Gardeners Manor Park Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Manor Park collects, uses, stores and protects personal data relating to customers in our service area. It is intended to provide clear information about our data practices and to help you understand your rights under applicable data protection laws, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act.

This Privacy Policy applies to all customers and prospective customers of Gardeners Manor Park in our operating area, whether you contact us online, by post or in person, or use any of our gardening and related services.

Who we are and scope of this policy

Gardeners Manor Park is a gardening services provider offering maintenance, landscaping and related services to residential and commercial customers in our local area. For the purposes of data protection law, Gardeners Manor Park is the controller of the personal data described in this Privacy Policy. This means we decide how and why your personal data is processed.

This Privacy Policy covers all processing of personal data relating to Gardeners Manor Park customers and prospective customers in our service area. By using our services or providing your personal data to us, you acknowledge that you have read this Privacy Policy.

Personal data we collect

We may collect and process the following categories of personal data when you contact us, request a quote, enter into a contract with us, or use our services:

Identification and contact details such as your name, postal address, property address where services are provided, and other basic contact information you choose to share to allow us to communicate with you.

Service and contract information such as details about the services you request, service preferences, visit schedules, notes regarding your garden or property that are relevant to carrying out the work, quotations issued and contracts agreed.

Communication records such as details of enquiries, messages, and feedback that you send to us, as well as any responses we provide and internal notes about your requests.

Payment and transaction information such as records of payments made, payment method details where necessary to process your payment, and billing history. We do not store full payment card details where a third party payment processor is used.

Usage and technical data where applicable such as information about how you interact with any online forms or digital tools we provide, including dates and times of contact and technical logs required to keep our systems secure and functional.

Marketing preferences such as whether you have chosen to receive information about our services, and your preferences about how we contact you.

How we collect personal data

We collect personal data directly from you when you contact us to request a quote, schedule a service, sign a contract, pay an invoice, or provide feedback or reviews. This may be in person, by post, over the phone, or through online forms or tools that we make available.

We may also generate personal data during the provision of services, such as internal notes related to your garden or property that are necessary to deliver the agreed services safely and effectively.

In limited cases, we may receive personal data from third parties, such as referrals from existing customers or business partners, or from payment and invoicing service providers where this is necessary to complete transactions or manage accounts.

Lawful basis for using your data

We rely on different lawful bases under data protection law depending on the specific purpose for processing your personal data. These include:

Contract performance where processing is necessary to provide our services, respond to your enquiries, prepare quotations, enter into contracts with you, schedule and carry out gardening work, and manage your customer account.

Legal obligations where we need to retain and process certain information to comply with laws and regulatory requirements, such as tax, accounting and record keeping obligations.

Legitimate interests where we process personal data to operate and improve our business, including managing customer relationships, ensuring service quality, preventing fraud, maintaining security of our systems and property, and pursuing or defending legal claims. When we rely on legitimate interests, we balance these interests against your rights and reasonable expectations to ensure they do not override your interests or fundamental rights.

Consent where you have clearly agreed to a particular use of your personal data, such as receiving certain types of marketing communications. You can withdraw your consent at any time, although this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before consent was withdrawn.

How we use your personal data

We use personal data for the following purposes:

To provide and manage our services, including assessing your needs, preparing quotations, scheduling work, delivering gardening and related services at your property, and following up on any issues or aftercare.

To manage our relationship with you, including responding to enquiries, handling complaints, recording your preferences, and keeping you informed about service changes that affect you.

To process payments and maintain financial records, including issuing invoices, recording payment status, and maintaining appropriate accounts and financial documentation.

To improve our services and operations, including internal analysis of service usage, training staff, enhancing safety on site, and developing new or improved offerings for customers.

To send you marketing communications about our services where permitted by law and, where required, where you have given your consent. You can opt out of marketing communications at any time.

To protect our business, staff and customers, including preventing and detecting fraud or misuse, ensuring the security of our systems and property, and exercising or defending legal rights.

Data sharing and processors

We may share your personal data with carefully selected third parties where necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, and always in compliance with data protection law.

Service providers acting as processors may include providers of payment processing, accounting services, information technology support, data storage and backup, customer management tools, and professional advisers. These processors are only permitted to process personal data on our instructions, must keep it secure, and are not allowed to use it for their own purposes.

Other third parties may include legal and regulatory authorities, law enforcement agencies, or professional advisers such as lawyers or accountants, where necessary to comply with a legal obligation or to protect our legal rights.

We do not sell your personal data. Any sharing of personal data is limited to what is necessary in connection with the specific purpose for which the data was collected and always in line with this Privacy Policy.

Data retention

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

Customer records, including contact and service details, are generally kept for the duration of our relationship with you and for a reasonable period thereafter, to handle any follow up queries, complaints or legal claims.

Financial records such as invoices, payment records and related documentation are retained for the period required by law for tax and accounting purposes.

Where personal data is no longer required for the purposes for which it was collected and no longer needs to be retained for legal or regulatory reasons, we will securely delete, anonymise or otherwise remove it from our systems.

International transfers

Where we use service providers or systems that are located outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, or that store data in other countries, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data. This may include using providers in countries that have been recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection, or entering into contracts that contain standard data protection clauses approved by relevant authorities.

How we protect your data

We take the security of your personal data seriously and use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect it against unauthorised access, accidental loss, destruction or damage. These measures may include access controls, secure storage, encryption in transit where appropriate, and staff training on data protection and confidentiality.

While we take reasonable steps to protect personal data, no system is completely secure. We maintain procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator where we are legally required to do so.

Your data protection rights

You have a number of rights in relation to your personal data under data protection law. These include:

The right of access, which allows you to request confirmation of whether we process your personal data and to receive a copy of that data, together with certain information about how it is used.

The right to rectification, which allows you to ask us to correct or complete your personal data if it is inaccurate or incomplete.

The right to erasure, sometimes called the right to be forgotten, which allows you to request that we delete your personal data in certain circumstances, for example where it is no longer needed for the original purpose and we have no legal obligation to retain it.

The right to restriction of processing, which allows you to ask us to limit the use of your personal data in certain situations, such as while we are considering a request to rectify or erase your data.

The right to data portability, which allows you to request that we provide certain personal data to you or to another controller in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format, where technically feasible and where the processing is based on consent or contract and carried out by automated means.

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

Where processing is based on consent, you also have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before consent was withdrawn.

Exercising your rights and complaints

If you wish to exercise any of your data protection rights, or if you have questions or concerns about how Gardeners Manor Park handles your personal data, you can contact us using the details provided on our usual customer communications and documents. We will respond to your request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection authority if you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data. We encourage you to contact us first so that we can try to resolve any concerns directly.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, how we process personal data, or changes in the law. When we make changes, we will revise the date of the latest version and make the updated Privacy Policy available. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we protect your personal data.