Privacy Policy - Gardeners Northumberland Heath

Effective date: This Privacy Policy applies to all Gardeners Northumberland Heath customers in the Northumberland Heath area. It explains how personal data is collected, used, stored, shared, and protected when you use our gardening services.

We are committed to handling personal information in a lawful, fair, and transparent way in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. This policy is designed to help you understand what information we collect, why we collect it, how long we keep it, who may process it on our behalf, and what rights you have in relation to your data.

1. Who we are

Gardeners Northumberland Heath provides domestic and commercial gardening services in the Northumberland Heath area. For the purpose of data protection law, we act as the data controller for the personal information we collect from customers, prospective customers, website visitors, and other individuals who contact us in connection with our services.

This means we decide how and why your personal data is used, and we are responsible for ensuring it is processed in line with applicable data protection laws.

2. What data we collect

We collect only the information needed to deliver services, manage enquiries, maintain records, and improve our business operations. The type of data we may collect includes:

Identity details such as your name
Contact details such as phone number, email address, and service address
Service information including the type of gardening work requested, job history, appointments, and instructions
Billing and payment records such as transaction details and invoicing information
Communication records including emails, messages, notes from calls, and correspondence about your booking or service
Property and access details where needed for carrying out work safely and effectively
Technical data such as basic website usage information if you contact us through online channels

We do not intentionally collect special category personal data unless it is strictly necessary and you provide it voluntarily. Special category data includes information such as health details, religious beliefs, political opinions, or biometric information.

3. How we use your personal data

We use personal data for the following purposes:

To respond to enquiries and provide quotations
To arrange, deliver, and manage gardening services
To communicate about appointments, changes, reminders, and service updates
To issue invoices, process payments, and maintain financial records
To keep internal records of work completed and customer preferences
To deal with complaints, queries, or service issues
To meet legal, tax, accounting, and regulatory obligations
To protect our business, staff, and customers from fraud or misuse

We only use your data in ways that are relevant to the services we provide and in line with the purpose for which it was collected.

4. Lawful basis for processing

Under UK GDPR, we must have a lawful basis for processing personal data. Depending on the circumstances, Gardeners Northumberland Heath relies on the following lawful bases:

Contract

We process personal data when it is necessary to perform a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. This includes preparing quotes, confirming bookings, delivering services, and handling payment-related matters.

Legitimate interests

We may process your data where it is necessary for our legitimate business interests and where those interests do not override your rights and freedoms. This may include keeping customer records, improving our services, managing enquiries, and preventing fraud or misuse.

Legal obligation

We process certain information because we are required to comply with legal obligations, such as tax rules, accounting requirements, and record-keeping duties.

Consent

In limited cases, we may rely on your consent, for example for certain optional communications. Where consent is used, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.

5. Data retention

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Retention periods depend on the type of information and the reason it is held.

In general:

Customer service and booking records are kept for a reasonable period to manage ongoing relationships and resolve queries
Financial and invoice records are retained for the period required by law
Communication records are retained only as long as needed for service administration and dispute handling
Information no longer needed is securely deleted or anonymised

Where data must be retained for legal reasons, we will store it securely and limit access to authorised personnel only.

6. Processors and third parties

We may use trusted third-party service providers, known as processors, to help us operate our business. These parties only process personal data on our instructions and must protect it appropriately. Examples may include:

IT and cloud storage providers
Accounting and bookkeeping services
Payment processing providers
Administrative or communication tools used for business operations

We may also share data with professional advisers, regulatory bodies, or public authorities where required by law or necessary to protect our legal rights.

We do not sell your personal information. Any sharing is limited to what is necessary and subject to appropriate safeguards.

7. International transfers

Where any processor stores or handles data outside the UK, we take steps to ensure that adequate protections are in place. This may include using approved contractual safeguards or working only with providers that maintain suitable data protection standards.

8. Security of your data

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration, or disclosure. These measures may include access controls, secure storage, staff awareness, and limiting data access to those who need it for legitimate business purposes.

While no system is entirely risk-free, we take data security seriously and continually review our practices to help keep information safe.

9. Your rights

Under data protection law, you have several rights regarding your personal data. These rights may apply depending on the circumstances and the lawful basis used for processing.

Right of access – you can request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
Right to rectification – you can ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data
Right to erasure – you can request deletion of your data in certain situations
Right to restriction – you can ask us to limit how we use your data in certain cases
Right to object – you can object to processing based on legitimate interests in some circumstances
Right to data portability – you can ask for certain data to be provided in a reusable format
Right to withdraw consent – where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw it at any time

Please note that some rights may not apply in every case, for example where we must retain information for legal compliance or where processing is necessary to provide a service you requested.

10. How to exercise your rights

If you wish to exercise any of your rights, you should make a clear request stating which right you want to use and what information it relates to. We may need to verify your identity before responding, to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to the wrong person.

We aim to respond within the timeframe required by law. If your request is complex or numerous, we may need more time, but we will keep you informed.

11. Complaints

If you have concerns about how we use your personal data, we encourage you to raise them with us first so that we can address the issue. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection authority if you believe your data protection rights have been infringed.

Gardeners Northumberland Heath values privacy and takes complaints seriously. We will investigate concerns carefully and aim to resolve them fairly.

12. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect legal, operational, or service-related changes. Any revised version will apply from the date it is published. We recommend reviewing this policy periodically so that you remain informed about how we handle personal data.

13. Summary of our commitment

We are committed to processing personal data lawfully, fairly, and transparently. We collect only the information needed to deliver services, retain it only as long as necessary, and limit access to trusted processors and authorised personnel. We respect your rights and aim to maintain a responsible approach to privacy for every customer in the Northumberland Heath area.

This policy applies to all Gardeners Northumberland Heath customers in the area.