House Clearance Merton Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how House Clearance Merton collects, uses, stores and protects personal data relating to our customers and prospective customers in Merton and the surrounding area. It also explains your rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act, and how you can exercise those rights.

Scope of this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to all House Clearance Merton customers and potential customers located in our service area, including individuals, landlords, letting agents, businesses and organisations who contact us about, or use, our house clearance and related services. It applies when you contact us by telephone, email, online enquiry form, social media, or any other communication method, and when you engage us to provide a service at a property.

Who we are and how to contact us

House Clearance Merton is a house clearance service provider operating in the Merton area. For the purposes of data protection law, House Clearance Merton is the data controller of the personal data described in this policy. This means we decide how and why your personal data is processed.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal data, or if you wish to exercise your data protection rights, you can contact us using the contact details published on our usual customer communications or invoices, clearly marked Privacy Request.

Personal data we collect

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

Contact details: name, address of the property requiring clearance, billing address, telephone numbers and email address.

Service information: details about the property, type of clearance required, preferred dates and times, photographs you choose to send us to help assess the work, and any access instructions or special requirements.

Communication records: notes of telephone conversations, emails, text messages, and any messages you send via online forms or social media in relation to our services.

Quotation and contract details: records of the quotations we issue, services agreed, work carried out, and associated correspondence and invoices.

Payment information: payment method and transaction details. We do not store full card details when payments are processed by a secure payment processor.

Technical data: where you use our website or online forms, we may collect technical data such as your IP address, device type, basic browser information and the pages you view, where this is necessary for security, analytics or to improve our services.

How we collect your personal data

We collect personal data directly from you when you contact us to request information, a quotation or a booking, when you complete an online form, when you communicate with us by phone or email, and when we provide services at a property.

We may also receive personal data from third parties where they are acting on your behalf or where they are instructing us in connection with a property. These may include landlords, letting agents, estate agents, solicitors, property managers, local authorities and family members who are arranging property clearance. In such cases, we will treat the information we receive in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Lawful bases for processing your data

We only process your personal data where we have a lawful basis under data protection law. Depending on the context, we rely on one or more of the following bases:

Contract: where processing is necessary to provide you with a quotation, enter into a contract with you, or perform a contract for house clearance or related services. For example, we need your contact details to arrange and carry out the clearance.

Legal obligation: where we need to process certain information to comply with legal or regulatory requirements, such as record keeping, tax reporting, waste disposal regulations or responding to requests from law enforcement or regulatory authorities.

Legitimate interests: where processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. This can include managing our business operations, responding to enquiries, improving our services, handling complaints, protecting our staff and property, and establishing or defending legal claims.

Consent: where we rely on your clear consent, for example, if we send you certain types of optional marketing communications. You can withdraw your consent at any time as described in this policy.

How we use your personal data

We may use your personal data for the following purposes:

To respond to enquiries: answering questions, providing information about our services and preparing quotations.

To provide services: arranging and carrying out property visits, planning and delivering house clearance work, managing access, and communicating with you before, during and after the service.

To manage our relationship with you: issuing invoices, processing payments, sending service confirmations and updates, dealing with queries or complaints, and maintaining our records.

To improve our services: reviewing communication records, job details and feedback to improve how we operate and the services we offer.

To meet legal and regulatory requirements: keeping appropriate business records, complying with waste disposal obligations, accounting rules and other legal duties.

To protect our business: preventing and detecting fraud or misuse of our services, managing disputes, enforcing our terms, and establishing or defending legal claims.

Data sharing and processors

We do not sell your personal data. We may share your personal data with trusted third parties where necessary for the purposes described in this policy.

Service providers and processors: we may use third-party companies to provide services such as waste transfer and recycling, secure payments, accounting support, IT services, data storage, email and communication platforms. These providers act as data processors and may only process your data on our documented instructions and for the purposes we specify. They are required to keep your data secure and confidential.

Professional advisers: we may share data with our accountants, legal advisers, insurers or similar professionals when necessary for advice, audits, insurance or to manage or defend claims.

Authorities and regulators: we may disclose personal data where required to comply with a legal obligation, court order or request from a competent authority, or to cooperate with law enforcement.

Other parties with your consent: if you ask us to share information with a third party, or if it is necessary to do so to carry out your specific instructions, we will share data in accordance with your request.

International transfers

Our core operations are based in the United Kingdom. If any of our service providers or systems transfer or store personal data outside the United Kingdom or European Economic Area, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place, such as an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses, to protect your personal data in accordance with data protection law.

Data retention

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

Enquiry records and quotations that do not lead to a booking are generally kept for up to two years, to help respond to follow-up enquiries and manage our business records.

Customer and job records, including invoices and communications related to work we have carried out, are generally kept for up to seven years from the end of our relationship with you, to comply with legal and tax obligations and to manage any potential disputes or claims.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you. We may use such anonymised data for longer periods for statistical or business analysis purposes.

How we protect your data

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorised access, accidental loss, destruction or damage. These measures include access controls to our systems and records, secure disposal of paper documents, and the use of reputable third-party providers for data storage and communications. While we take reasonable steps to safeguard your data, no system can be completely secure, and you should take care when sending information to us electronically.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. These rights may be subject to limitations or conditions in certain situations. Your rights include:

Right of access: you can request confirmation that we process your personal data and ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, together with information about how we use it.

Right to rectification: you can ask us to correct or complete personal data that is inaccurate or incomplete.

Right to erasure: in certain circumstances, you can ask us to delete your personal data, for example where it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected. We may need to retain some information where required by law or where we have a legitimate reason to do so.

Right to restriction: you can ask us to restrict how we use your data in certain circumstances, for example while we are considering a request to rectify or erase your data.

Right to object: where we process your personal data on the basis of legitimate interests, you can object to that processing if you believe your interests or rights override our interests. We will consider your objection and stop processing unless we have compelling legitimate grounds or need to continue for legal reasons.

Right to data portability: in certain circumstances, you can request that we provide you or a third party with a copy of your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, where the processing is based on consent or contract and carried out by automated means.

Right to withdraw consent: where we rely on your consent for processing, you can withdraw that consent at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw consent.

To exercise your rights, please contact us using the contact details provided in this Privacy Policy. We may need to verify your identity before responding. We aim to respond to all valid requests within one month, or within any extended period permitted by law where requests are complex or numerous.

Complaints and your right to complain to the regulator

If you have concerns about how we handle your personal data, we encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve the issue. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection supervisory authority in the United Kingdom. Details of how to do this are available from the regulator. Your right to complain is in addition to any other rights or remedies you may have.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, how we handle personal data, or legal requirements. The most recent version will apply to how we process your personal data. You should review this policy periodically to stay informed about how we protect your data.