Privacy notice

About this notice

This notice explains what Fraser & Fraser hold about the people who use their property inspection system, why it is held, and what you can ask them to do about it.

The system has two parts. Staff use an app on a phone to record inspections of properties in deceased-estate cases. Head office uses a dashboard in a web browser to set up cases, review the reports that come back, and produce documents from them.

Only authorised Fraser & Fraser staff can sign in. There is no public sign-up and no access for clients or contractors.

This notice is about the inspection system. Fraser & Fraser publish their own privacy policy for the firm's wider work on estates, and it stands alongside this notice rather than in place of it.

Fraser & Fraser's privacy policy

Who is responsible for your information

Fraser & Fraser are responsible for the information described here. They decide what is recorded and what it is used for. Baron Tech (Pvt) Limited built and maintain the system on their instructions.

Who holds your information

Fraser & Fraser

Registered office

39 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8EH

Information Commissioner's Office registration

Z6407527

Who answers requests

Fraser & Fraser, at info@fraserandfraser.co.uk

What is recorded about you as a member of staff

Your name, your email address and your phone number. The phone number is used to send you a sign-in code when two-step sign-in is switched on for your account.

Your access level, the job title shown beside your name, whether your account is active, whether two-step sign-in is on, and the date the account was opened.

A registration for the app on your phone, so notifications can reach it. This identifies the installed app rather than you, and records which kind of phone it is and when it was last seen.

Which notifications you have been sent and whether you have read them.

A record of what you did to an inspection report (submitting, approving, sending one back or reopening it), with the time and, where one is needed, the reason.

What is recorded about an inspection

The case it belongs to: the case name and number, the date of death, the address and postcode of the property, its position on a map, and any notes added to it.

The answers entered into a report, the version of the report template used, who created it, when it was sent in, who reviewed it and when, and the note written if a report is sent back.

Photographs taken during an inspection. Each photograph is stored with the date and time it was taken and the location of the phone at that moment, so head office can see where and when the evidence was gathered. The location is recorded for the photograph, not for you: the system does not follow where staff are and has no feature for doing so.

Files added to a case, such as a title register or a plan, with the file name, the kind of file, its size, who added it and when, and who removed it if one is removed.

Tasks raised against a case: what is to be done, who it is assigned to, how urgent it is, and when it is due.

Why it is recorded

To carry out Fraser & Fraser's work on deceased-estate cases, which is the reason the system exists.

To let head office check that an inspection was carried out, and to show when and where each photograph was taken. A photograph without a time and place is weaker evidence, which is why both are kept with it.

To let people sign in safely, to send a sign-in code where two-step sign-in is on, and to tell staff about work assigned to them.

Nothing recorded here is used for advertising. None of it is shared with anyone else for their own purposes, and none of it is exchanged for payment.

We use this information on the basis of Fraser & Fraser's legitimate interests in carrying out and recording inspections of estate property.

Where your information is held

Records, photographs and the dashboard are held in the United Kingdom, in London.

The dashboard's server work runs in London as well, which is set deliberately rather than left to chance.

Email sent by the system, such as an invitation or a report sent out as a document, goes through Resend, whose servers are in Ireland, inside the European Union.

Push notifications are delivered through Expo (United States), Apple and Google.

A notification shows the case number and what has happened: that a report was approved, returned or closed off, or that a case or a task has been assigned to you. It carries nothing else from the case or the report: not the case name, not the name of the report template, not the address or postcode, and not the note written when a report is sent back. Those are shown only inside the app, after you have signed in.

Text messages will be sent through Twilio once it is connected. No text message is sent today, and this paragraph describes what will happen rather than what does.

While an inspection is being carried out, the report and its photographs are also held on the phone itself, so the work survives a weak signal. They are sent to head office when there is signal again.

How long it is kept

Case records, reports and photographs are kept for six years after the case is closed, and are then dealt with in accordance with the firm's data retention procedures. The period follows from Fraser & Fraser's own obligations on estate files.

What the system does is settled. Records are not removed, apart from the temporary copies described below. A case, a report or a task that is finished with is archived, which takes it out of the working lists and keeps it recoverable. A report sent back to a member of staff is archived with the reason written against it.

When a report is exported with its case documents, a temporary copy may be stored in the UK (London). Copies made for a download are removed within 24 hours. When a report is too large to attach to an email, the email carries a link to a stored copy instead; the link stops working after 7 days and the copy is removed after 30 days.

Information is kept to what the work needs; we minimise what is recorded and do not gather more than the task calls for.

How long records are kept

six years after the case is closed

What you can ask for

You can ask what is held about you and for a copy of it. You can ask for anything wrong to be corrected. You can object to how your information is used, and you can ask for its use to be restricted while a question about it is settled.

Where a request would mean removing a record, the record is archived rather than erased, and the reason is recorded. This is how the system is built, and Fraser & Fraser will tell you what has been done and why.

If you are not satisfied with the answer you receive, you can raise it with the Information Commissioner's Office, the United Kingdom's authority for these matters.

How to ask for your account and data to be removed

Write to the email address below and say what you would like done. Your request goes to the person named above as responsible for answering it, and Fraser & Fraser will tell you what has been done.

Your account can be deactivated. Once it is, you can no longer sign in, and the app on your phone stops being able to reach anything.

Your name stays on the record of what you did to each report (submitting it, approving it or sending it back) after the account is deactivated. That record shows who carried out the estate's inspection, and it is not rewritten when someone leaves.

The case records, reports and photographs made through the system are kept for the period shown below, which follows from Fraser & Fraser's own obligations on estate files. Nothing in this system is removed in normal use, apart from the temporary copies made when a report is exported, which are described above: a case, a report or a task that is finished with is archived, which takes it out of the working lists and keeps it recoverable. Deactivating an account does not take away the inspection work recorded under it, because that work belongs to the estate's record rather than to the account.

Two things are removed outright, and no request is needed for either. The registration that lets notifications reach your phone is deleted when you sign out of the app. The temporary copies made when a report is exported with its case documents are removed on the timescales set out above. Nothing else in the system is removed automatically.

Nothing further is promised here. Records are archived rather than removed, the reason is recorded, and Fraser & Fraser will say what was done in your case.

Email address for requests

info@fraserandfraser.co.uk

How long records are kept

six years after the case is closed

How to reach Fraser & Fraser about this

Send a request or a question to the address below and it will be passed to the person named above as responsible for answering it.

Email address for requests

info@fraserandfraser.co.uk