Privacy Policy.

We will never sell, distribute or intentionally make your personal information public without your consent and have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect the data you share with us from loss and preserve its security and confidentiality. All your interactions with our website are protected by strong 256-bit encryption and we aim to collect the minimum of personal information needed to provide an effective service.

We believe in being transparent about what data we are collecting and how it will be handled. The information below sets out our privacy policy in detail. In each case we’ll explain why a particular piece of data is being processed and how long it will be retained. We are also committed to providing relevant information and control at the point of collection so that you can make informed decisions about what personal data you choose to share with us.

We collect and process information about you only where we have legal bases for doing so. This legal bases will depend on the individual services you use and how you use them. Additional information is provided below but in general terms we will only collect and use your information where:

In cases where you have consented to our use of your personal information for a specific purpose you have the right to change your mind at any time. Where we are using your information because we have a legitimate interest to do so, you have the right to object to that use, but in some cases this may mean you are no longer able to access our service.

We will collect and process the following data about you:

• Information you give us. This is information about you that you give us by filling in forms on our website (our site) or by corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise.
• Information we collect about you. With regard to each of your visits to our site we may automatically collect technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; and information about your visit.

We use information held about you in the following ways:

Information you give to us. We will use this information:

• to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us;
• to provide you with information about other goods and services we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about;
• to provide you, or permit selected third parties to provide you, with information about goods or services we feel may interest you. If you are an existing customer, we will only contact you by electronic means (e-mail or SMS) with information about goods and services similar to those which were the subject of a previous sale or negotiations of a sale to you.;
• to notify you about changes to our service;
• to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.

Information we collect about you. We will use this information:

• to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
• to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
• to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so;
  as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
• to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
• to make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our site about goods or services that may interest you or them.

Information we receive from other sources. We will combine this information with information you give to us and information we collect about you:

• We will use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above (depending on the types of information we receive).

You agree that we have the right to share your personal information with:

• Any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.

We will disclose your personal information to third parties:

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
• If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of us, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Like most businesses we rely on a number of third-party providers to support our day-to-day operations, for example in areas such as online file storage and email delivery. We may also hire third parties to operate, maintain or improve our website and other digital services. Some of these service providers will by necessity have access to or be directly involved in processing or storing a subset of the personal information you share with us.

All our third-party data processors have been carefully chosen as service suppliers who also practice responsible data handling. We believe that each has in place appropriate protections to ensure the security of the data we store or process with them and have clear policies for how they treat that data. But if in doubt you should review their individual Privacy Policies.

Amazon Web Services (file storage):
https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/

Google (website analytics):
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en

HeartInternet (hosting services):
https://www.heartinternet.uk/terms/heart-internet-privacy-statement

The Pixel Parlour (website development & support):
https://www.pixelparlour.co.uk/about/privacy-and-cookies/

Before using or sharing your information with third parties in ways not described here or not previously authorised by you, we will provide you with notice and an opportunity to control the further use or disclosure of your personal information.

Under certain circumstances we will transfer your information outside of the European Economic Area. We will only do this with your informed consent, when it is necessary to perform a contract we have with you or where the receiving organisation has adequate safeguards in place – for example certification under the EU-US Privacy Shield framework.

Our website is hosted in the UK in a data centre managed by Heart Internet. When you visit our website or access one of the files stored on our web server information about this request will be automatically stored in our log files to provide usage statistics, enable security features and aid technical troubleshooting. This is on the legal basis of legitimate commercial interests. In these cases, your IP address at the time acts as a unique identifier and is stored along with information about your operating system, browser version and the pages/files you access. These logs are retained on the server for up to 30 days, after which they are automatically deleted. Heart Internet will also record a similar set of data for the purposes of data management and security. This data is retained by them for up to 3 months.

Like most businesses, we use Google Analytics to help understand how our website is being discovered and interacted with and we use this information to help improve the experience for our visitors and make decisions about future development. Google Analytics presents us with aggregate information about the geographic location, device types and operating systems used by our website visitors, but not in a way that personally identifies you. Additionally, Google will record your computer’s IP address and set a number of temporary cookies in your browser to help distinguish you as an individual visitor as you move around our site. In the interest of limiting the amount of data Google collects via our site we are using Google’s standard Analytics implementation and have not enabled any additional advertising features, such as remarketing tags which would tie your usage of our site in with your broader browsing habits. Any user-level data that is associated with Analytics’ cookies are retained for up to 26 months from your last activity on our site, after which it is automatically deleted from Analytics’ servers.

Our website and emails contain a number of links to third party sites. It is important to be aware that these external sites are governed by their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. The inclusion of a link to an external source should not be understood to be an endorsement of that website, its owners or their products/services. Always check the individual privacy policies of these external sites before you submit any personal data through them.

Cookies are temporary files stored in your web browser by a website to help track usage and enable services that rely on a persistent identity. You can control which cookies you accept and remove them at any time by adjusting your browser settings or using the tools provided by this site, but it is important to be aware that some cookies are essential and our website may not function as expected without them.

Essential cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our websites and to use some of its features. But you can still block or delete them by changing your browser preferences.

• PHPSESSID, JSESSIONID (Wilkinson Byrne) – used to give you a unique identifier during your time on the site for security purposes. Expire at the end of your session.

Functional cookies
These cookies are used to enhance the performance and functionality of our websites. They are non-essential but without them, certain functionality may become unavailable.

• propertyhive_recently_viewed (Wilkinson Byrne) – used to temporarily store your recently viewed properties. Expires at the end of your session.

Analytics and customisation cookies
These cookies collect information to help us understand how our website is being used or customise it in order to enhance your experience.

• _ga (Google Analytics) – used to distinguish between users. Expires after 13 months.
• _ga_XXXXXXXXXX (Google Analytics) – used to create a persistent session state. Expires after 13 months.

Advertising cookies
These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests.

• None currently in use

When you send us an email, either to one of the addresses displayed on our website or to an individual member of staff, we will collect your email address and any other information you provide within your email.

Microsoft is our email service provider so any emails you send us will be stored on their servers. Therefore your email and any associated personal data may be transferred outside of the European Economic Area to servers located in the USA. Microsoft’s certification under the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework commits it to maintain appropriate safeguards for international data transfers. You can learn more here: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-GB/privacystatement

The information you provide will only be processed in relation to the purpose of your correspondence with us. We have no fixed retention period for email correspondence, but we are committed to only storing your data for no longer than is necessary to serve our legitimate interests of record keeping or to perform a contract we have entered into with you.

When you submit a Valuation Request, New Buyer/Tenant Registration or Viewing Request through our website the information we collect is only that needed to allow us to effectively fulfil your request and the personal data only used for this purpose. This can include your:

• Full name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Street address

Some forms include a free text field where you can provide additional information about your property search criteria or selling situation. We recommend limiting any personal data you include here to just that needed to help effectively convey your requirements.

Additionally we will capture information about your internet network, device type and IP address to use for spam filtering and logging. This technical data may be stored for up to 3 months before being permanently deleted.

Any transactional emails generated by our website are sent using Amazon SES. On its way out your message will pass through anti-spam filters operated by Amazon Web Services to identify poor quality content or viruses. These are automated processes with no human involvement. Amazon will only access email content under very limited circumstances, such as investigating fraudulent or abusive activity. You can read the detail of Amazon’s data privacy policy here: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/

Our website and services are not for use by children under 13 years and we will not knowingly collect or use the personal data of children. If you are under the age of 13 please do not provide any personal data even if prompted to do so.

A breach is considered any loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data. We are committed to disclosing any personal data breaches that might adversely affect your rights and freedoms without undue delay so that you can take appropriate action. Any notifiable breaches will also be reported to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hrs. This includes breaches affecting the third party services identified in this privacy policy, where personal data is being held on our behalf.