Gardeners Petersham Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Petersham collects, uses, stores and protects personal data relating to customers within our service area. It also describes 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 Gardeners Petersham customers in our operating area, regardless of how they contact us or use our services.

Who We Are

Gardeners Petersham is a local gardening and landscaping service provider. For data protection purposes, Gardeners Petersham is the controller of the personal data described in this Privacy Policy, meaning we decide how and why your personal data is processed.

Personal Data We Collect

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

Contact and identification details, such as your name, home or business address, billing address, and any contact preferences you communicate to us.

Communication details, including information you provide when you call us, send us a message, or speak with our staff during site visits, such as details about your garden, specific requirements or instructions, and any feedback you give us.

Service and contract information, such as details of the services you request or purchase, service dates, service history, quotes, invoices, and payment history relating to our gardening services.

Payment and transaction data, such as the amount paid, date of payment, and method of payment. We do not store full payment card details; where electronic payments are used, these are processed by external payment providers acting as processors on our behalf.

Technical and usage data, where relevant, such as information about how you access or interact with any online information we provide. This may include anonymised or aggregated information about your device and general browsing behaviour where technically necessary for providing or improving our services.

Photographs and site information, such as images of your garden or outdoor areas taken with your knowledge for the purposes of quotations, planning and documenting completed work.

How We Use Your Personal Data and Lawful Basis

We only process your personal data when we have a valid legal basis to do so under data protection law. Depending on the circumstances, we may rely on the following lawful bases:

Performance of a contract: We process your personal data to enter into and perform our contract with you, including to provide quotes, schedule and deliver services, communicate with you about your booking, manage payments, and respond to your queries related to ongoing or completed work.

Legal obligation: We may process your data where necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations, such as maintaining financial and tax records or responding to lawful requests from authorities.

Legitimate interests: We may process your personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate business interests, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. This includes managing our relationship with customers, improving our services, preventing fraud or misuse of our services, and maintaining accurate business records.

Consent: In some cases, we may ask for your consent to use your personal data for specific purposes, such as sending you certain types of marketing communications or using particular types of photographs for promotional materials. Where we rely on consent, you have the right to withdraw it at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

How We Share Your Personal Data

We do not sell your personal data. We may share your data with carefully selected third parties where necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy and in accordance with data protection law.

We may share personal data with service providers acting as processors on our behalf. These can include payment processing companies, accounting or bookkeeping services that handle our financial records, IT or cloud storage providers that host or store our data, and other professional service providers who support our business operations. These processors are only allowed to use your personal data in accordance with our instructions and must implement appropriate security measures.

We may also share your personal data with other third parties where required by law, for example with regulatory authorities, law enforcement, or in connection with legal claims, or where necessary to protect our rights, property, or safety or those of our staff or customers.

If we ever reorganise or transfer part or all of our business, personal data may be transferred as part of that process, always in accordance with data protection requirements and with appropriate safeguards.

Data Retention

We keep your personal data only for as long as it is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected and to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. The specific retention period will depend on the type of data and the reasons for its collection.

Customer and contract data, such as your contact information, service details, quotes, invoices and payment records, will typically be kept for a period that allows us to manage our relationship with you, respond to any queries or complaints, and comply with tax and accounting obligations. This is usually a number of years after the end of our relationship with you, in line with statutory retention periods.

Communication data, such as general correspondence, will be kept for as long as necessary to deal with your enquiry or request and for a reasonable period afterwards, in case further follow up is needed.

Photographs and site information will be kept for as long as they are required for planning, delivering or evidencing our services, or for as long as we have your consent where they are used for promotional purposes. Where we rely on consent, we will delete or anonymise the data if you withdraw that consent unless another lawful basis applies.

When personal data is no longer needed, we will securely delete or anonymise it so that it can no longer be linked to you.

International Transfers

If it is necessary for us to transfer your personal data outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, for example where one of our service providers stores or processes data in another country, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place. These may include using countries that have been recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection or entering into standard contractual clauses approved by relevant authorities.

Data Security

We take the security of your personal data seriously and implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect it against unauthorised access, accidental loss, destruction or damage. These measures include limiting access to personal data to those employees and processors who need it for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy and ensuring that they are subject to confidentiality obligations.

While we strive to protect your personal data, no system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. We encourage you to contact us promptly if you suspect any misuse or unauthorised access to your personal data in connection with our services.

Your Data Protection Rights

You have a number of rights in relation to your personal data under data protection law. These rights apply to all Gardeners Petersham customers in our area, subject to certain limitations and conditions.

Right of access: You have the right to request confirmation as to whether we process your personal data and, if we do, to receive a copy of that data and information about how it is used.

Right to rectification: You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold about you.

Right to erasure: In certain circumstances, you may have the right to request that we delete your personal data, for example where it is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected and we have no other lawful basis for retaining it.

Right to restriction of processing: You may have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain situations, such as while we verify its accuracy or consider an objection you have raised.

Right to object: You may have the right to object to our processing of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests, including profiling based on those interests. We will consider your request and stop processing unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, rights and freedoms or where processing is required for legal claims.

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

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

You also have the right to raise concerns or lodge a complaint with a data protection authority if you believe that your data protection rights have been infringed.

Changes To This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, legal requirements or how we process personal data. Any changes will take effect when the updated policy is made available. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we protect your personal data.