Privacy Policy

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together follows:

• Identity Data includes first name and last name only.
• Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us and other project information including invoices, quotes and schedules.
• Technical Data includes browser type and version, time zone setting and location, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Profile Data includes engaging in our services, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
• Usage Data includes information about how you use our website and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

However, in some limited circumstances, we do collect some health data in relation to a medical condition(s) where it may benefit you to notify us of any physical limitations or disability you have so that we are aware of these conditions and how they inform your project with us. This will allow us to take reasonable steps to accommodate specific needs or requirements you have. We will only process this type of data where we have your explicit consent.

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:

Engage us to provide our services;

• Raise an enquiry by email, phone, post, or on our website;
• Subscribe to our service;
• Request marketing to be sent to you;
• Enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
• Give us some feedback.

Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:

• Technical Data from the following parties:
  – analytics providers [such as Google based outside the EU];
  – advertising networks based inside the EU’
  – search information providers based inside the EU.
• Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services based inside the EU.
• Identity and Contact Data from data brokers or aggregators.
• Identity and Contact Data from publicly availably sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the EU

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

a) Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.

b) Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

c) Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

We have set out below a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.

To register you as a new client

a) Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.

To process and deliver our services (including ‘communications to further your project’, ‘manage payments, fees and charges’, and ‘collect and recover money owed to us’)

a) Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.

b) Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

To manage our relationship with you (including ‘notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy’, ‘asking you to leave a review or take a survey’)

a) Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.

b) Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (to keep our records updated and to study how clients use our services).

c) Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)

a) Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise).

b) Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you

a) Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (to study how clients use our services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy).

To use data analytics to improve our website, services, marketing, client relationships and experiences

a) Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (to define types of clients for our services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy).

To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you

a) Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (to develop our services and grow our business).

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.

Promotional Offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Transaction, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us only if you have requested information from us or engaged our services and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any company for marketing purposes.

Opting out

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by logging into the website and checking or unchecking relevant boxes to adjust your marketing preferences or by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of service experience or other transactions with the Company.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above.

• External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary chapter [12] below
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our clients (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being clients for tax purposes. We also retain certain documents such as building contracts, drawings, specifications and correspondence for up to twelve years in line with our professional conduct requirements.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which overrides your rights and freedoms.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Lawful Basis

• Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us
• Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
• Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

External Third Parties

• Service providers acting as processors based in the UK who provide website, IT and system administration services.
• Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors, pension providers and insurers based in the UK who provide consultancy, banking, legal, pension, insurance and accounting services.
• Professional advisors such as consultants acting as processors or joint controllers (including structural, mechanical and electrical engineers, surveyors, transport, ecologists, asbestos surveyors etc) who are based in the UK in connection with your project.
• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the UK who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
• Professional bodies such as RIBA and ARB acting as processors or joint controllers in connection with award/prize nominations.
• Fraud Prevention and Credit Reference Agencies acting as processors or joint controllers based in the UK.

This version was last updated on 30 September 2024.

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current.

Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact Ben Elliott on 01434 633007 or write to us using the contact details in this Privacy Notice.