Privacy Policy

What we do with information we collect from you when you contact us

You may have contacted us by email, through our online contact form or by post because you have a question, a concern or wish to provide us with feedback on consumer related matters.  We will collect your name, address, email address and any other personal data contained in your message.

We will use your contact details to respond to you.

Lawful basis for processing

We process your personal information because:

  • processing is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law

How long do we keep your personal data

We only keep your personal information for the minimum amount of time necessary. Once our correspondence with you has ended, we will retain a record for 12 months. 

Who do we share your information with

Your information will be accessed by our staff who need to do so. We will not share this information with third parties unless we have informed you and we have a lawful basis to do so.

In general we do not transfer personal data outside either the UK or the European Economic Area (EEA) and on the rare occasions when we do so we will inform you. We will only transfer data outside the UK and the EEA when we are satisfied that the party which will handle the data and the country we are processing it in will provide adequate safeguards for personal data.

Your data protection rights

Data protection law gives you certain rights that you may exercise in respect of your own personal information:

  • you have a right to request a copy of personal information we hold about you.
  • you have the right to ask us to update our records if you believe that the data we hold is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in. There may however be some circumstances in which we cannot comply. Such as, if we have a legal duty to keep data, or we process it in a particular way
  • you have the right to ask that we stop or restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances
  • you have the right to object to processing.

We have one month to respond to you. Please contact us at corporateservices@consumer.scot if you wish to make a request.

You can find out more about your rights by visiting Your data matters | ICO

Subject Access Request

To make a Subject Access Request for access to personal data (i.e. if you believe we hold information on you or someone you are acting on behalf of, and you would like access to it), please email your request to the Data Protection Officer at corporateservices@consumer.scot - or alternatively refer to the ICO Guidelines, and complete and submit an online Subject Access Request form using the Consumer Scotland email corporateservices@consumer.scot.

Your right to complain

If you have concerns about how we handle your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer in the first instance at corporateservices@consumer.scot who will look into the concerns you have raised and respond to you.

If you are not satisfied with our DPO’s response you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO are the supervisory authority responsible for data protection in the UK.

You can contact the Information Commissioner at:

The Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Tel: 08456 30 60 60

More information is available on the Information Commissioner's website. You can also report any concerns via the Information Commissioner Officer's website.

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review to make sure it is up to date and accurate. If this privacy notice changes in any way, we will update this page.

Third Party Privacy Notices

Privacy notices for personal information shared with us by other organisations:

Advice Direct Scotland