Data Protection Complaints

If you wish to raise a complaint with us which relates to how we have dealt with your personal data, please email us at complaints@napthens.co.uk letting us have details of your complaint.

Alternatively, you can write to us at:

Napthens LLP, 7 Winckley Square, Preston, PR1 3JD

Please let us have as much detail as possible so we fully understand and address your concerns.

We are committed to handling data protection complaints in line with our legal and professional obligations, in an accessible, fair, transparent and timely manner and in line with our internal policies and procedures.

We will keep appropriate records about each data protection complaint in our central register and will open a case in our case management system.

These records may include:

• The date we received the complaint.
• Our acknowledgement of the complaint.
• All relevant correspondence, conversations and documents.
• The outcome of the complaint, including escalation, and any actions we have taken in response to/to address the complaint.

These records will be used to demonstrate compliance, for training, audit and monitoring purposes,  to support consistent handling and to identify recurring issues, trends or areas for organisational improvements or remediation.

We will not retain personal data relating to complaints for longer than is necessary and will handle such records in accordance with our retention and data protection policies.

For all complaints received on or after 19 June 2026, we will send you a written acknowledgement within 30 days of receipt.

We will aim to:

• Request any further information (including for clarification or identification purposes) within ten working days.
• Provide updates at least every 30 days.
• Reach an outcome within 60 working days.

For ongoing investigations, we will update you with an indication of our anticipated timescales for resolving the complaint. We will continue to keep you informed of our progress, including, where appropriate, the next steps, any further information required, and any expected timeframe for the next update, or outcome.

Investigations

We will take reasonable and proportionate steps necessary to investigate complaints fairly and in a timely manner.

We have processes in place to classify and escalate complaints that are time-sensitive, more serious or sensitive in nature.

 It may take us longer to investigate and resolve complaints which are complex, serious or which relate to multiple data protection issues.

Outcomes and escalation

We aim to communicate the outcome of the complaint to you without undue delay, explaining our findings, whether the complaint has been upheld (in whole or in part), any action taken or proposed, and, where no action is taken, the reasons for that decision.

We have processes in place for reviewing and escalating complaints where you are unsatisfied with our complaint handling as we progress the complaint or the outcome.

If you are unhappy with the outcome or any aspect of our response and notify us, we will escalate the matter to our Compliance Officer for Legal Practice (Compliance Officer). They will review the matter and respond to you with their decision on our complaint handling; including whether to accept the original finding, to substitute a new finding or alternatively to escalate the complaint to an appropriate reviewer.

Where reasonably practicable, any internal review will be carried out by a person who was not primarily responsible for the original response.

The Compliance Officer will respond to you within 15 working days of the referral to them. If the complaint is upheld, the Compliance Officer will ensure that necessary steps are taken as a result, such as correction, deletion, apology, security remediation, or process changes.

Once the matter has been escalated to our Compliance Officer and a decision issued, this decision is final in terms of our internal process. No further action will be taken and you will be informed of this.

If, once you have received our response, you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Information Commissioner about your complaint.

Details relating to making a complaint to The Information Commissioner can be found at:-

https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/data-protection-complaints