Who we are
Accountants for Solicitors is a trading style of Buzz Accounting Ltd,
registered in England and Wales, company number 15182358, VAT registration number
GB481 882 554. Buzz Accounting Ltd is the data controller for the personal data
described in this notice. You can reach us at hello@accountantsforsolicitors.co.uk, and that
address also reaches the person who deals with data protection questions.
The personal data we collect
- Enquiries. The name, email address, telephone number, firm name and
message you type into the form on our contact page, or that you send
us by email or WhatsApp.
- Newsletter subscribers. The email address you give us, and the page you
subscribed from.
- Calculator results. The calculators on this site run in your browser. If
you ask us to email you a result, we receive the email address you give us and the figures in
that result.
- Clients. Once you engage us, everything needed to do the work: contact and
identity details, the identification documents required for client due diligence under the
Money Laundering Regulations, the firm's financial and accounting records and, where we act for
partners personally, National Insurance numbers, Unique Taxpayer References and the contents of
tax returns.
- Technical data. Our host records standard server logs, including the IP
address a page was requested from.
We do not buy personal data and we do not scrape it. Everything we hold comes from you, from
someone at your firm acting on your behalf, from a previous accountant on professional clearance,
or from public registers such as Companies House.
Why we use it, and our lawful basis
- Replying to an enquiry — Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR, steps taken at your
request before entering into a contract, and Article 6(1)(f), our legitimate interest in
answering somebody who has asked us a question.
- Providing accountancy services — Article 6(1)(b), performance of our
engagement contract with you.
- Client due diligence, tax filing and record keeping — Article 6(1)(c),
compliance with our legal obligations, including the Money Laundering Regulations and HMRC's
record-keeping requirements. Where an identification document reveals special category data we
rely on Article 9(2)(g) and the substantial public interest condition for preventing or
detecting unlawful acts in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018.
- Sending our monthly email — Article 6(1)(a), your consent, which you can
withdraw at any time using the unsubscribe link in every message.
- Keeping the site working and secure — Article 6(1)(f), our legitimate
interest in a website that functions and is not abused.
Who else sees it
- Netlify hosts this website and processes the forms on it. When you send
the contact form or the newsletter form, the submission passes through Netlify before it
reaches us by email.
- Brevo sends our marketing email. If you subscribe, your email address is
stored in Brevo until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove it.
- Our accounting, payroll and tax software providers, where your data has to
sit in a system for us to do the work you have engaged us to do.
- HMRC, Companies House and — where you instruct us to — your bank or lender,
to make the filings and provide the information you have asked us to provide.
- The registered auditor who prepares your SRA Accountant's Report. Where you
engage Anstey Bond LLP through us, we provide the records and information that rule 12.8
requires a firm to give its reporting accountant. They are a separate firm and their own
controller for what they then hold.
- Our professional indemnity insurers and professional bodies, where a claim
or a regulatory enquiry makes that necessary.
We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with anybody for their own marketing.
Sending data outside the UK
Some of the suppliers above operate outside the United Kingdom. Where personal data is
transferred out of the UK we rely either on the UK's adequacy regulations for the destination
country, or on the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the European
Commission's standard contractual clauses, alongside the supplier's own technical and
organisational measures.
Cookies
This site sets no advertising cookies, no analytics cookies and no tracking pixels. There is
no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to. The only data your browser sends us is
what is needed to serve you the page.
How long we keep it
- Enquiries that do not become engagements — up to 24 months, then
deleted.
- Newsletter subscriptions — until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete the
record, plus a suppression entry so that we do not email you again by accident.
- Client records — at least six years after the end of the engagement, which
is what tax record-keeping and the Money Laundering Regulations require of us. Your own
obligation is separate and sits alongside it: rule 13 of the SRA Accounts Rules requires a law
firm to store its accounting records securely and keep them for at least six years.
- Server logs — for the short retention period our host applies.
Your rights
Under the UK GDPR you have the right to ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about
you; to have inaccurate data corrected; to have data erased where we no longer have a reason to
hold it; to restrict how we use it while a question about it is resolved; to receive data you
gave us in a portable format; to object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate
interests; and to withdraw consent to marketing at any time. Some of those rights are qualified
where we are legally required to keep records — we cannot delete a tax record we are obliged to
retain, and we will tell you plainly when that is the reason.
We make no decision about you by solely automated means and we do not carry out profiling. To
exercise any right, email hello@accountantsforsolicitors.co.uk. We will respond within one month,
and there is no charge.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us first so that
we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office
at any time:
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Helpline 0303 123 1113. ico.org.uk.
Changes to this notice
If we change how we use personal data we will update this page, and where the change is
significant we will tell subscribers and clients directly. This notice applies to
accountantsforsolicitors.co.uk and to the accountancy services provided under that name. Our
engagement letter carries the confidentiality and data protection terms that apply once you
become a client, and those terms prevail over this notice if the two ever differ. If anything
here is unclear, ask us — we would rather answer than have you
guess.