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Privacy policy

Places for People Group is committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services.

The Privacy Notice below explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy.

Who are we?

This privacy notice (the “Privacy Notice”) applies to all personal information processing activities carried out by Places for People Group for new build and sales developments.

More information about the Places for People Group can be found here.

We respect individuals’ rights to privacy and to the protection of personal information. The purpose of this Privacy Notice is to explain how we collect and use personal information in connection with our business.

We may update our Privacy Notice from time to time. We would encourage you to visit our website regularly to stay informed of the purposes for which we process your information and your rights to control how we process it.

Why we collect your personal information

When you make an enquiry about our developments, homes or services, we will collect and retain information that you have provided to us.

Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when put together with other information can then identify a person.

Information we may collect about you may include (but is not limited to):

  • your contact details (name, email, phone numbers, address)
  • your communication preferences
  • the type and price of the home(s) you are looking for
  • why and when you want to move
  • some demographic information about you including age range, household type’ profession
  • the source of your enquiry

We require this information to effectively follow up on your enquiry and meet your needs. If you do not provide adequate information, we may not be able to do this.

You do not need to provide any personal data to use our website (but see the section below on Website tracking and cookies). Some sections of the website, or services provided within the website may not be accessible if you choose not to share any information with us.

If you enquire via a third party website such as Rightmove or Zoopla, the third party provider, will pass your details to us so that we can contact you or send you further information about a product you have enquired about.

As we follow up on your enquiry we will process further information including:

  • your ability to purchase, including financial resources, and any assistance you may require
  • notes on conversations and meetings you have had with us
  • correspondence
  • details of your new mortgage (if you require one)
  • details about the sale of your current house (if you need to sell it or use our Smooth Move / Easy Move or Part Exchange Schemes)
  • information to support any equity loan scheme (such as Help to Buy)
  • additional purchases and choices you make
  • Family and household members

If you consult an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA) in furthering your purchase, we will process any information you have agreed they can share with us relating to your purchase. The IFA may also confirm your financial documents.

Our conveyancer will send contract documents to your solicitor or representative, respond to queries and process information they or you provide in furthering the sale to you of your new home, or in acquiring your home if a part exchange agreement has been made, including:

  • Contract terms, deposit payments
  • Certified copies of your passport, driving licence and / or utility bill as required by the CMLA to support money laundering / fraud legislation
  • A marriage or death certificate in some circumstances to prove succession of title
  • A check on HM Treasury’s Financial Sanction list for evidence of criminal activity

When you complete the purchase we will process further information relating to:

  • Your utility companies and meter readings
  • Details of any issues with your home that you have reported to us and how they are followed up
  • Your responses to our customer satisfaction surveys, unless you elected to respond anonymously.

How the law allows us to use your personal information

There are a number of legal reasons why we need to collect and use your personal information.

Generally we collect and use personal information for the purposes of where:

  • you are entering or have entered into a contract with us
  • you, or your legal representative, have given consent
  • it is required by law
  • you have made your information publicly available
  • it is necessary for legal cases
  • it is necessary for archiving, research, or statistical purposes

When you make an enquiry, we will use the personal information we hold about you to take steps towards entering into a contract with you such as to:

  • follow up your enquiry and provide further information you have requested about developments or properties you are interested in.
  • determine which properties may suit your needs, based on the information you provide
  • we will make you aware of new sales releases, offers, events, promotions and other marketing information based on your consent

Consent and Your Preferences

We may contact you or send communications via email or SMS to tell you about a service enhancement such as improvements to our online services or to keep you informed on how we are performing. We won’t need your consent to communicate with you this way because we have assessed that it forms part of our agreement with you and it is in our legitimate interest or of mutual interest for us to keep you informed and is relevant to your contract with us.

We would like to occasionally send you information via email and SMS on products and services we offer, and which we think will be of interest to you. We will ask for your consent to communicate this type of information to you, you can remove your consent and ask us to stop.

Where we can, we’ll only collect and use personal information if we need it to deliver a service.

If we don’t need personal information we’ll either keep you unsubscribed if we already have it for something else or we won’t ask you for it. For example, in a survey we may not need your contact details so we’ll only collect your survey responses.

We won’t sell your personal information to anyone else.

We will always provide an option for updating your marketing preferences on our communications with you. 

We only use what we need

Where we can, we’ll only collect and use personal information if we need it to deliver a service or meet a requirement.

If we don’t need personal information we’ll either keep you anonymous if we already have it for something else or we won’t ask you for it. For example in a survey we may not need your contact details so we’ll only collect your survey responses.

If we use your personal information for research and analysis, we’ll keep you anonymous or use a different name unless you’ve agreed that your personal information can be used for that research.

Visiting our websites

When you visit one of our websites, we collect standard internet log information for statistical purposes.

  • We use cookies to collect information in an anonymous way, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.
  • We do not make any attempt to identify visitors to our websites.
  • We do not associate information gathered from our sites with personally identifying information from any source
  • When we collect personal information, for example via an online form, we will explain what we intend to do with it.

Our websites contain links to various third party websites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of any external websites that are linked from our sites.

How we use your telephone number and email address

Text messages and contact via telephone or email provide a direct way to contact and share information with you about our developments.

If you provide your telephone number or email address we may keep in contact with you by these methods.

Operational SMS/text/email messaging and call, examples of operational text messages include:

  • Confirming an appointment/visit
  • Sending a reminder about an appointment
  • Asking you to contact a named person or department
  • Satisfaction surveys

Who do we share your information with?

We use a range of organisations to either store personal information or help deliver our services to you. Where we have these arrangements, there is always an agreement in in place to make sure that the organisation complies with data protection law.

Other than those third parties listed above in this Privacy Notice, we are likely to share your personal information with the following:

  • NHBC/Premier Warranty

We will share your details so that warranty certificates can be issued.

  • Contractors

Contractors and third party supply chain service providers for the purposes of carrying out property related sales, inspections and repairs. Generally we will only share your name, the property address and your contact details so that they can arrange an appointment with you.

  • Insurance

We may share your personal information with our insurers in the case of a public liability claim. We will only share data specifically related to the claim. Our Insurers will provide you or make available to you the Privacy Notice that is linked to our insurance policy.

  • CCTV

We use CCTV systems in some locations. CCTV is installed for the purpose of preventing and detecting crime.

  • Third Party mailing or survey companies

We may share your name and contact details with external companies who we have appointed to assist us with mail, email or text message distribution or to carry out surveys so that we can obtain feedback from you on our services. The appointed companies will work on behalf of us and will never use your information for any other purposes.

  • Utility companies and local authorities

We will need to share your personal information with utility companies [gas, electric, water] and local authorities for the purpose of ensuring utility services and council tax to the property are correctly charged. We will take meeting readings on the day you complete your purchase and pass this information along with your personal data such as your name and contact information to the relevant utility company.

  • Legal Services and Partners

We may share your personal information with our legal services or solicitors when we are preparing for a sale/transaction or defending a legal claim.

  • Places for People Group companies

We may share your information with shared service functions within the Places for People Group, such as for the purpose of financial transaction when making payments to us or the insurance functions if you make a claim. Places for People Group shared services comply with and process personal information within the same privacy standards and procedures.

  • Safeguarding, Support Agencies and Charities

We may share your personal information with these organisations where we suspect there may be safeguarding or welfare concerns. We will usually try to gain your consent in advance, but we may make a safeguarding referral without consent in situations where we feel there is a significant risk. 

Sometimes we have a legal duty to provide personal information to other organisations, this is often because we need to give that data to the police, courts, local authorities or government bodies.

We may still share your information if we believe the risk to others is serious enough to do so.

Keeping your information secure

We store personal information both electronically and in paper form.

We implement security policies, processes and technical security solutions to protect the personal information we hold from:

  • Unauthorised access
  • Improper use or disclosure
  • Unauthorised modification
  • Unlawful destruction or accidental loss

We’ll do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and we’ll only make them available to those who have a right to see them. Examples of our security include:

  • Encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code or what’s called a ‘cypher’. The hidden information is said to then be ‘encrypted’
  • Pseudonymisation, meaning that we’ll use a different name so we can hide parts of your personal information from view. This means that someone outside of the Places for People Group could work on your information for us without ever knowing it was yours
  • Controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it
  • Training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong
  • Regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches)

When you contact us, we may ask you to provide us with some information so that we can confirm your identity. If other people (e.g. family members, solicitors) act on your behalf we will take steps to ensure that you have agreed for them to do so. This may include asking them to provide us with supporting information to indicate your consent. We do this to protect you and to make sure that other people cannot find things out about you that they are not entitled to know.

Employees and third parties who have access to, or are associated with the processing of, your personal information are obliged to make reasonable efforts to safeguard it.

Where in the world is your information?

Your personal information is stored on systems in the UK. But there may be some occasions as our technology services progress where your information may leave the UK either in order to get to another organisation or if it’s stored in a system outside of the EU.

We will always have additional protections on your information if it leaves the UK ranging from secure ways of transferring data to ensuring we have a robust contract in place with that third party.

We’ll take all practical steps to make sure personal information is not sent to a country that is not seen as ‘safe’ either by the UK or EU Governments.

How long do we keep your personal information?

There’s often a legal or a contractual reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time. We will keep your information for the duration of providing a service or product to you under the terms of a contract. When your contract has ended we will keep your personal data for a set time for auditing and reporting purposes and for legitimate interest purposes, after that time we will either anonymise or destroy your information.

You can ask us for a copy of our retention periods by contacting us at data.protection@placesforpeople.co.uk.

Your Rights

The law gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us. You can contact us regarding any of the rights below by contacting us. We will deal with your request within one month from receiving your request and if we need additional information from you to identify you we will ask for this without undue delay.

You can ask for access to the information we hold about you

You have the right to ask for the information we have about you. When we receive a request from you in writing, we must give you access to what personal information we’ve recorded about you.

A request for personal information can be made via email or in writing. This is known as a subject access request. In order to make a subject access request you will need to provide the following information:

  • your name
  • your address
  • enough information to identify your records

If we have doubts about your identity or we are finding it difficult to locate your personal information we may ask you to provide us with proof of identity.

What types of documents could I submit as proof of ID?

  • Copy passport with signature (please remove your passport number)
  • Copy driving license picture with signature (please remove your driver number)
  • Copy of signed tenancy or contract with us

Email us at data.protection@placesforpeople.co.uk  (Please ensure you attach you provide enough information for us to identify your records). We will not start your subject access request until we are satisfied that you have provided us with enough information for us to identify you.

Once you have made a request you will receive an acknowledgement and your request should be answered within one month. In certain circumstances, we are allowed to take longer but we will tell you if we feel we may need longer without undue delay from when we receive your request.

We can refuse to handle your request for access if it is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

You can ask to change information you think is inaccurate

You should let us know if you disagree with something we may have recorded about you.

We may not always be able to change or remove that information but we’ll correct factual inaccuracies and may include your comments in the record to show that you disagree with it.

You can ask to delete information (right to erasure)

In some circumstances you can ask for your personal information to be deleted, for example:

  • Where your personal information is no longer needed for the reason why it was collected in the first place.
  • Where you have removed your consent for us to use your information (where there is no other legal reason us to use it).
  • Where there is no legal reason for the use of your information.
  • Where deleting the information is a legal requirement.

Where your personal information has been shared with others, we’ll do what we can to make sure those using your personal information comply with your request for erasure.

Please note that we can’t delete your information where:

  • You have an active application or contract with us
  • we’re required to have it by law

You can ask to limit what we use your personal data for

You have the right to ask us to restrict what we use your personal information for where:

  • you have identified inaccurate personal information, and have told us of it
  • where we have no legal reason to use that information but you want us to restrict what we use it for rather than erase the information altogether

We will assess whether you have a right to a restriction and where restriction of use has been granted, we’ll inform you before we carry on using your personal information.

Where possible we’ll seek to comply with your request, but we may need to hold or use information because we are required to by law or we have a legal basis to do so, such as a contract.

You can ask to have your information moved to another provider (data portability)

You have the right to ask for your personal information to be given back to you or another service provider of your choice in a commonly used format. This is called data portability.

However this only applies if we’re using your personal information with consent (not where we are processing your personal information for contractual, legitimate interests, legal obligations or vital interests as a legal basis) and if decisions were made by a computer and not a human being.

It’s likely that data portability won’t apply to most of the services you receive from us.

Right to understand Automated Decisions made about you

We do not process your personal data using automated decisions

You also have the right to object if you are being ‘profiled’. Profiling is where decisions are made about you based on certain things in your personal information.

If and when your personal information is used to profile you, in order to deliver the most appropriate service to you, you will be informed.

How to tell us of a data breach

Places for People Group takes responsibility to protect the personal information we hold about those with whom we work seriously. We are accountable for our processing and take necessary technical and operational steps to information security protections.

If you suspect your personal information or that of others may have been at risk of a data protection breach please contact us.

Where can I get advice?

We have a Data Protection Officer who makes sure we respect your rights and follow the law. If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please email the Group Data Protection Officer.

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate)

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