Privacy Notice

The South Eastern Circuit (“the Circuit”, “the SEC”, “we”) is one of the six historic circuits of the Bar of England and Wales. For the purposes of UK data-protection law the SEC is the data controller for personal data collected through this website and through membership administration. The Circuit is completing its registration with the Information Commissioner's Office and will publish the reference here once it is issued.

Contact for data-protection matters: admin@southeasterncircuit.com.

We collect only the personal data we need to operate the SEC:

• Membership application data — name, year of call, chambers, email address, and the further details a barrister supplies when applying to join.
• Member account data — sign-in email, an anonymous session identifier, and the editable profile fields that members maintain themselves in the members area.
• Communications data — emails sent to and received from SEC addresses (administrator, leader, junior, and other office-holders) and the contents of those communications.
• Subscription preferences — opt-ins for Circuit newsletters, Circuit events, and external partner communications.
• Technical data — IP address, browser and device information collected through our hosting provider for the purpose of operating and securing the site.

We rely on the following lawful bases under Article 6 of the UK GDPR:

• Contract — for processing necessary to administer your membership of the Circuit (including communications about your subscription and member-only services).
• Legitimate interests — for site operation, security, fraud prevention, and limited communications with non-member visitors.
• Consent — for marketing communications and newsletter subscriptions. You can withdraw consent at any time by emailing admin@southeasterncircuit.com.
• Legal obligation — where we are required to retain or disclose information by law (e.g. financial records).

We do not sell personal data. We share it only with:

• Our hosting and sign-in providers — Cloudflare, which serves every page, and Supabase, which holds the membership records, the sign-in system and the Circuit's private files.
• Our email provider — Resend, which carries the six-digit sign-in codes and the notices the site sends. Your email address passes through it each time you sign in.
• Our mailing provider — Mailchimp, used for On Circuit and the Circuit's other mailings.
• Our video provider — Vimeo, which hosts the Circuit's recorded lectures and training films. Playing a film sends your IP address to Vimeo and may set cookies in your browser.
• Our payments and accounting providers — the provider that collects subscriptions by direct debit, and our accounting system.
• Each of the above acts as our processor and is bound by a written data-processing agreement.
• The Bar Council and Bar Standards Board — where statutory or professional obligations require disclosure of specific records.
• Law enforcement or courts — only where we are required by law to do so.

We keep current-member records for the duration of membership and for six years after membership ends. Retention periods for each kind of record will be set out in a retention schedule, which the Circuit is preparing. Financial records are retained as required by HMRC (currently six years from the end of the relevant tax year). Application data from unsuccessful applicants is deleted after twelve months unless the applicant asks us to retain it for a future application.

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Ask us to erase your data (subject to our legal and contractual obligations).
• Restrict or object to particular processing activities.
• Request your data in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent for any consent-based processing.

To exercise any of these rights, email admin@southeasterncircuit.com. We will respond within one calendar month.

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns first.

We review this notice periodically and will publish any material changes here. Last updated: 21st September 2026, when the providers we share data with were set out one purpose at a time and three that were already in use were named.