Privacy Policy

Who is responsible for your information

Bailiff Advice Centre is a trading style of My Debt Plan Ltd. My Debt Plan Ltd is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy.

My Debt Plan Ltd is registered in England and Wales under company number 10992838. Its registered office is Alexandra Court, Carrs Road, Cheadle, England, SK8 2JY. You can check the company record at Companies House.

My Debt Plan Ltd is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZB284067.

For questions about this policy or how we use your information, email info@mydebt-plan.co.uk or call 0161 660 0411.

Use of the website itself is governed by our terms and conditions.

Who this policy applies to

This policy applies to people who visit this website, contact us, ask us for information or advice, or use a service provided by us.

Our services are not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If we learn that we hold a child's information without an appropriate reason, we will take steps to delete it.

Information we collect

The information we collect depends on how you use the site and what help you ask for. It may include:

• identity and contact information, such as your name, date of birth, address, email address and telephone number
• details of your income, spending, debts, creditors, employment, household and assets
• information used to check your identity, financial position or eligibility, including information received from credit reference agencies, open banking providers and public sources where appropriate
• health or vulnerability information that you choose to provide when it is relevant to the support you need
• records of your enquiries, correspondence, complaints, preferences and any service provided to you
• call recordings where a call is recorded for training, monitoring, evidence or regulatory purposes
• technical information about how your device uses the site, such as an IP address, browser type, pages requested and cookie choices
• the complete phrase entered in any site search box, unless you choose not to save that search.

We usually collect information directly from you through this website, by telephone, email or post. We may also receive it from someone you have authorised, from a service you have chosen to connect, from a public record, or from an organisation that is legally permitted to provide it.

Please give us accurate information and tell us if important details change.

Some information is needed so we can answer your request, complete legal checks or provide a service you choose. If you do not provide it, we may be unable to assess your circumstances or continue with that service. We will explain this when we ask for the information.

How and why we use your information

UK data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for each use of personal information. The basis depends on the purpose and the circumstances.

Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal does not make earlier processing unlawful. It may mean we cannot continue the activity for which the information was needed.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we consider whether the use is necessary, whether it benefits our service or the people who use it, and whether your rights and interests should take priority.

Health and other sensitive information

Information about health is special category data and receives extra protection under data protection law. You may choose to tell us about a health condition or vulnerability if it affects your circumstances or the way you need us to communicate with you.

Where we use this information to understand your needs and tailor our support, we ask for your explicit consent as well as identifying a lawful basis for using the underlying personal information. You can withdraw that consent, although we may still have to keep a record where the law, regulation or a legal claim requires it.

Who we share information with

We share personal information only where there is a reason connected with the purposes in this policy. Depending on the service and your choices, recipients may include:

• your creditors and their representatives
• companies in the same corporate group
• identity, credit-reference, open-banking, payment, communications, AI-assisted document-processing, printing, IT, hosting and back-office service providers
• professional advisers, claims-management companies and solicitors where their work is required
• regulators and professional bodies, including the Insolvency Service, the Insolvency Practitioners Association and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) where relevant
• bond providers, insurers, auditors, fraud-prevention services, law-enforcement bodies and other authorities where the law or protection of our services requires it
• a buyer, seller or adviser involved in a proposed sale, purchase or reorganisation of all or part of the business
• an alternative service provider where you have agreed to a referral.

Where you have separately consented to direct marketing by another organisation, information may be shared with MoneyPlus Group, Fresh Start UK Debt Management Ltd, J3 Debt Solutions or Angel Advance for that purpose. We work with Angel Advance, which provides regulated debt advice. You can withdraw marketing consent at any time.

Where SLWB acts jointly with us as nominee in an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, information needed to carry out that role is shared with SLWB.

Service providers acting for us are required to protect the information and use it only for the agreed service. An organisation acting as a separate data controller is responsible for explaining its own use of your information.

International processing

Some service providers may process information outside the UK. Where UK data protection law treats this as a restricted transfer, we use a permitted transfer mechanism, such as UK adequacy regulations or appropriate contractual safeguards. You can contact us if you want more information about the safeguard relevant to your information.

How long we keep information

We keep personal information only for as long as it is needed for the reason it was collected and for any legal, regulatory, accounting or claims requirement that applies.

• If you make an enquiry but do not proceed with a service, we normally keep the enquiry record for up to 12 months.
• If you enter a debt solution or use another service provided by us, we normally keep the service record for six years after you last used our services.
• Search phrases saved from site search boxes are kept for up to 90 days and then deleted automatically.
• The essential cookie that remembers your cookie choice can remain on your device for up to 182 days.

A particular record may be kept for longer where a law, regulator, complaint or legal claim requires it, or deleted sooner where it is no longer needed.

Cookies and measurement

The site uses essential technology needed for functions such as security and remembering your cookie choice. It also offers separate analytics and advertising categories. Analytics and advertising storage are denied by default and are enabled only if you consent. You can change or withdraw that choice using the cookie settings in the site's global controls.

The Cookie Policy lists each cookie and storage name by category.

If you reject analytics and advertising cookies, our consent system does not permit those cookies to be set. Google tags may still send limited cookieless measurement signals carrying a denied-consent state. Advertising data is redacted when advertising consent is denied. Those requests can include ordinary technical information needed to communicate over the internet, and we do not describe them as anonymous.

Cookie consent is separate from any permission you give us to contact you about an enquiry or to handle information for a service.

Site search

When you use the search box on this site, we keep a copy of the complete phrase you searched for. We do this to find the questions people ask that our guidance does not yet answer, so we can write the missing pages. Counting only pre-chosen keywords cannot show us a gap we have not thought of, which is why we keep the whole phrase.

That means a search we keep may include anything you typed into the box, including personal details if you enter them. Please avoid putting names, addresses or account numbers in the search box.

This applies to every search box on the site, including the small search boxes in the site header and at the bottom of the mobile menu. Those compact boxes show a shorter retention notice, a link to this section and the same choice below.

If you would rather we did not keep it, tick "Don't save this search" next to the search box. Your search still runs and you get exactly the same results; we simply do not record the phrase. The choice applies to that search, so tick it each time you want it.

We keep search phrases for up to 90 days and then delete them automatically. They can be read only by our site administrators. This feature does not connect what you searched for to your name, your IP address, an account, a cookie or any other identifier, and it does not send your search to Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, an advertising platform or any other outside company.

Because a saved search is not connected to an identifier, we cannot later identify a particular phrase as yours. Use the "Don't save this search" choice when you do not want the phrase recorded.

Separately from this feature, our web host keeps ordinary server and security logs, as almost every website does. Those are outside what is described here and may record technical information such as IP addresses and the web addresses requested.

Your data protection rights

Depending on the circumstances, you may have the right to:

• ask for a copy of personal information we hold about you
• ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information
• ask us to delete information when there is no continuing legal reason to keep it
• ask us to restrict how information is used in certain circumstances
• object to processing based on legitimate interests, and object at any time to direct marketing
• receive information you provided in a portable electronic format where the legal conditions for data portability apply
• withdraw consent at any time where processing relies on consent
• complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.

These rights are not all absolute. For example, we may need to keep information to comply with a legal obligation or to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim. We will explain any restriction that applies when we respond.

To exercise a right, email info@mydebt-plan.co.uk. We may need enough information to confirm your identity and locate the relevant records.

Security

We use technical and organisational measures intended to protect personal information from unauthorised access, loss, alteration or disclosure. Access is limited to people and providers who need the information for an authorised purpose. No system can guarantee complete security, but we review the measures used for the nature of the information and the risks involved.

Questions and complaints

If you have a question about this policy, want to exercise a right or are unhappy with how your information has been used, email info@mydebt-plan.co.uk. To make a formal complaint, email complaints@mydebt-plan.co.uk. Our complaints policy explains how a formal complaint is handled.

You can also make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office. We would welcome the opportunity to look into your concern first, but contacting us does not affect your right to complain to the ICO.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when our services, suppliers or legal obligations change. The version published on this page is the current version.