Privacy Policy

Gardeners South Harrow Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners South Harrow collects, uses, stores and protects personal data for all customers in the South Harrow area. It also explains your rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and related data protection laws.

Scope of this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to all Gardeners South Harrow customers and prospective customers located in the South Harrow area. It covers personal data collected when you contact us, request a quote, use our gardening services, visit our website, or otherwise interact with us in relation to our services.

Data Controller

Gardeners South Harrow acts as the data controller for the personal data described in this Privacy Policy. As the data controller, we decide how and why your personal data is processed and are responsible for complying with applicable data protection laws.

Types of Personal Data We Collect

We may collect and process the following types of personal data about you:

Identification data such as your name and, where relevant, information about the property where services are to be provided.

Contact data such as your residential address, billing address, and any other address relevant to the service location, along with details you choose to share when contacting us.

Service data such as details of the gardening or related services you request, site visit notes, job history, schedules, and information relating to access to your property.

Billing and payment data such as details necessary to issue invoices and record payments. We do not store full payment card details if you pay by card through a third party payment provider.

Communication data such as records of your communications with us, including enquiries, complaints, feedback and any preferences you express about services or communications.

Technical and usage data related to our website, such as IP address, browser type, pages visited and time spent, where this is collected through cookies or similar technologies in compliance with applicable regulations.

How We Collect Your Data

We collect personal data directly from you when you contact us, request a quote, make a booking, use our services, or communicate with us by any means. We may also collect data indirectly when you use our website or interact with our online content.

In some cases, we may receive limited personal data about you from third party platforms that you use to find local services, where you have given them permission to share your details with service providers such as us.

Lawful Basis for Processing

We process your personal data only where we have a lawful basis under data protection law. The main lawful bases we rely on are:

Contract: we process your personal data where it is necessary to enter into or perform a contract with you, such as to provide gardening services, schedule appointments, and manage payments.

Legitimate interests: we process personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate business interests, provided that those interests are not overridden by your rights and interests. This includes managing and improving our services, responding to enquiries, maintaining records, and promoting our services to existing customers in a proportionate way.

Legal obligation: we process personal data where it is necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations, including record keeping, tax, accounting and responding to lawful requests from public authorities.

Consent: in limited cases, we may rely on your consent, such as where you explicitly agree to certain types of marketing communications. Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time.

How We Use Your Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To provide and manage our gardening and related services, including arranging site visits, planning work, completing jobs, and following up as needed.

To respond to your enquiries, provide quotes, and communicate with you about your bookings, services, and any changes that may affect you.

To manage billing, payments, refunds and accounting, and to maintain accurate service and transaction records.

To improve our services, including analysing service history and feedback to understand how we can better meet customer needs.

To send you service related information and, where permitted, limited marketing about similar services you have previously used, which you can opt out of at any time.

To protect our business, staff and customers, including managing disputes, enforcing our contracts, and preventing or detecting fraud and misuse.

To comply with applicable laws, regulations and guidance from authorities.

Data Retention

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

In general, we retain customer and service related records for as long as you remain an active customer and for a reasonable period afterwards, typically up to seven years, to comply with tax and accounting rules and to manage any legal claims.

Communication records, enquiries and quotes that do not lead to ongoing services may be kept for a shorter period, based on our legitimate interest in understanding demand and managing potential future enquiries.

Where we no longer need your personal data for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, we will securely delete or anonymise it.

Data Sharing and Processors

We do not sell your personal data. We may share your personal data with third parties where this is necessary to provide our services, meet our legal obligations or operate our business. These third parties act as data processors or, in some cases, as independent controllers.

Data processors are service providers who process personal data on our behalf and under our instructions. These may include companies that provide scheduling or customer management tools, payment processing services, accounting or bookkeeping services, IT support, website hosting and cloud storage providers.

Where we use data processors, we ensure that appropriate data processing agreements are in place and that they implement suitable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data.

We may also share personal data with professional advisers such as accountants or legal advisers, and with public authorities or regulators where required by law or to protect our rights and the rights of others.

If in future we transfer personal data outside the United Kingdom or European Economic Area, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place in accordance with data protection law.

Security of Your Personal Data

We take reasonable and appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data from unauthorised access, accidental loss, destruction or damage. These measures include limiting access to personal data to staff and service providers who need it for legitimate business purposes, using secure storage methods, and regularly reviewing our data protection practices.

Your Data Protection Rights

Under data protection law, you have a number of rights concerning your personal data. These rights apply subject to certain conditions and exemptions.

Right of access: you have the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you and information about how we process it.

Right to rectification: you have the right to ask us to correct or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold about you.

Right to erasure: in certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to delete your personal data. This right may be limited where we need to retain certain data to comply with legal obligations or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

Right to restriction of processing: you can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data in certain situations, for example while we verify its accuracy or consider an objection you have raised.

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. You also have the right to object at any time to the use of your personal data for direct marketing.

Right to data portability: in certain circumstances, you have the right to receive the personal data you provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and to request that we transmit it to another controller where technically feasible.

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

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection authority if you believe your rights have been infringed. We encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve your concerns.

Updates to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, legal requirements or other factors. When we make changes, we will revise the date of the update and, where appropriate, notify you through our usual communication channels. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we use and protect your personal data.

Contacting Us About Privacy

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how Gardeners South Harrow handles your personal data, or if you wish to exercise any of your data protection rights, you can contact us using the usual contact details you use for our services. Please clearly state that your query relates to data protection or privacy so we can direct it to the appropriate person.