Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice & Cookies Policy

Introduction

Medical Law Service (MLS) recognises the importance of respecting and protecting privacy by complying with the UK GDPR and other data legislation. This privacy notice sets out and explains what personal information we may collect and how we may use and protect personal information made available to us.

This notice also contains important information on who we are, explains how and why we collect, use, and share personal information. It also sets out your legal rights concerning personal information and how to contact us if you have any questions or a complaint.

This notice applies to all our service users, including companies, individuals and visitors to our website.

Medical Law Services (MLS) is a trading style of Medical Law Pagination Services Ltd.

Our data protection registration number is ZA458391.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you please contact our Data Protection Officer Dawn Bowdler, please contact us by

telephone – 01704 546919

e-mail – customers@medicallawservices.co.uk

write to us – MLS, Dukes House, 34 Houghton Street, Southport, Merseyside PR9 0PA

 

The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioners Office. Further information and contact details are available at https://ico.org.uk

How do we collect and use your data?

We are instructed by law firms, insurance companies or medical agencies to offer services to those organisations who are providing services under contract to data subjects. We may also be instructed by individuals directly  in respect of welfare benefits applications.

We collect data if you make an enquiry online via our website, telephone or by e-mail enquiry. By submitting your details, the organisation you are in contract with confirms to us that they have a processing authority that allows us to collect, store and deal with your data.

To enable a request for service to be progressed, it is often necessary to obtain personal information about the firm asking for the services and the data subject.

When a service user contacts us about using our services we will use personal information for the purpose of dealing with the enquiry so that the service requested can be effectively processed.  Services can include

  • Requesting, sorting, collation of medical records into a paginated bundle that are comprehensible for application by the service user.
  • Opinion on merit – providing detailed assessment with page references and chronology of the medical history of the individual, outlining viewpoint on the events surrounding the alleged negligence or accident, together with the factual details regarding the individual’s current health status.
  • Our Welfare Benefits Advisor will assess your eligibility for Welfare Benefits, prepare and submit applications on your behalf and advise on your rights, entitlements and explain your options. They may also arrange appointments or follow up your application communicating with the relevant government agencies. There may be an agreement that the Advisor provides support through Application hearings.
  • Our in-house nursing and legal team will ‘triage’ and assess the lead. They will provide a detailed recommendation of whether to proceed or reject the claim based on the Claimant’s summary of events and the service users’vetting criteria.

If a service user contacts us for a service query, by submitting your details, you are requesting that we process your data to enable us to respond to your query and we will use and store your information for that purpose. Depending upon the nature of the enquiry we may also provide information about MLS services.

What personal information do we collect?

Personal information means any information identifying or describing an identifiable individual that we may collect to enable us to fulfil our contractual obligations to our service user.

Our lawful basis for processing and collecting personal information is to provide and improve products and services to our services users, through our service agreement with them. The service user may also provide to us your written consent to obtain all relevant information. You may withdraw your consent.

This information includes but is not limited to information relating to the individuals

  • Name, address or contact information for the individual
  • Medical and occupational health records
  • Date of birth, gender, reproductive status
  • Marital status, sexual orientation, ethnic or social origin, belief, culture and language
  • This may also extend to the individuals family members
  • Physical or mental health, disability
  • Educational, criminal or employment history
  • Information regarding the individuals claim
  • Financial status or information relating to financial transactions including details of pension, income and earnings

 

How do we protect your personal information?

We are committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure. We will take all appropriate steps and security measures to store your personal information provided to us to protecting it from loss, destruction, unauthorised access, transfer, disclosure or other misuse.

To help protect the privacy of data and personally identifiable information you submit through our website, we maintain physical, technical and administrative safeguards.

We restrict access and do not disclose to any person any personal data of a data subject unless  they are required to know that information to provide services to you.

We will never disclose confidential, personal or sensitive data (unless to the service user) without the consent of the data subject and we train our employees about the importance of confidentiality and maintaining the privacy and security of personal information.

All of our electronic data is stored within the UK. Third parties with whom we have contractual arrangements with may store personal data on secure services located within the European Economic Area (EEA).

Do we disclose any information to outside/third parties?

To enable us to provide services to our service users we may pass and retrieve personal information to third parties. Where we make use of third party services, we require them to maintain confidentiality of any personal information we provide to them for this purpose.

Some of these third parties may be situated outside of the UK and by using our services you consent to personal data and that of any data subjects sent to us being transferred outside the UK if required, so that we can meet the requirements of the services we are providing to you. When this is required, we ensure security and privacy procedures are in place that provide the same level of protection as in the UK.

This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential.

We may disclose personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with legal or regulatory requirements. We may also release information when we believe release is appropriate to comply the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property or safety.

How We Use Artificial Intelligence (AI)

We use the latest technology to help us deliver the best possible service, efficiently and accurately, and for our own internal business purposes. This includes tools for storing, analysing, and creating data.

In addition, we use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to enhance the quality or efficiency of our services. Such tools may be used for tasks such as drafting documents and analysing data. These tools will also be used for internal processes like administrative support, optimising processes, or managing information.

We ensure that any tool we use complies with our data protection and confidentiality obligations to protect personal data from being accessed or used in a way that is not explicitly authorised or subject to an appropriate lawful basis.

Automated decision making

We do not make decisions about individuals that are based solely on automated processing. We do utilise automated systems and analytical tools to support the processing of personal data that may contribute to the formulation of recommendations or preliminary decisions. Any output is subject to thorough review and verification before any final decision is made.

Application Programming Interface – APIs

To enable us to provide services to you we use APIs to specify how different software systems should communicate with each other. We may pass and retrieve data, including personal information between different software systems that interact with the APIs.

How long we keep your data?

Where we have been contacted by a service user to fulfil a contract, or if you make an enquiry with us that we do not then continue with we shall retain your full data for 12 weeks following closure of the enquiry or service agreement.

We will retain basic data for a period of 6 years.

This is to ensure that we can deal with any complaints or potential claims arising from the service given to the service users.

When a service user terminates our agreement, portions of your personal information may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary to assist us in meeting our legal obligations.

What are your rights?

Under UK Data protection law, we must have a “lawful basis” for collecting and using your personal data. Some of your data protection rights are set our below. You can find out more about your data protection rights on the ICO’s website www.ico.org.uk/for-the-public/.

  • Right of access – The right to ask for copies of your personal information known as a subject access request.
  • Right to rectification – The right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate and to correct any out of date or missing information.
  • Right to withdraw consent – The right to request that we stop any consent-based processing of your personal data after you withdraw your consent

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, or other rights under GDPR that you feel may apply please contact us using the contact details set out below providing enough information so that we may identify you. Please note that we will contact the service user regarding any request of this nature.

We must stop unless we believe that we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your personal data.

Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was published in February 2026 and last updated on 4th February 2026.

We may change this privacy notice from time to time, and if we do, we will post any changes on this page/site. If you continue to access this website or use services available from this website after those changes have come into effect, you will have agreed to the revised notice.

 

Cookies Policy

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the site’s or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information.

As a user you can accept or decline cookies. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not fully experience any interactive features on our website.

How do we use cookies?

Our website uses cookies to better the users experience while visiting the website.

As required by legislation, where applicable our website uses a cookie control system, allowing the user to give explicit permission or to deny the use of and saving of cookies on their computer/device.

Our website uses Google analytics which enables us to collect information on your site-viewing activity, such as how many people visit our site, the pages visited, duration of session and geolocation data. This information enables us to improve our websites to deliver the best possible service to service users by improving our site to maintain a reliable, consistent service.

Information on how Google analytics collects and processes information about you and information on how to opt out from Google’s collection of information from you, please click here.

How long do cookies last?

Some cookies are temporary and last for the duration of your session on our website. Once you close your browser these cookies will automatically delete.

Other cookies are persistent and remain on your personal device even after closing your browser. We use these cookies to remember you across multiple browsing sessions so that we may retain your preferences from one visit to another.

How to delete cookies

If you would like to delete your cookies please visit allaboutcookies.org which contains further information and step by step instructions for the browser you use.