Legal

Privacy notice and terms of use

This page explains what personal information Halden & Rowe holds, why we hold it, who sees it, how long we keep it and what you can ask us to do with it. It also sets out the terms on which this website is provided.

It is written to be read rather than to be got past. If anything here is unclear, telephone 01632 960 118 and ask, or write to the practice administrator at the office address. Last reviewed August 2026.

Privacy notice

What we hold and why

We collect personal data for one purpose: to provide the accountancy, tax, payroll and related services we have been engaged to provide, and to meet the professional and legal obligations that come with providing them. We do not collect personal information for any other reason, we do not sell it, and we do not pass it to third parties for marketing.

The information we hold

Depending on the engagement, this may include your name and contact details, the identification documents we are required to see before acting, the financial and accounting records of your business, payroll and employment information about your staff, details of the entity and its owners and controllers, and the correspondence that passes between us.

Where we prepare accounts or returns, the underlying records themselves inevitably contain personal information — customer and supplier names, employee costs, director drawings, and the transactions behind each of them. That material is held for as long as it is needed to do the work and to answer questions about it afterwards.

Why we hold it

Most of what we hold is held because we cannot perform our contract with you without it. Some of it — identification documents in particular — is held because a professional practice is required to verify who its clients are and to keep those records current. A smaller amount is held for our own legitimate interests in administering the practice: the diary, the records-received log, the fee ledger and the file notes that make it possible to answer a question about work done three years ago.

We do not build profiles, we do not make automated decisions about you, and we do not use client information to target advertising of any kind. There is no marketing list attached to this website.

Who sees it

Access within the practice is limited to the people working on your affairs and those supervising them. Fourteen people work here and the working papers for any given client are ordinarily seen by three or four of them.

We share information outside the practice only where you have asked us to, where it is necessary to deliver the service — a return submitted on your behalf, for instance — or where we are required by law or professional obligation to do so. Any external service provider we use is bound by written confidentiality terms and may use the information only to provide the service we have engaged them for.

How long we keep it

Client records are ordinarily retained for a period of years after the relationship ends, in line with the retention period expected of a professional practice, and are then securely destroyed. Some records are kept longer where there is a continuing legal or professional reason to do so, for example where a matter remains open or where a document may be needed to defend advice given.

Original documents belonging to you are returned as a matter of course once we have finished with them, usually within a fortnight of the relevant work being finalised. We keep our own copies in the file; the originals are yours.

Your rights

You may ask us what personal data we hold about you, ask for inaccurate data to be corrected, and in certain circumstances ask for data to be deleted or its use restricted. You may also ask for a copy of the information you have provided to us in a portable form, and object to processing carried out on the basis of our legitimate interests.

Write to the office address marked for the attention of the practice administrator, or email hello@haldenrowe.example.com. We will respond within one month. There is no charge for a reasonable request, and we will tell you before doing anything that would attract one.

Some rights are limited where we are required to keep information — identification records are the usual example. Where we cannot do what you have asked, we will explain in writing why not rather than simply declining.

Specific situations

Particular kinds of information

Some of what we handle needs a longer explanation than a general notice allows. These notes cover the situations clients ask about most often.

Identification documents

Before we can begin work we are required to verify the identity of the business and of the individuals who own or control it. In practice that means photographic identification and proof of address for each director or partner with a significant interest, together with the incorporation or registration details of the entity.

We ask for these once, hold them securely, and use them for no other purpose. This applies to every client without exception and implies no suspicion whatsoever. We are also required to keep the records current, which is why we occasionally ask you to confirm that nothing has changed.

Meeting notes and recordings

Somebody on our side takes notes at every review meeting, and you receive a short written summary within one working day. Those notes form part of the client file and are retained with it.

We do not record video meetings by default. Where a client asks for a session to be recorded, everybody on the call is told at the start, the recording is held for three months and is then deleted, and it is provided to you as a download rather than circulated. We will not record a meeting without telling the people in it.

External service providers

Like every modern practice we rely on a small number of suppliers: bookkeeping and payroll software, a document store, an email provider, an offsite backup, and the confidential waste contractor who destroys paper records at the end of their retention period.

Each is engaged under written terms that limit them to providing the service we have asked for. We do not use client information for product development, training of any kind, or analytics, and we do not permit our suppliers to do so either.

Security in the office

Paper records are held in a locked records room and logged in and out. Electronic files are accessible only to the people working on the relevant client and those supervising them. Access is reviewed when somebody joins, changes role or leaves.

Documents at the end of their retention period are destroyed by a confidential waste contractor rather than put in a bin, and electronic records are deleted on the same cycle. Staff are reminded of their confidentiality obligations annually, and those obligations continue after employment ends.

If something goes wrong

If personal information held by us is lost or disclosed in error, we will investigate immediately, tell you what happened and what information was involved, explain what we have done about it, and notify whoever else needs to be notified. We would tell you even where there is no obligation to, because you would want to know.

If you believe we have mishandled your information, raise it with your manager first, then with the partners in writing. You also have the right to complain to the supervisory authority responsible for data protection in your jurisdiction, and we will tell you how on request.

This website

Cookies, tracking and how this site is built

This site does not set analytics or advertising cookies. It does not embed third-party trackers, social widgets, comment systems, chat boxes, hosted fonts, mapping services or content delivery networks. Every image on these pages is drawn inline in the markup, and the small amount of script present does one thing: it opens and closes the navigation menu on a narrow screen.

No account is created and no personal information is collected simply by reading these pages. If you fill in the enquiry form on the contact page, the information you type is what we receive; nothing else is gathered alongside it.

Our web server keeps ordinary technical logs of the kind every web server keeps — the pages requested, the time, and a truncated network address — for a short period, so that we can tell whether the site is working. They are not used to identify individuals, are not combined with any other information, and are deleted on a rolling cycle.

Why the site is built this way

It would be quicker to load a mapping widget, an analytics tag and a font service from elsewhere. We have chosen not to, for three reasons. It keeps the pages fast on a poor connection, which matters to the clients who read them from a site cabin. It means nobody outside this practice learns anything about you because you visited our website. And it means we can honestly say what the site does, in a paragraph, without having to check what a third party has changed this month.

The whole site is plain markup and one stylesheet. It works with scripting disabled, apart from the navigation menu on small screens, which falls back to being permanently visible.

Accessibility

We aim to make this site usable by everyone. It uses plain markup, reflows to narrow screens without horizontal scrolling, respects your browser's text size settings, maintains readable colour contrast throughout, and provides a skip link to the main content at the top of every page. Tables scroll within their own container rather than forcing the page sideways.

If you have difficulty using any part of it, or would like information in a different format such as large print, please telephone or email and we will provide it. We can also make reasonable adjustments to how we work with you more generally: documents in larger type, meetings at your premises rather than ours, or correspondence by post where email is inconvenient.

Terms

Terms of use

The material on this website is provided for general information about our practice and its services. It is not advice, and it is not a substitute for advice. Circumstances differ, rules change, and a paragraph written for a general audience cannot take account of your particular position. Please speak to us, or to another suitably qualified adviser, before acting on anything you read here.

We take care to keep this site accurate but give no warranty that it is complete or current, and we accept no liability for loss arising from reliance on it. Any figures, fee ranges, durations and timescales shown are indicative and do not constitute an offer. A binding engagement arises only from a signed engagement letter that sets out the scope of work, the fee and the responsibilities of each party.

Nothing on these pages is a filing deadline, a statement of anybody's legal obligations, or advice about the tax or regulatory position in any particular jurisdiction. Statutory dates depend on your year end, your structure, the taxes you are registered for and the rules in force where you operate. Your own dates are set out in the timetable attached to your engagement letter, and we confirm each one in writing before it falls due.

Content on this site is the property of Halden & Rowe unless otherwise stated. You may print or download extracts for your own use; you may not republish them commercially without permission. Where we link to another organisation's site, that link is not an endorsement and we have no control over the content you find there.

A note on the illustrations. The client comments quoted on the main page are drawn from our annual client survey and are used with permission, with identifying details removed at the client's request. Some examples elsewhere on the site are composites assembled from several engagements so that no individual business is identifiable. Where a figure is given as an illustration, it is described as one.

The same applies to the fee ranges, the session lengths and the connection figures quoted elsewhere. They are drawn from what we actually observe across the client list rather than invented for the page, but they describe a spread rather than a promise, and yours may sit outside it. Anything we are prepared to be held to appears in your engagement letter, not here.

Professional standards and complaints

We work to the ethical standards expected of a professional accountancy practice, including requirements relating to integrity, objectivity, professional competence, confidentiality and professional behaviour. We hold professional indemnity insurance, details of which are available on request.

If something goes wrong we would much rather hear about it than not. Raise the matter first with the manager responsible for your affairs, who has the authority to put most things right immediately. If that does not resolve it, write to the partners at the office address; we will acknowledge your letter within five working days, investigate, and respond in writing within a month. If you remain dissatisfied at the end of that process we will tell you what further steps are open to you.

Changes to this notice

We review this page once a year and whenever something about the practice changes in a way that affects it. The date of the last review is shown at the top. Where a change is significant — a new category of information, a new purpose, a materially different retention period — we will tell existing clients directly rather than relying on you noticing a revised page.

Previous versions are kept on the file and can be provided on request, which is occasionally useful when somebody wants to know what the position was at a particular date.

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