Gardeners Southfields Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Southfields collects, uses and protects personal data when providing gardening and related services. It applies to all Gardeners Southfields customers in the Southfields area, as well as anyone who contacts us to enquire about our services.

We are committed to complying with the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018. This policy describes the categories of personal data we process, the purposes and lawful bases for processing, how long we keep data, how we share it with processors, and the rights you have over your personal data.

Data Controller

Gardeners Southfields is the data controller in respect of the personal data we collect and use in connection with our gardening and maintenance services in the Southfields area. As data controller, we determine the purposes and means of processing your personal data and are responsible for ensuring that such processing is carried out in accordance with data protection law.

Personal Data We Collect

We only collect personal data that is necessary for us to provide our services, manage our relationship with you, and comply with our legal obligations. The types of personal data we may collect include:

Identification and contact details such as your name, home address, service address, and general contact details you choose to give us such as communication preferences.

Service and contract information such as details of the gardening services you request, service frequency, property access information where necessary for the service, records of work carried out, and any instructions or preferences you provide.

Billing and payment information such as details necessary to issue invoices and record payments. We do not store full payment card details when you pay electronically; where electronic payments are used, they are processed securely by third party payment providers.

Communication records such as enquiries, messages, and correspondence between you and Gardeners Southfields relating to services, quotes, complaints, or feedback.

Technical information such as basic device and usage information when you interact with our online presence, to the extent necessary to provide and improve the service. We do not seek to identify individuals from such technical data unless this is necessary for security or legal reasons.

Purposes and Lawful Bases for Processing

Data protection law requires us to identify the lawful basis on which we process your personal data. Gardeners Southfields processes personal data on the following bases:

Contract: We use your personal data to provide and manage our gardening services. This includes creating and managing bookings, attending at your property, communicating with you about appointments, issuing invoices, and handling related customer service matters. The lawful basis is that processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract.

Legitimate interests: We may process your personal data where this is necessary for our legitimate business interests and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. This includes arranging schedules, improving our services, maintaining our records, handling enquiries, and protecting the security of our personnel and property. Where we rely on legitimate interests, we balance these interests against your rights and expectations to ensure that processing is proportionate.

Legal obligations: We may process your personal data where necessary to comply with legal or regulatory requirements, such as accounting, record keeping, tax obligations, and responding to requests from competent authorities when we are legally required to do so.

Consent: In limited cases, we may rely on your consent as the lawful basis for processing, for example where we send you certain types of optional marketing communications that are not covered by our legitimate interests. When we rely on consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time, and this will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before consent was withdrawn.

How We Use Your Personal Data

Gardeners Southfields uses your personal data to:

Provide gardening and related services at your property in the Southfields area, including assessing your requirements and preparing quotes.

Manage bookings, scheduling, and access instructions so that our gardeners can attend at agreed times and perform the work safely and efficiently.

Communicate with you about the services, including confirmations, service updates, changes, and responses to your questions or feedback.

Issue and manage invoices, receive payments, and maintain accurate and compliant financial records.

Monitor quality, resolve complaints or disputes, and improve the services we offer to customers in the Southfields area.

Protect our business, staff and customers by preventing and detecting abuse, fraud or misuse of our services, and by maintaining appropriate records for security and auditing purposes.

Data Sharing and Processors

We do not sell your personal data. We only share personal data where this is necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, and always in accordance with data protection law.

Service providers and processors: We may share your personal data with carefully selected third parties who act as data processors on our behalf. These may include providers of scheduling tools, payment processing services, accounting or bookkeeping services, secure data storage, and IT support. These processors are only allowed to process your data in accordance with our instructions and for the purposes we specify, and they are required to implement appropriate security measures to protect your data.

Professional and legal advisers: We may share necessary information with professional advisers such as accountants, insurers or legal advisers where this is required for legitimate business purposes or to defend or exercise legal claims.

Authorities and regulatory bodies: We may disclose your personal data where required by law, regulation or court order, or where necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Gardeners Southfields, our customers or others.

Where we use processors located outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place, such as standard contractual clauses or equivalent protections, so that your data remains protected to a level essentially equivalent to that in the UK.

Data Retention

Gardeners Southfields keeps personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.

In general, we keep customer and service records for the duration of our relationship with you and for a period afterwards where there is a legal or business need to retain the information. For example, invoices and financial records are usually retained for a number of years to comply with tax and accounting rules.

When personal data is no longer required, we will delete it or anonymise it so that it can no longer be associated with an identifiable individual. The exact retention period may vary depending on the type of data, its sensitivity and the legal requirements that apply.

Security of Your Personal Data

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal data we hold from unauthorised access, accidental loss, damage or destruction. These measures include limiting access to personal data to those who have a genuine business need to access it, using secure systems for storing and processing data, and training staff on their data protection responsibilities.

While we take reasonable steps to protect your personal data, no system can be guaranteed as completely secure. You are encouraged to take care when sharing personal information and to notify us if you suspect any misuse of your data in connection with our services.

Your Data Protection Rights

Under data protection law, individuals whose personal data we process have a range of rights. These rights apply to all Gardeners Southfields customers in the Southfields area whose personal data we hold, subject to certain limitations and exceptions. Your rights include:

Right of access: You have the right to request confirmation of whether we process your personal data and to receive a copy of that data, together with information about how and why it is processed.

Right to rectification: You have the right to ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete personal data that 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 the data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, or where you withdraw consent and there is no other lawful basis for processing.

Right to restriction: You may have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain situations, such as when you contest the accuracy of the data or object to our processing.

Right to object: You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests as the lawful basis, including for direct marketing. If you object to direct marketing, we will stop processing your data for this purpose.

Right to data portability: Where processing is based on consent or on a contract and is carried out by automated means, you may have the right to receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and to transmit it to another controller.

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. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before the withdrawal.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection supervisory authority if you believe that your personal data has been processed in a way that does not comply with data protection law. We encourage you to contact us first so that we can seek to resolve any concerns directly.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, our processing activities or applicable laws. When we make significant changes, we will take appropriate steps to bring the updated policy to your attention. The latest version of this Privacy Policy will always apply to the personal data we hold and process about you as a customer in the Southfields area.