Gardeners Edmonton Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Edmonton collects, uses, stores and shares personal data when providing gardening and related services. It applies to all Gardeners Edmonton customers in the Edmonton area and to anyone who contacts us or interacts with our services as a private individual, sole trader or representative of a business customer.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your personal data in a lawful, fair and transparent way in accordance with applicable data protection laws, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Data Controller

For the purposes of data protection law, Gardeners Edmonton is the data controller for the personal data described in this Privacy Policy. This means we decide why and how your personal data is processed.

Personal Data We Collect

We may collect and process the following categories of personal data about you when you use our services or contact us:

Identification and contact details such as name, postal address, property address where services are provided, and preferred contact details such as email or other messaging identifiers that you choose to share with us.

Service information such as details of your garden or outdoor space, photos you choose to provide of the property, access instructions, property layout notes relevant to the service, service preferences and any special requests.

Contract and transaction data such as records of quotes, bookings, services provided, invoices, payments received, payment method type, and billing history. We do not store full payment card details; where you pay electronically, these details may be handled by our payment service provider acting as a data processor on our behalf.

Communication data such as records of communications with you, including enquiries, complaints and feedback, and notes arising from telephone or in person conversations necessary to manage your account and our services.

Technical usage data where relevant such as basic technical information that may be collected when you visit our online pages, including device identifiers, approximate location, browser type and pages visited, as provided by your device or browser settings. We do not seek to identify you from this information unless it is necessary for security or legal reasons.

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, provide feedback or interact with us in any other way. We may also collect data when we visit your property to assess or carry out work and you or your representative provide information on site.

In some cases, we may receive personal data from third parties, for example if someone refers you to us and provides your contact details so we can discuss potential services, or from payment service providers confirming that a payment has been made.

Lawful Bases for Processing

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

Contractual necessity to take steps at your request before entering into a contract with you, and to perform a contract for gardening or related services. This includes processing necessary to provide quotes, bookings, service delivery, customer support and invoicing.

Legitimate interests where the processing is necessary for our reasonable business interests and does not override your rights and freedoms. This includes managing and improving our services, keeping records of past work, responding to general enquiries, and maintaining security and fraud prevention measures.

Legal obligations where we must process personal data to comply with laws and regulations, for example in relation to tax, accounting, record keeping or responding to lawful requests from public authorities.

Consent where required by law for specific activities, such as certain types of marketing. Where we rely on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time. Withdrawing consent will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before the withdrawal.

How We Use Your Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To provide and manage our gardening services including preparing quotations, scheduling visits, carrying out work, communicating with you about your booking, and tailoring services to your property and preferences.

To manage our relationship with you including handling enquiries and complaints, collecting and recovering money owed to us, and updating you on changes to our terms or policies where necessary.

To operate, maintain and improve our business including internal administration, record keeping, analysis of service performance, staff training and quality control.

To meet legal and regulatory requirements including tax and accounting obligations, and to respond to requests from regulatory or law enforcement authorities where we are legally required to do so.

To protect our rights, property and safety and those of our customers and others, for example in connection with the prevention and detection of fraud or misuse of our services.

Data Sharing and Processors

We do not sell your personal data. We may share your personal data with trusted third parties where this is necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy or where we are required to do so by law.

We may use external service providers who act as data processors on our behalf. These can include providers of payment processing services, accounting or bookkeeping support, information technology and hosting services, customer administration systems and other professional advisers. These processors are only permitted to process your personal data in accordance with our written instructions, must keep it secure and are not allowed to use it for their own purposes.

We may also share personal data with independent professional advisers such as accountants or legal advisers acting as separate controllers where this is necessary for advice or representation, and with public authorities, regulators or law enforcement when required by applicable law.

International Transfers

Where any of our processors or service providers are located outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we will ensure that an appropriate level of protection is in place for your personal data. This may involve using countries that have been recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection, or putting in place standard contractual clauses or equivalent safeguards as required by data protection law.

Data Retention

We keep your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including to meet any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.

In practice, this generally means we retain customer and transaction records for a number of years after the end of our relationship, in line with statutory limitation periods and tax record keeping requirements. Information required for invoices and tax records will usually be retained for at least the period specified in relevant tax and accounting laws.

Where personal data is no longer needed for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, we will securely delete it, anonymise it or, if that is not possible, ensure that it is stored securely and isolated from further use until deletion is possible.

Your Data Protection Rights

Under data protection law, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. These rights apply to all Gardeners Edmonton customers in the Edmonton area, subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

Right of access you can request confirmation of whether we process your personal data and obtain a copy of the personal data we hold about you, together with certain information about how we use it.

Right to rectification you can ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete personal data that we hold about you.

Right to erasure in some 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 or where you withdraw consent and there is no other legal basis for processing.

Right to restriction of processing you can request that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain situations, for example while we verify the accuracy of the data or where you have objected to processing.

Right to object you may object to processing based on our legitimate interests, including profiling, on grounds relating to your particular situation. We will stop such processing unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, rights and freedoms or the processing is for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

Right to data portability where processing is based on consent or contract and carried out by automated means, you may request to receive the personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and to have it transmitted to another controller where technically feasible.

Right to withdraw consent where we rely on your consent to process your personal data, you can withdraw that consent at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of processing before consent was withdrawn.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority if you are concerned about how we handle your personal data. In the United Kingdom this is the Information Commissioner's Office. We encourage you to contact us first so that we can try to resolve any concerns directly.

Security of 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 limiting access to personal data to those staff and service providers who need it to perform their duties, using secure storage methods, and maintaining procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, business practices or legal obligations. Any updated version will apply from the date it is made available. We recommend that you review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we process your personal data.