Gardeners St James's Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice explains how Gardeners St James's collects, uses, stores and shares personal data about its customers and prospective customers. It applies to all Gardeners St James's customers in the St James's area, including anyone who contacts us to enquire about our gardening services or related activities.

Gardeners St James's acts as the data controller for the personal data described in this Privacy Notice. This means we decide how and why your personal data is processed, in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulation and other applicable data protection laws.

Personal Data We Collect

We collect and process different categories of personal data in the course of running our gardening services. The types of personal data we may collect include the following categories.

Identification and contact details, such as your full name, postal address, property details necessary for providing gardening services, and general location information. We may also record preferred methods of contact to manage our communications with you.

Service and contract information, such as details of the gardening services you request or receive, visit dates and times, work instructions, service history, and any related notes relevant for planning and delivering our services.

Payment and billing information, such as records of payments made, invoices issued, amounts due and any related transaction records. We do not store full payment card details when payments are processed by specialist payment providers.

Communications data, such as records of enquiries or complaints, notes from calls or conversations, and any correspondence we receive from you that is relevant for managing our relationship with you.

Technical and usage data, where applicable, such as basic information about how you interact with our website or online content, including the date, time and duration of your visit and which pages you access. This is generally collected using cookies or similar technologies where permitted by law.

We collect personal data directly from you when you contact us, request a quote, make a booking, or otherwise interact with our services. We may also collect personal data indirectly where someone else arranges services on your behalf or where publicly available property information is needed to plan our work.

Lawful Bases for Processing

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

Contract. We process your personal data where it is necessary to enter into or perform a contract with you, including to provide gardening services you have requested, to manage bookings, to issue invoices, and to respond to queries about your services.

Legal obligation. We process certain information to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, such as record keeping, accounting, and responding to lawful requests from public authorities where required.

Legitimate interests. We process personal data where this is necessary for our legitimate business interests and where your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. These interests include planning and improving our gardening services, managing our relationship with customers in the area, maintaining security and safety, preventing fraud or misuse of our services, and defending legal claims.

Consent. In some cases we may ask for your consent before processing your personal data, for example for certain types of direct marketing or for the use of optional cookies or similar technologies. Where we rely on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time, and we will explain how to do this when we request your consent.

How We Use Your Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes.

To provide gardening services, including assessing your requirements, preparing quotes, scheduling visits, carrying out agreed work, and following up on completed services.

To manage our relationship with you, including responding to enquiries or complaints, keeping you informed about bookings or changes to services, and updating you about important information relating to your contract or property.

To administer our business operations, including record keeping, invoicing and payments, accounting, auditing, and internal reporting.

To improve and develop our services, including reviewing feedback, understanding service usage patterns in the St James's area, and enhancing the quality and efficiency of our work.

To maintain safety and security, including protecting our staff, equipment, and customers, and detecting or preventing fraud or misuse of our services.

To send you direct marketing communications about services that may be relevant to you, where permitted by law. You can object to or opt out of such communications at any time.

Data Retention

We keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, and to meet any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. When we decide how long to retain personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process it, and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means.

In general, we retain customer and service records for a period that allows us to manage ongoing relationships in the area, deal with any queries, and comply with statutory limitation periods for legal claims. Accounting and tax records are kept for the periods required by applicable law. When personal data is no longer required, we will securely delete it or anonymise it so that it can no longer be linked to you.

Data Sharing and Processors

We treat your personal data as confidential and only share it where necessary and lawful. We may share personal data with the following categories of recipients.

Service providers acting as data processors who support the operation of our business, such as information technology and hosting providers, payment processing services, and administrative support providers. These processors are only permitted to process personal data on our instructions and are required to protect it appropriately.

Professional advisers, such as accountants, auditors, or legal advisers, where this is necessary to obtain professional services, comply with legal obligations, or protect our rights.

Public authorities, regulators or law enforcement bodies, where we are required or permitted to do so by law, or where sharing is necessary to protect our rights or the rights of others.

We do not sell your personal data. If we ever envisage any other type of recipient, we will ensure an appropriate lawful basis is in place and that you are informed where required by law.

International Transfers

Some of our service providers may process or store personal data outside the United Kingdom. Where this occurs, we take steps to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data, such as relying on adequacy regulations or entering into data protection terms that provide a similar level of protection to UK data protection law.

Your Data Protection Rights

As a customer of Gardeners St James's, you have a number of rights under data protection law in relation to the personal data we hold about you. These rights apply to all our customers in the St James's area, subject to any legal limitations.

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

Right to rectification. You have the right to request that inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold about you is corrected or updated.

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 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 have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain situations, such as while we are verifying its accuracy or considering an objection you have raised.

Right to object. You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests as our lawful basis, including profiling based on those interests. You also have an absolute right to object to direct marketing at any time.

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

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

We will respond to requests to exercise these rights in accordance with applicable legal requirements and may ask you to provide reasonable information to help confirm your identity before we respond.

Changes to This Privacy Notice

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time to reflect changes in our services, in the way we process personal data, or in applicable laws and guidance. The most current version will always apply to all Gardeners St James's customers in the area from the date it is issued. We encourage you to review this Privacy Notice periodically to stay informed about how we protect your personal data.