Gardeners Soho Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Soho collects, uses, stores, and protects personal data relating to our customers and prospective customers in our service area. It also explains your rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and, where applicable, the EU General Data Protection Regulation. This Privacy Policy applies to all Gardeners Soho customers and potential customers within our operating area, whether you contact us online, by post, or in person.

Who We Are and Scope of this Policy

Gardeners Soho provides gardening and related services to residential and business customers. For the purposes of data protection law, we act as the data controller in relation to the personal data described in this Privacy Policy. This means we decide how and why your personal data is processed. This Privacy Policy covers all personal data that we collect about customers and prospective customers in our service area in connection with enquiries, quotations, bookings, service delivery, and follow up communications.

Personal Data We Collect

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

Identity and contact details, such as your name, title, postal address, and other contact details you choose to provide when you contact us or become a customer.

Service and property information, such as your property type, garden layout or size, access instructions, preferred appointment times, records of services requested or provided, and related notes necessary to plan and perform gardening work.

Communication records, including information you provide when you contact us by any channel, such as enquiries, complaints, feedback, and any correspondence about our services.

Billing and transaction information, such as invoices, payment status, amounts paid, and the method of payment used. Where payments are processed by a third party payment processor, we do not receive or store your full card details but may receive confirmation of payment and partial reference data.

Technical and usage information, where you interact with our online presence, which may include log data such as date and time of access and basic device or browser information. This information is generally used to maintain and improve our services.

How and Why We Use Your Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To respond to enquiries and provide quotations, including assessing your service requirements, preparing and issuing quotes, and communicating with you about potential work.

To provide and manage gardening services, including scheduling visits, attending your property, performing gardening and related services, and communicating with you before and after visits.

To manage our relationship with you, including handling queries and complaints, updating you about changes to our services, and keeping records of our interactions for reference and quality purposes.

To manage billing and payments, including issuing invoices, recording payments, processing refunds where applicable, and maintaining financial records for accounting and tax purposes.

To improve and develop our services, including monitoring service quality, training staff, and reviewing customer feedback so that we can enhance the services we provide.

To comply with legal and regulatory obligations, including record keeping, responding to lawful requests from authorities, and maintaining appropriate business and tax records.

Lawful Basis for Processing Your Data

We rely on the following lawful bases for processing your personal data:

Contract. We process personal data where it is necessary to enter into or perform a contract with you, for example to provide gardening services, issue quotes, arrange access to your property, and manage your bookings.

Legitimate interests. We process personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate interests, provided those interests are not overridden by your rights and interests. These interests include running and improving our business, maintaining service and financial records, and communicating with you in a proportionate way about existing or compatible services.

Legal obligation. We process personal data where this is necessary to comply with legal and regulatory duties, such as tax, accounting, and consumer protection requirements.

Consent. In limited cases, we may rely on your consent, for example where we send certain types of electronic marketing communications to you and consent is required. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time by contacting us using the details provided in our communications.

Data Retention

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

Customer service records, including details of services provided and communications, are generally kept for a period that allows us to respond to queries, manage repeat work, and demonstrate service history where needed. After this period, the data is securely deleted or anonymised unless a longer retention period is required by law.

Financial and transaction records, such as invoices and payment records, are kept for the period required by tax and accounting laws. At the end of the applicable retention period, these records are securely deleted or archived in a form that no longer identifies you.

Enquiry records for prospective customers who do not become customers may be retained for a limited period to allow us to respond to follow up queries and manage repeat requests. These records are then securely deleted or anonymised.

Sharing Your Personal Data and Processors

We may share your personal data with trusted third parties where necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

Service providers and processors. We may engage external companies to act as data processors on our behalf, for example providers of payment processing, business administration, cloud storage, appointment scheduling tools, or external support services. These providers may only process your personal data according to our instructions and are required to keep it secure and confidential.

Professional advisers. We may share data with accountants, auditors, or legal advisers where necessary for the provision of professional services and to comply with legal obligations.

Authorities and regulators. We may disclose personal data to public authorities, law enforcement, or regulatory bodies where required by law or where necessary to protect our rights or the rights of others.

We do not sell your personal data. If we were to undertake any significant organisational change, such as a business transfer or restructuring, personal data may be transferred as part of that process, in which case we would ensure that appropriate protections are in place.

International Transfers

Where any of our processors or service providers are located outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, or store data in another country, we take steps to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data. These safeguards may include the use of standard contractual clauses approved by relevant data protection authorities or other legally recognised safeguards.

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 restricting access to personal data to those employees, contractors, and service providers who need it for legitimate business purposes and who are subject to confidentiality obligations. However, no system can be completely secure, and you should take care when providing information, particularly when using electronic communications.

Your Data Protection Rights

As a customer or prospective customer of Gardeners Soho within our service area, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data under data protection law. These include:

The right of access. You have the right to request confirmation as to whether we process your personal data and to receive a copy of that data, together with certain information about how we use it.

The right to rectification. You have the right to request correction of any inaccurate or incomplete personal data that we hold about you.

The right to erasure. In certain circumstances, you have the right to request that we 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.

The right to restriction. You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances, for example while we verify the accuracy of data you believe is incorrect.

The right to data portability. In some cases, you 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 it to another controller where technically feasible.

The right to object. You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests as the legal basis, including profiling related to those interests. You also have the right to object at any time to the use of your data for direct marketing.

The right to withdraw consent. Where we rely on your consent as the lawful basis for processing, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before consent was withdrawn.

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

Changes to This Privacy Policy

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