Privacy notice.

1. Who we are

Bronwyn Butt Attorneys & Conveyancers (“we”, “us”, “the firm”) is a practising attorneys’ firm registered with the Legal Practice Council, operating from 32 Buffalo Thorn Road, Fourways Gardens Estate, Fourways, Johannesburg 2055.

For the purposes of POPIA we are the responsible party for the personal information described in this notice. Where we act as a conveyancer in a transaction, we process information about buyers, sellers, bondholders, agents and related parties in order to give effect to that transaction.

2. Our Information Officer

POPIA requires every responsible party to have a registered Information Officer. Ours is the person to contact about anything in this notice — a question, a correction, an objection or a complaint.

3. What we collect, and why

The information we hold depends on how you deal with us.

If you send us an enquiry through this website

The contact form asks for your name, email address, phone number, the type of matter, and whatever you choose to tell us in the message. The cost calculator’s “email me this estimate” option asks for your name and email address, and sends us the figures you had on screen. We use this only to answer you. Every field is voluntary — if you would rather not complete the form, phone or email us instead.

If we act for you in a matter

Carrying out a transfer, registering a bond, drafting a will, forming a trust or administering an estate requires considerably more: identity documents and identity numbers, proof of residential address, income tax and VAT numbers, marital status and antenuptial or divorce documents, bank account details for the payment of proceeds, bond and rates account details, and correspondence about the matter. For a company, close corporation or trust we collect the registration documents and the details of directors, members, trustees and beneficial owners.

We collect this because we cannot lawfully complete the work without it. The Deeds Registries Act, the Transfer Duty Act, the Administration of Estates Act and the rules of the Legal Practice Council each require particular records, and the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) obliges us, as an accountable institution, to establish and verify who our clients are before we act. Where the law requires the information, providing it is not optional — if we do not have it, we cannot proceed with the matter.

When you simply browse this site

We use Google Analytics to understand which pages are read and how people arrive here. It records technical information such as approximate location, device type, browser and the pages visited. We have configured it not to collect information that identifies you personally, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles. This site sets no advertising cookies.

4. Who we share it with

We share personal information only where the matter requires it, or where the law does. In practice that means:

• the Deeds Office, SARS and the relevant municipality or body corporate, to obtain clearances and register the transaction;
• banks and bond attorneys where a bond is being registered or cancelled;
• the estate agent and the other party’s attorney, to the extent needed to move the transaction forward;
• the Master of the High Court, in deceased estate and trust matters;
• the Financial Intelligence Centre, the Legal Practice Council, the Legal Practitioners’ Fidelity Fund and our auditors, where we are required to report or to be audited;
• the service providers who run our systems — our email and document storage provider, our practice management software, and the form provider described below.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not give it to anyone for their own marketing.

5. Information that leaves South Africa

Enquiries submitted through this website are delivered to us by Formspree, a form-processing service operated outside South Africa, and our email and document storage may also be hosted outside the country. POPIA permits this where the recipient is bound by rules that give your information a level of protection comparable to POPIA, or where the transfer is necessary to perform a contract with you or at your request.

If you would prefer that nothing you send us crosses a border at this stage, phone us on 078 126 4201 rather than using the form.

6. How long we keep it

Enquiries that do not become matters are kept only as long as we may still need to answer them, and are then deleted.

Files for matters we have acted in are kept for the periods required by law and by the rules of the profession. FICA records must be kept for at least five years from the end of the relationship or the conclusion of the transaction, and attorneys’ files are customarily kept substantially longer given how long a property title and an estate can be revisited. We destroy or de-identify records once we are no longer required or entitled to keep them.

7. How we protect it

This website is served only over an encrypted connection, and enquiry data is transmitted encrypted. Access to matter files is limited to the people working on them. Where we hold original documents and wills, they are kept in safe custody at our offices.

If personal information in our care is accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, POPIA requires us to notify the Information Regulator and, where the breach may cause you harm, to notify you as well. We will do so as soon as reasonably possible after establishing what has happened.

8. Your rights

You may, at any time and free of charge:

• ask us to confirm what personal information we hold about you, and ask for a copy of it (a reasonable fee may apply to the copy itself);
• ask us to correct or delete information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, misleading or obtained unlawfully;
• object to our processing your information on the grounds set out in POPIA;
• withdraw a consent you previously gave, without affecting processing that has already taken place;
• complain to the Information Regulator.

Two honest caveats. Where we are legally obliged to keep a record — a FICA file, a deeds record, a statutory return — we cannot delete it on request. And if you withdraw information we need in order to act, we may not be able to continue with the matter.

Requests for access are made under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) on the prescribed form. Write to us at bronwyn@bbconveyancers.co.za and we will tell you how.

9. Complaints to the Information Regulator

If you believe we have handled your information unlawfully, please raise it with us first — most concerns are cleared up quickly. You are entitled to go to the Regulator directly:

10. Changes to this notice

We update this notice when our practice or the law changes. The date at the top shows when it was last revised. Where a change materially affects how we handle information we already hold, we will bring it to the attention of the clients affected rather than relying on this page alone.