Gardeners Bloomsbury Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Bloomsbury collects, uses, stores and protects personal data relating to our customers and prospective customers in our service area. It also explains your rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and related data protection laws, and how you can exercise those rights.

This Privacy Policy applies to all Gardeners Bloomsbury customers and potential customers located in our operating area, including those who contact us, request a quote, enter into a contract with us, or otherwise use our services.

Who we are and scope of this policy

Gardeners Bloomsbury is a gardening and related services provider. In relation to the personal data we collect and process, we are the data controller. This means we decide how and why your personal data is used, and we are responsible for ensuring that such use is compliant with data protection law.

This Privacy Policy covers personal data collected through our correspondence with you, our website or other online presence operated by us, and any offline interactions such as telephone calls, written correspondence or in-person meetings.

Types of personal data we collect

We collect and process different categories of personal data depending on how you interact with us and which services you use. The main categories of personal data we may collect are:

Identification and contact details, such as your full name, postal address, billing address, and any other contact details you choose to provide so that we can communicate with you.

Service and property information, such as the type of garden or outdoor space you have, property access details relevant to the provision of our services, photographs you provide to us for quotation or planning purposes, and details of any special instructions for your property.

Contract and transaction data, including records of services requested or ordered, quotations provided, invoices, payments received and outstanding balances, and your service preferences.

Communication records, including emails, letters, and notes of telephone calls or in-person discussions, as well as any feedback, complaints or compliments you provide.

Technical and usage information when you interact with our website or other online tools, which may include information about your device, browser type, pages visited and the date and time of your visit, where such data is collected through standard analytics tools or similar technologies.

Marketing preferences, including your preferences about receiving information from us about our services, offers and updates, and records of your consent or objection to such communications.

How we collect your personal data

We may collect personal data directly from you when you contact us to request information or a quotation, engage us to provide services, complete a form or provide details via our website or other online channels, interact with us by telephone, post, or in person, or sign up to receive updates or marketing communications from us.

We may also collect personal data automatically through your use of our website or digital tools, for example via analytics technologies that record technical data about your visits. Where appropriate and lawful, we may obtain additional information about you from publicly available sources to verify your identity or contact details.

Lawful bases for processing your personal data

Data protection law requires that we have a lawful basis for each use of your personal data. Gardeners Bloomsbury relies on the following lawful bases:

Performance of a contract or taking steps at your request before entering into a contract, where we use your personal data to provide quotations, schedule and deliver gardening services, manage your bookings and process your payments.

Compliance with a legal obligation, where we need to retain certain information to meet tax, accounting or other legal and regulatory requirements.

Legitimate interests, where the processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. This can include managing and improving our services, maintaining business records, responding to your enquiries, ensuring security of our operations and preventing fraud or misuse of our services.

Consent, where you have specifically agreed to us using your personal data for a particular purpose, such as receiving certain kinds of marketing communications. When we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time.

How and why we use your personal data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To provide and manage our services, including assessing your requirements, preparing and issuing quotations, agreeing contracts, arranging and carrying out visits, and providing ongoing garden maintenance or related services.

To manage our relationship with you, including handling your enquiries, providing customer support, notifying you of changes to our terms or services, and managing your preferences.

To process payments and maintain financial records, including invoicing, collecting payments, and managing any queries about charges.

To improve our business and services, including monitoring the quality of our services, analysing usage patterns, and developing new or improved offerings.

To send you marketing communications about our services, offers or updates, where we are permitted to do so by law and, where required, where you have provided your consent. You can opt out of marketing at any time.

To comply with legal obligations and to protect our rights, for example to keep appropriate business and financial records, respond to lawful requests from public authorities, and establish or defend legal claims.

Data processors and third party recipients

We may share your personal data with trusted third parties who act as data processors on our behalf. These service providers are only permitted to use your personal data in accordance with our instructions and only for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. They are required to keep your data secure and to comply with data protection law.

Such processors may include providers of data storage and hosting services, providers of customer relationship management or invoicing systems, payment processing services, and professional advisers who support our business operations.

In some cases we may need to share limited personal data with other third parties acting as independent data controllers, such as accountants, insurers, legal advisers or regulatory authorities, where this is necessary to meet our legal obligations or to protect our legitimate interests. When we do so, we will ensure that there is a lawful basis for the sharing and that only the minimum data necessary is disclosed.

International transfers

Where any of our processors or service providers are located outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, or store data in such locations, we will ensure that an appropriate level of protection is in place for your personal data. This may include relying on adequacy regulations or implementing standard contractual clauses or equivalent safeguards, as required by applicable data protection law.

Data retention and storage

We keep your personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, including to meet any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.

In general, we retain customer records, including contact details, service history and financial records, for as long as you remain an active customer and for a reasonable period thereafter, typically up to six years after the end of our relationship, to meet legal and tax obligations and to be able to respond to any questions or disputes that may arise.

Where personal data is collected solely for a specific purpose, such as a one-off enquiry or marketing communication to which you no longer subscribe, we will keep that data only for as long as is necessary to deal with your enquiry or until you opt out or withdraw your consent, subject to any legal obligations to retain certain information.

Once the relevant retention period has expired, we will either securely delete or anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be linked to you.

How we protect your personal data

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data from unauthorised access, loss, alteration or disclosure. These measures include limiting access to personal data to those employees, contractors and service providers who need it to perform their roles, using secure systems for storing and transmitting data, and implementing policies and procedures designed to safeguard the confidentiality and integrity of data.

While we take reasonable steps to protect your personal data, no system can be completely secure. We therefore cannot guarantee absolute security of information transmitted to or by us, but we strive to protect it in accordance with applicable law and good industry practice.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data held by Gardeners Bloomsbury. These rights may be subject to certain conditions and legal exceptions. Your rights include:

The right of access, which allows you to request confirmation that we process your personal data and to obtain a copy of that data along with certain information about how we use it.

The right to rectification, which allows you to request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data.

The right to erasure, sometimes known as the right to be forgotten, which allows you to ask us to delete your personal data in certain circumstances, for example where it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected and there is no legal reason for us to keep it.

The right to restrict processing, which allows you to request that we limit how we use your personal data in certain situations, such as while we are considering a request you have made to correct or object to our use of your data.

The right to object to processing, which allows you to object to our use of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests as our lawful basis. You also have an absolute right to object at any time to the use of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.

The right to data portability, which allows you in some circumstances to receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to request that we transfer it directly to another controller where technically feasible.

Where we rely on consent to process your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal of consent will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority if you believe our processing of your personal data infringes data protection law. You are encouraged to contact us in the first instance so we can seek to resolve any concerns.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, legal requirements or how we process personal data. When we make significant changes, we will take appropriate steps to inform you. The version published by Gardeners Bloomsbury from time to time will state the date from which it is effective, and we encourage you to review it periodically to stay informed about how we handle your personal data.