicating with you in the course of our engagement. This includes taking your instructions, providing advice and our services and invoicing our costs and disbursements. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to perform the contract for memorial services that we have with you. It is also in our legitimate interest to run our business, to provide you with professional memorial services and advice, and to keep our records up to date.
• Next of kin, executor or personal representative’s details: We this information to communicate with those individuals in the course of our engagement. This includes recording their instructions, providing advice and our services, and invoicing our costs and disbursements. In addition, we may hold information about your position as attorney for the purpose of administering products or services to the third party for whom you act as attorney. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to perform the contract that we have with you. It is also in our legitimate interest to run our business, to provide you with professional services and advice, and to keep our records up to date.
• Information provided as part of a funeral arrangement, memorial order or pre-paid funeral plan application: We use this information to provide our services to you. This may include, for example, personal details to be shared in a eulogy, addresses where you or your family wish to arrange viewing at home, or be collected from on the morning of the funeral. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to perform the contract that we have with you. It is also in our legitimate interest to run our business, to provide you with professional services and advice, and to keep our records up to date.
• Information contained in a final or proposed memorial inscription: We use this information to provide our memorial services to you and create a personalise memorial. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to perform the contract that we have with you. It is also in our legitimate interest to run our business, to deliver our services and advice, and to keep our records up to date.
• Financial information: bank account details, payment methods, details of payments made, your financial position. We use this information to manage payment of our accounts. We may also use this information to provide you with advice, for example in relation eligibility for assistance with funeral costs. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to perform the contract that we have with you. It is also in our legitimate interest in to manage payment of our invoices and debt recovery.
• Website and Social media information: We hold your social media information in the course of operating our social media accounts. We hold information you provide in comments posted on our website (e.g. condolences posted on funeral announcements). Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary in order to pursue our legitimate interest in maintaining a visible, engaging and relevant social media and online presence and prevent abuse on our website.

How we use ‘Special categories’ of personal information

‘Special categories’ of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information.

In the course of providing funeral and memorial services, we usually need to know your religious or similar beliefs. We use this information to provide you with professional funeral and memorial advice and guidance, and to provide our funeral and memorial services to suit your religious beliefs and traditions.

Our lawful basis for this is that processing religious or similar beliefs information is:

• necessary to perform the contract that we have with you.
• Necessary for our legitimate interests to deliver pre-arranged and pre-paid funeral or memorial services to you at your time of need.

Our further justification is your explicit consent.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you do not provide certain personal information to us, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you or carry out the funeral or other services you have requested. In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another purpose and that purpose is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the lawful basis which allows us to do so.

Automated decision-making

We do not envisage taking any decisions about you based solely on automated processing (i.e. without human involvement), which have a legal or similarly significant effect on you.

Data sharing

To help us provide the services you have instructed, we may need to pass your personal data to third parties including officiants (ministers, priests, celebrants etc.), crematoriums, cemeteries, local authorities, Ecclesiastical Planning Services (pre-paid funeral plans), and other service providers. Those third parties, who are performing some of the services for you, may contact you directly. We will not pass on your personal data beyond what is reasonable and necessary in order to carry out the services instructed and to comply with laws and regulatory measures which we are subject to.

All third parties are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow third parties to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to access your personal data for specific purposes and in accordance with our instructions. We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example with a potential purchaser in the context of a potential sale or restructuring of the business. We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator to comply with the law. We may transfer your personal information outside the EU. If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information. Transfers will always be subject to adequate safeguards.

Data security

We have appropriate security measures to protect your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We limit access to your personal information to those people who have a business need to know.

Data retention

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal accounting, or reporting requirements.

• We keep details of funerals and memorials we carry out indefinitely, as often families require this when planning subsequent family funerals or memorials.
• If you request information from us or make an enquiry, we will store your Personal Data for period of three months, unless you ask us to contact you in the future or take out a plan in which case we will store your data in line with this privacy policy..
• We retain Funeral Wishes information until the date of your funeral. Thereafter, we keep data of the funeral details indefinitely.
• We retain Pre-paid funeral plan application and arrangement information until the date of your funeral with us. Thereafter, we keep details of the funeral indefinitely.
• We retain Funeral or Memorial file information for the period of our relationship with you (including for the duration of any memorial warranty period and until ashes we are asked to retain are collected or dispersed), and for seven years from the date on which the matter in which you have instructed us has completed.
• We retain Social Media Information for the period during which we are connected on any given social media platform.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

Where you have chosen to unsubscribe from marketing communications, we will retain your contact details to ensure that you are not sent any further communications. This information will be held indefinitely.

Changes to your data

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us. If your personal information changes, please let us know by phone, email or in writing.

Your Rights

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information. This is commonly known as a subject access request. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are processing it lawfully.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request transfer of your personal information to another party.
• Request the reconsideration of an automated decision. This enables you to ask us to reconsider a decision that was made solely by automated means or to ask for human intervention.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party or request the reconsideration of an automated decision, please contact us.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (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.

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 at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact us. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

Questions, Complaints and Concerns

If you have any concerns over how we use your data, please contact us in the first instance.

If you are not satisfied that we have addressed your concerns adequately, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the ICO. Their contact details are below:

The Information Commissioner’s Office – Scotland

45 Melville Street

Edinburgh EH3 7HL

Telephone: 0303 123 1115

Email: Scotland@ico.org.uk

Data Protection Contact

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle personal information, please contact us in writing using the details below.

Donald McLaren Ltd

Email address: info@donaldmclarenltd.co.uk

Postal address: 45 Sunnyside Road, Coatbridge, ML5 3DG

Our company registration number is: SC189724