Privacy Policy

1. Important information and who we are

This privacy policy gives you information about how Fosters Solicitors LLP collects and uses your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide when you use our legal services.

This website is not intended for children, and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children, except so far as it is relevant to the legal services we provide.

Controller

Fosters Solicitors LLP is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “Fosters Solicitors”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights (paragraph 9), please contact us using the information set out in the contact details in paragraph 10.

2. The types of personal data we collect about you

Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified.

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data includes first name, last name, any previous names, or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
• Contact Data includes postal address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us.
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device ID and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Usage Data includes information about how you interact with and use our website and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
• Matter Data includes details of the legal matter you need support with and may include relevant documents, information and evidence.

We also collect, use and share aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data which is not personal data as it does not directly (or indirectly) reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate individuals’ Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature in order to analyse general trends in how users are interacting with our website to help improve the website and our service offering.

3. How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Your interactions with us. You may give us your personal data by filling in online forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
• use our legal services;
• subscribe to our publications;
• request marketing to be sent to you;
• submit a survey or enquiry; or
• give us feedback or contact us.
• Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see our cookie policy below for further details.
• Technical Data is collected from the following analytics providers: Microsoft Clarity based outside the UK; and Hotjar also based outside the UK.
• Contact, Financial and Transaction Data is collected from providers of technical, payment and delivery services such as LEGL based inside the UK.
  
  

4. How we use your personal data

Legal basis

The law requires us to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal data. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract with you: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you, to provide our legal services to you.
• Legitimate interests: We may use your personal data where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, for example to prevent fraud and enable us to give you the best and most secure customer experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
• Legal obligation: We may use your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.
• Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use the various categories of your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Direct marketing

During the period you are a client of ours, you may be asked to indicate your preferences for receiving direct marketing communications from Fosters Solicitors via email.

We may also analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view of which services and offers may be of interest to you so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications.

Third-party marketing

We will not share, sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties without your permission or unless required to provide our services to you, other than for the limited exceptions listed below:

• If we are required to do so by law or comply with the contractual obligations we are subject to.
• For the purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party, but only if these are not overridden by your interests, rights or freedoms.
• In urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety or vital interests of clients or the public.
• To protect and defend the rights of property of Fosters Solicitors.
• On occasions where you use our Residential or Commercial Property, Litigation, Personal Injury or Wills, Trusts & Probate services, we may be required to provide personal information to our Search Providers (Lawyer Checker; TM Group; PSG or Index Property Information) for the purpose of carrying out our Money Laundering, Account and Identification checks; and
• Data collected by the Google Analytics cookies is shared with Google, but no data which can personally identify you is shared.

Opting out of marketing

If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to us at data@fosters-solicitors.co.uk.

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, you will still receive service-related communications that are essential for administrative or customer service purposes for example appointment reminders, updates to our Terms and Conditions and checking that your contact details are correct.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added, and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

We also use Google Analytics cookies on our website.

Google Analytics is an analysis tool that helps us to understand how visitors to our site engage with our website. It uses a set of cookies to collect information and report site usage statistics without personally identifying any individual visitors. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘_ga’ cookie.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Microsoft Clarity

We use Microsoft Clarity, a web analytics tool provided by Microsoft, to better understand how visitors engage with our website. Microsoft Clarity uses cookies and tracking technologies to collect anonymous data about user interactions, including mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling activity.

What Data Does Microsoft Clarity Collect?

• User interactions such as page views, clicks, and scrolling behaviour.
• An anonymized user identifier to track visits across sessions.
• Technical information such as browser type, operating system, and screen resolution.

Microsoft Clarity does not collect personally identifiable information such as names, email addresses, or payment details. All data is processed in accordance with Microsoft’s Privacy Statement (https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement).

Hotjar

We use Hotjar, another analytics tool, to analyse user behaviour and improve our website’s usability. Hotjar helps us understand how users navigate the site through heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys.

What Data Does Hotjar Collect?

• Mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling activity.
• Pages visited and time spent on each page.
• Device type, browser type, and screen resolution.
• User feedback through optional surveys and polls.

Hotjar does not collect personally identifiable information, and all data is anonymized. More details on Hotjar’s data policies can be found in their Privacy Policy (https://www.hotjar.com/legal/policies/privacy/).

Intelligent Insights

We use Intelligent Insights, a feedback company to better understand our clients and gather feedback. For the purpose of data analytics no personal data is stored by Intelligent Insights, all analytics are run only on anonymised and aggregated data so individual can’t be identified. More details on Intelligent Insights data policies can be found in their Privacy Policy here.

Typeform

We use Typerform to help send and collate interactive forms to help gather feedback, information and responses from you. Data is kept for only as long as necessary for the purposes it was collected, you can request data deletion at any time through their standard process, for more details on Typeform’s policies please see their Privacy Policy here.

LiveChat

We use LiveChat to communicate with you directly through our website, LiveChat uses 256-bit SSL encryption to secure data in transit. Data is kept for as long as necessary for the purposes it was collected, you can request data deletion at any time through their standard process, for more details on LiveChat’s policies please see their Privacy Policy (https://www.livechat.com/legal/privacy-policy/ ).

How We Use This Data

We use Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar to analyse user behaviour and improve our website’s design, navigation, and content. This helps us enhance your browsing experience and optimize our site for better usability.

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We will not share, sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties without your permission or unless required to provide our services to you, other than for the limited exceptions listed below:

• If we are required to do so by law or comply with the contractual obligations we are subject to.
• For the purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party, but only if these are not overridden by your interests, rights or freedoms.
• In urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety or vital interests of clients or the public.
• To protect and defend the rights of property of Fosters Solicitors.
• On occasions where you use our Residential or Commercial Property, Litigation, Personal Injury or Wills, Trusts & Probate services, we may be required to provide personal information to our Search Providers (Lawyer Checker; TM Group; PSG or Index Property Information) for the purpose of carrying out our Money Laundering, Account and Identification checks; and
• Data collected by the Google Analytics cookies is shared with Google, but no data which can personally identify you is shared.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6. International transfers

We do not transfer your personal data outside the UK.

7. Data security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and organisational procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

8. Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

If you instruct us to provider legal services to you, we are required to retain copies of our files for a certain period after your matter has concluded. Our file (and your personal data which we retain in relation to this) will be retained for a period after the conclusion of your matter, at which point our file will be destroyed (save that we may retain basic information such as name and address details, to allow us to perform conflict checks). How long we retain your file depends upon the nature of your legal matter. The period that we retain files, according to their type, are detailed below:

9. Your legal rights

You have a number of rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal data in certain circumstances. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data 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 data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for that particular use of your data (including carrying out profiling based on our legitimate interests). In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.
• You also have the absolute right to object any time to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes (see paragraph 4 for details of how to object to receiving direct marketing communications).
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data (see the table in paragraph 4 for details of when we rely on your consent as the legal basis for using your data). However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in one of the following scenarios:
• If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy;
• Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
• Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
• You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please see the contact details in paragraph 10 to get in touch.

No fee usually required

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 is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

10. Contact details

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or about the use of your personal data or you want to exercise your privacy rights, please contact our DPO in the following ways:

• Email address: data@fosters-solicitors.co.uk
• Postal address: William House, 19 Bank Plain, Norwich NR2 4FS
• Telephone number: 01603 620508

11. Complaints

• Our objective at Fosters Solicitors is always to provide our clients with excellent service.

If you feel that we have fallen below the high standards we set ourselves, we welcome the opportunity to hear from you, and will do everything we can to put matters right. We will look into all expressions of dissatisfaction with Fosters Solicitors, our staff, or a concern about an invoice or our service. We will follow this procedure whenever a complaint arises – we are dedicated to learning from every mistake and always committed to improving our service to our clients where possible.

Our complaints procedure can be found here.

In dealing with complaints our objectives are:

• To act promptly, thoroughly and fairly;
• To learn from every mistake and look to continuously improve our service.

If you wish to contact us about a concern or complaint you have, please email our Head of Client Services, Lisa Petherick and we will contact you to discuss your concerns.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour and you can raise your concerns with them directly by visiting their website here.

You have the right to make a complaint relating to our use of your personal data at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.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.

12. Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes 

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 3.10.2025.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us, for example a new address or email address.

13. 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 policy of every website you visit.