Gardeners Herne Hill Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Herne Hill collects, uses, stores, and protects personal data relating to customers in the Herne Hill area. It also explains your rights under data protection law, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

This Privacy Policy applies to all Gardeners Herne Hill customers and prospective customers located in the Herne Hill area, as well as visitors who contact us to enquire about our gardening services.

Who We Are

Gardeners Herne Hill is a gardening service provider operating in and around the Herne Hill area. For the purposes of data protection law, Gardeners Herne Hill is the data controller in respect of your personal data. This means that we determine the purposes and means of the processing of your personal information.

Personal Data We Collect

We collect and process only the personal data that is necessary for us to provide our gardening services and to manage our relationship with you. The types of personal data we may collect include:

Identification and contact details, such as your name, residential address, property address where services are provided, and other basic contact information you choose to share.

Service and contract details, such as descriptions of the gardening or maintenance services requested, visit dates and times, instructions relating to access to your property, and records of work carried out.

Communication records, such as information you provide when you contact us to request a quote, ask a question, make a complaint, or provide feedback. This can include notes of conversations and any written correspondence.

Billing and payment information, such as invoices issued, details of services charged, and records of payments received. We do not store your full payment card details; where card payments are processed, this is done by a payment processor on our behalf.

Technical and usage information, where relevant, such as basic analytics about how you interact with any online forms or digital tools we may use. We aim to keep this to a minimum and use it only to improve our services.

How We Collect Personal Data

We collect personal data directly from you when you contact Gardeners Herne Hill to enquire about or request our services, when you enter into a contract with us, and during the course of providing our gardening services. This may be through conversations, forms, or other written communications.

We may also receive some information from third party service providers who assist us with payment processing or booking management, but only where this is necessary to complete your booking or process your payment.

Lawful Bases for Processing

We process your personal data only where we have a lawful basis to do so under data protection law. Depending on the context, our lawful bases may include:

Contract. We process personal data that is necessary to enter into and perform a contract for gardening services with you. This includes using your contact details to arrange visits and service details to deliver the work.

Legitimate interests. We may process personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate business interests, provided that your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. Examples include managing our business records, improving our services, and protecting our rights in case of disputes.

Legal obligation. We may process certain personal data to comply with legal obligations, such as maintaining accounting and tax records.

Consent. In limited cases, we may rely on your consent, for example, where you have specifically agreed to receive optional updates or marketing communications. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time.

How We Use Your Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To provide gardening and related services, including assessing your requirements, providing quotes, scheduling and delivering services, and managing access to your property where needed.

To manage our relationship with you, including handling enquiries, responding to feedback, communicating about changes to services, and resolving any issues or complaints.

To administer billing and payments, including preparing invoices, monitoring payments, and maintaining financial records.

To manage and improve our operations, which can include training, service quality monitoring, and internal record keeping.

To comply with legal and regulatory requirements, including maintaining records for tax and accounting purposes and responding to lawful requests from public authorities where applicable.

Data Sharing and Processors

We do not sell your personal data. We may share your personal data with carefully selected third parties where this is necessary to provide our services or to meet our legal obligations. These third parties act either as data processors on our behalf or as independent data controllers.

Data processors. We may use third party service providers to assist with activities such as payment processing, accounting support, scheduling tools, and secure data storage. These processors are only permitted to process your personal data on our documented instructions, must keep it secure, and are not allowed to use it for their own purposes.

Professional advisers. We may share personal data with professional advisers such as accountants or legal advisers where this is necessary for them to provide services to us, for example in connection with tax obligations or in order to manage or defend legal claims.

Authorities and legal requirements. We may disclose personal data where required to do so by law, or where we believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, the rights of our customers, or the safety of others.

Data Retention

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

In practice, this means that we generally keep customer and service records for a period that allows us to manage our relationship with you, respond to queries about past work, and comply with financial record keeping rules. After the relevant retention period has expired, we will either delete your personal data securely or anonymise it so that it can no longer be linked to you.

Retention periods may vary depending on the type of data, the nature of our relationship with you, and the legal requirements that apply. We review our retention practices regularly to ensure that data is not kept for longer than necessary.

International Data Transfers

Where we use service providers that process data outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data. These may include recognised standard contractual clauses or other measures required by data protection law.

Your Data Protection Rights

As a customer of Gardeners Herne Hill in the Herne Hill area, you have certain rights in relation to your personal data under data protection law. These include:

Right of access. You have the right to request confirmation that we process your personal data and to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you, along with certain related information.

Right to rectification. You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold about you.

Right to erasure. In certain circumstances, you have the right to request that we delete your personal data, for example where it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected and we have no other lawful basis for retaining it.

Right to restriction. You may request that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain situations, such as where you contest the accuracy of the data or object to our processing.

Right to object. You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests as our lawful basis. We will stop processing your personal data unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds which override your interests, rights, and freedoms, or unless the processing is required for legal claims.

Right to data portability. Where our processing is based on consent or contract and carried out by automated means, you may have the right to receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format and to request that it is transmitted to another controller where this is technically feasible.

Right to withdraw consent. Where we rely on your consent for processing, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdrew your consent.

You also have the right to raise concerns with the relevant data protection supervisory authority if you believe that your personal data has not been handled in accordance with the law.

Security of Your Personal Data

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure, or access. These measures are designed to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risks associated with the processing of your personal data.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in law, our services, or our data protection practices. Any changes will be effective when the updated version is made available. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically so that you remain informed about how Gardeners Herne Hill protects your personal data.