On this page
1. Who we are
Asylum Document Translations is the data controller responsible for your personal data. This means we decide how and why it is used.
- Address: 33 Willmore Road, Birmingham, B20 3JH, United Kingdom
- Email: info@asylumdocumenttranslations.co.uk
- Phone and WhatsApp: +44 7482 545337
Please contact us at the email address above with any question about this policy or your personal data.
When a solicitor or charity instructs us
When an immigration solicitor, adviser or charity sends us documents about their client, that organisation is normally the controller of the client's data, and we process the documents on its instructions to provide the translation. Where we agree terms with the organisation, those terms set out how we handle the data. The organisation's own privacy notice explains how it uses its clients' data.
2. The personal data we collect
- Contact details. Your name, email address, phone number and, if you use it, your WhatsApp number.
- Order details. The language, document type, deadline, what the translation is for, the spelling of names you ask us to follow, your delivery address and your order history with us.
- Your documents. The files you upload or send to us and the translations, certificates and other documents we produce for you.
- Payment information. Payments are handled by third-party payment processors (for example card processors, banks and PayPal). We receive confirmation that you have paid and limited details such as the amount and date. We do not see or store your full card number.
- Messages. What you write to us by email, through our website forms or by WhatsApp.
- Website data. Technical data such as your IP address, browser and device type, and, only if you accept analytics cookies, information about how you use our website (see section 11).
Sensitive information in your documents
Asylum and immigration documents often contain special category data, such as information about health, religious or philosophical beliefs, political opinions, racial or ethnic origin, sex life or sexual orientation. They can also contain criminal offence data, such as a police report, arrest warrant, court summons or allegation made against you or someone else.
We do not ask for this information for its own sake. We only process it because it appears in the documents you ask us to translate, and only as far as needed to translate, certify, check and deliver them.
3. How we use your data and our lawful bases
| Purpose | Lawful basis under UK GDPR |
|---|---|
| Answering your enquiry and preparing a quote | Steps at your request before entering into a contract (Article 6(1)(b)) |
| Translating, certifying, checking and delivering your documents, and arranging any service you order | Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)) |
| Taking payment, including instalments | Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)) |
| Keeping invoices and accounting records | Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) |
| Acting for a client on a solicitor's or charity's instructions | Our legitimate interests in providing services to the organisation that instructs us (Article 6(1)(f)) |
| Keeping our website and systems secure, preventing fraud and dealing with complaints or legal claims | Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) |
| Using Google Analytics to understand how our website is used | Your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), given through our cookie banner |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered your rights and expectations and believe they are not overridden by our interests. You can ask us for more information about this.
Special category data
We process special category data in your documents on one or both of these conditions:
- Your explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a) UK GDPR). We ask for this when you send us your documents. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us, but we may then be unable to complete or continue your order.
- Legal claims (Article 9(2)(f) UK GDPR), where the translation is needed to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim, for example an asylum claim, an appeal to the Tribunal or another immigration application or proceeding.
Criminal offence data
Where your documents contain criminal offence data, we process it under Article 10 UK GDPR and section 10 of the Data Protection Act 2018, relying on a condition in Schedule 1 to that Act. The conditions we rely on are processing that is necessary for the purpose of, or in connection with, legal proceedings, obtaining legal advice, or establishing, exercising or defending legal rights, and, where relevant, processing with your consent. We keep safeguards in place for this data in line with the Act.
4. Who we share your data with
Your documents are only seen by the people who need them to do the work:
- our team members who manage your order
- the UK-based translator and the checking linguist assigned to your order, who are bound by confidentiality obligations
- service providers who act for us (processors), such as our website host, email provider and file storage, under contracts that require them to keep your data secure and use it only on our instructions
- payment processors, who handle your payment under their own terms and privacy notices
- a UK notary public, only if you order notarisation, and other professionals needed for a service you ask for, such as an apostille or legalisation
- your solicitor, adviser or another person, only when you or your representative ask us to send documents to them
- postal and courier services, if you ask for printed copies to be posted
Messages you send through our website contact or quote forms are emailed to us through our web host. If you contact us by WhatsApp, your messages are also handled by WhatsApp under its own terms and privacy policy.
We never sell your data. We do not share your documents with the Home Office, any government or any other organisation unless you ask us to, or the law requires us to (for example, a court order).
5. International transfers
Our translators are based in the UK. Some of our service providers (for example email, hosting, payment or analytics providers) may process data outside the UK. Where this happens, we make sure the transfer is protected, for example because the country has been found to provide adequate protection under UK adequacy regulations, or because the transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. You can contact us for more information about these safeguards.
6. How long we keep your data
| Data | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Your uploaded documents and the translations we produce | Deleted 3 days after the service is delivered. You can ask us to delete them sooner. |
| A minimal record of your order (name, contact details, order reference, languages, service and dates) | As long as needed to deal with questions, corrections, complaints or legal claims about the order |
| Invoices, payment and accounting records | 6 years, as required for tax and accounting purposes (for example by HMRC) |
| Enquiries and quotes that do not lead to an order | Deleted within 12 months |
| Analytics data (only if you consent) | According to the retention settings in our Google Analytics account |
Because we delete your files 3 days after delivery, please save the copy we send you. If you need another copy after that, you will need to send us the documents again.
7. How we protect your data
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data. These include encrypted connections (HTTPS) on our website, restricted access to files on a need-to-know basis, strong passwords and two-factor authentication on our systems, and confidentiality obligations for everyone who works on your documents. No system is completely secure, but we work to keep the risk as low as possible and will act promptly if anything goes wrong.
8. Children
We do not knowingly take instructions directly from children. If a document belongs to someone under 18, we act only on the instructions of a parent, guardian, social worker or legal representative acting for that child, and we handle the child's data with extra care.
9. Your rights
Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:
- ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you (subject access)
- ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data
- ask us to delete your data
- ask us to restrict how we use your data
- object to our use of your data where we rely on legitimate interests
- ask for data you gave us in a portable format, where this applies
- withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent (this does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it)
Some rights apply only in certain circumstances, and some data must be kept by law (for example accounting records). To use any of your rights, email info@asylumdocumenttranslations.co.uk. We may need to confirm your identity first. We will reply within one month, or tell you if we need longer as the law allows. We do not usually charge a fee.
10. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we use your data, please contact us first so we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or by phone on 0303 123 1113.
11. Cookies
By default, our website only uses strictly necessary cookies and similar technologies that the site needs to work, such as keeping the upload and quote forms working securely. These do not need your consent.
We only use analytics cookies if you choose to accept them in our cookie banner. These are Google Analytics 4 cookies (named _ga and _ga_<id>, where <id> is our analytics property identifier), which help us understand how visitors use the site, such as which pages are visited. If you do not accept, these cookies are not set.
Your cookie choice is stored in your browser's local storage so we do not ask you again on every page. You can change your mind at any time by clearing your browser's site data for our website, which will show the cookie banner again, or by using your browser settings to block or delete cookies.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time, for example if our services or the law change. The "Last reviewed" date at the top shows when it was last updated. For more about how our service works, see our terms and conditions.
Last reviewed 1 October 2026. This page explains our translation service and is not legal advice.