Gardeners Lampton Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Lampton collects, uses, stores and protects personal data about our customers and prospective customers. It also explains your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation and related UK data protection laws. This Privacy Policy applies to all Gardeners Lampton customers and prospective customers in our service area.

Who We Are

Gardeners Lampton is a gardening and grounds maintenance business providing services such as garden maintenance, landscaping, planting, lawn care and related services to residential and commercial customers. For the purposes of applicable data protection law, Gardeners Lampton is the data controller in relation to the personal data described in this Privacy Policy. This means we decide how and why your personal data is processed.

Personal Data We Collect

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

Identification and contact details such as your name, postal address, service address, billing address, and any other details you choose to provide in correspondence with us.

Communication information such as the content of emails or messages you send to us, notes of telephone conversations, and any feedback or complaints you submit.

Service and contract information such as details of the gardening or landscaping services you request or receive, site visit notes, photographs of your garden or outdoor areas where necessary to design or deliver services, and records of quotes and contracts.

Payment and transaction information such as records of payments made, amounts, dates, methods of payment and related accounting entries. We do not store full payment card details when a third party payment provider is used.

Usage and technical information where you interact with any of our online services, such as information about how you access and use our website, including device details, basic log data and cookie-related information where applicable.

Marketing preferences such as whether you have agreed to receive marketing communications from us and your preferences about the type of information you would like to receive.

How We Collect Your Data

We collect personal data directly from you when you contact us to request a quote, make a booking, ask a question, or otherwise communicate with us. This can be in person, by telephone, online or by any other method you use to get in touch.

We may also collect personal data during the delivery of our services at your property, for example when we attend your garden to assess the work required or to carry out ongoing maintenance. Where we use photographs or site notes, we limit these to information necessary to plan and complete the agreed services.

In some cases, we may receive personal data about you from third parties such as property managers, letting agents or other intermediaries who engage us to perform services at a property you occupy or own. In these cases, we will process your personal data in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Lawful Basis for Processing

We process your personal data only where we have a lawful basis to do so under data protection law. The lawful bases we rely on include:

Performance of a contract where processing is necessary to provide our gardening and related services to you, to prepare and send quotes, to schedule and complete work, to issue invoices and to manage your customer account.

Compliance with legal obligations where we must process certain information to comply with laws, for example, tax and accounting requirements, record-keeping duties or responding to lawful requests from authorities.

Legitimate interests where processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests, provided these interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms. Examples include managing our relationship with you, improving our services, protecting our business, and pursuing or defending legal claims.

Consent where you have given clear consent for us to process your data for a specific purpose, such as receiving certain types of marketing communications. You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us, and we will stop processing your data for that purpose unless another lawful basis applies.

How We Use Your Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To provide gardening and related services, including preparing quotes, planning and delivering work, communicating with you about appointments and service updates, and managing aftercare or follow-up visits.

To manage our relationship with you, including handling enquiries, feedback and complaints, updating your details, and maintaining records of our interactions.

To manage billing and payments, including sending invoices, recording payments, handling queries about charges, and maintaining financial records.

To maintain the safety and security of our staff, customers and business, including managing access to properties, handling disputes and responding to incidents.

To improve and develop our services, including reviewing customer feedback, analysing service usage and planning new offerings or improvements.

To send marketing communications about our services where we are permitted to do so by law or where you have given your consent, and to manage your marketing preferences.

Data Sharing and Processors

We do not sell your personal data to third parties. We may share your personal data with the following categories of recipients where necessary and lawful:

Service providers who act as data processors and provide services to us such as information technology support, data hosting, cloud storage, accounting software and payment processing. These providers are allowed to process your personal data only on our instructions and must implement appropriate security measures.

Professional advisers such as accountants, auditors, legal advisers or insurers where necessary for the management of our business, to obtain professional advice or to handle legal claims.

Public authorities, regulators or law enforcement where we are legally required to share information or where it is necessary to protect our rights, property, safety or the safety of others.

Other third parties in connection with a business transaction such as a restructuring, merger or transfer of our business, in which case we will ensure appropriate safeguards are in place and that you are informed where required.

International Transfers

Where any of our service providers or systems involve transferring personal data outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we take steps to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place. These may include using countries that have been formally recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection, or entering into standard contractual clauses or equivalent safeguards approved by data protection authorities.

Data Retention

We keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, or for as long as we are required to keep it by law.

Customer records relating to the performance of gardening services, including contracts, quotes and service notes, are typically retained for a period that allows us to manage our relationship, handle any queries or claims and comply with tax and accounting obligations.

Financial and transaction records are kept for the period required by tax and accounting laws and regulations.

Marketing data, including your contact details and preferences, is retained while you remain subscribed to our communications and for a reasonable period after you unsubscribe to ensure we respect your preferences.

At the end of the relevant retention period, we will securely delete or anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you.

Your Data Protection Rights

You have a number of rights under data protection law in relation to your personal data. These rights may be subject to certain conditions and exceptions. Your rights include:

The right of access to obtain confirmation as to whether we process your personal data and to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you, together with information about how we use it.

The right to rectification to request that we correct any inaccurate or incomplete personal data about you.

The right to erasure, sometimes called the right to be forgotten, to request that we delete your personal data where there is no good reason for us to continue processing it, subject to legal and contractual obligations.

The right to restrict processing to request that we limit the way we use your data in certain circumstances, for example while we are considering a request for rectification.

The right to data portability to request that we provide your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, or that we transmit it to another controller where this is technically feasible and based on your consent or a contract.

The right to object to certain types of processing, including direct marketing and processing based on legitimate interests, where you consider your rights and interests outweigh ours.

The right to withdraw consent where we rely on your consent to process your personal data. Withdrawing consent will not affect the lawfulness of processing that took place before the withdrawal.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority if you are concerned about how we handle your personal data. We encourage you to contact us first so that we can try to resolve any concerns.

Security of Your Personal Data

We take 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 those who have a business need to know it, using secure systems and implementing procedures to respond to suspected data security incidents. While no system can be completely secure, we work to reduce the risks to an appropriate level given the nature of the data and our business.

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 legal requirements. When we make significant changes, we will take appropriate steps to inform you. The most recent version of the Privacy Policy will apply to the processing of your personal data.