PRIVACY POLICY
introduction
This Privacy Notice is to let you know how we handle your personal data. This includes what you tell us about yourself, what we learn by having you as a customer, and the choices you give us about what marketing you want us to send you. This Privacy Notice explains how we do this and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Your personal data is any information relating to you from which you can be identified.
This notice sets out:
- How we will process any personal data that we collect from you and what it will be used for.
- The information that you are entitled to receive from us when we collect your personal data.
- Your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in connection with the way we handle your personal data.
Where you provide personal data about another person this Privacy Notice will also apply to that data. This Privacy Notice applies to any personal data which you may provide to us in person, over the telephone, by e-mail, on our website and/or by post. This Privacy Notice also applies to any personal data which we may collect from third parties about you and/or which we may collect when you access our website and/or in the course of our relationship.
You can choose not to give personal data. We may need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract and/or relationship that we have with you. If you choose not to give us this personal data, it may delay or prevent us from meeting our obligations. It may also mean that we cannot perform services so we cancel a product or service you have with us.
Wherever we refer to “processing” of personal data in this Privacy Notice this includes any combination of the following activities: collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.
This Privacy Notice only applies to personal data collected by or on behalf of Thomas Homes via the company’s website or by any other means. The company’s website may from time to time contain links to and from other websites (partner networks, advertisers and affiliates) in which case these websites will have their own privacy policies separate from ours.
Our promise to you
We promise:
- To keep your personal data safe and only process it on valid legal basis.
- To keep our records up to date and delete or correct inaccurate personal data.
- Not to keep your personal data after the purpose has ended.
- Not to sell your personal data.
- To give you ways to manage and review your marketing choices at any time.
Who we are
Thomas Homes is the trading name for Thomas Homes Limited which is a company registered in England and Wales. Thomas Homes Limited is the company responsible for your personal data, as Data Controller. You can contact Thomas Homes at:
Customer Services Department,
Thomas Homes,
Arlington House,
Arlington Grange,
Curridge Road,
Curridge,
Thatcham,
Berks, RG18 9AB.
by email or via our Contact page.
Legal basis for processing your personal data
We need to have a proper reason under the GDPR whenever we process your personal data ourselves or share it with others. These reasons are:
- To fulfil a contract we have with you or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you.
- When it is our legal duty.
- When it is in our legitimate interest or the legitimate interest of a third party except where such interests are overridden by your interests or your fundamental rights or freedoms.
- When you consent to it.
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to process your personal data, but this must not unfairly go against your rights.
In the section below there is a list of all the ways that we may process your personal data, and which of the reasons we rely on to do so. This is also where we tell you what our legitimate interests are.
Unless we have your explicit consent to do so, we will not process special categories of personal data revealing any of the following: racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation.
How we collect your personal data
We may collect personal data from you in the following ways:
- When you make an enquiry or register your interest on our website or mobile device apps.
- When you contact us in person, over the telephone, by email or by post.
- At the point of reserving a property to purchase from us.
- At the point of purchasing options and extras from us.
- During the process of purchasing a property from us and/or selling a property to us with our Part Exchange scheme.
- When you apply for our products and services.
- In customer surveys.
- When you use our services.
- Payment and transaction data.
We may collect your personal data from third parties we work with including:
- Companies that introduce you to us.
- Financial advisers.
- Credit reference agencies.
- Insurers.
- Suppliers of materials and equipment.
- Trade contractors.
- Comparison websites.
- Social networks.
- Fraud prevention agencies.
- Payroll service providers.
- Land agents.
- Estate agents.
- Analytics providers.
- Solicitors.
- Surveyors.
- Mortgage providers.
- The National House Building Council, or similar warranty provider.
- Public information sources such as Companies House.
- Agents working on our behalf.
- Market researchers.
- Government and law enforcement agencies.
We may also use Google Analytics which sets cookies to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the website and blog, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
The types of personal data we may collect
The type of information we may ask you to provide about yourself and therefore collect includes, but is not limited to:
- Contact details: Name, address, contact telephone number (mobile and landline), e-mail address.
- The developments you’re interested in.
- Status of move (first time buyer, house on the market etc.).
- Budget.
- Financial details: Your financial position, status and history.
- Socio-demographic details: This includes details about your work or profession, nationality, education and where you fit into general social or income groupings.
- Contractual details about the products or services we provide to you.
- Locational data we get about where you are, such as may come from your mobile phone or the address where you connect a computer to the internet.
- Behavioural details about how you use our products and services.
- Technical details on the devices and technology you use.
- Communications: What we learn about you from letters, emails and conversations between us.
- Social relationships: What we learn about your family, friends and other relationships that we record from conversation between you and us.
- Open data and public records: Details about you that are in public records, such as the Electoral Register, and information about you that is openly available on the internet.
- Usage data: Other data about how you use our products and services.
- Documentary data: Details about you that are stored in documents in different formats, or copies of them. This could include things like your passport, drivers licence or birth certificate.
At the point of reserving a property to purchase from us we may require further information including, but not limited to:
- National Insurance, driving licence or passport number or alternative number or code given to you by a government to identify who you are.
- Mortgage provider.
- Solicitor details.
- Deposit amount.
- Occupation.
If you apply for a shared equity loan we may keep the personal data provided in your reservation agreement, loan agreement and personal data obtained from third parties, such as credit reference and fraud prevention agencies to underwrite and manage your loan.
Please note that we may require this information to be able to respond to your enquiry or to provide our services or marketing information to you. You can however at any time tell us to change or remove any personal data or to stop or restrict the processing of your personal data.
Sharing your personal data
We may disclose your personal data to third parties in certain circumstances but we will not sell, rent or trade your personal data.
Unless we notify you, we will not transfer your personal data outside the UK and the European Economic Area, as it is currently defined.
Where relevant, we may give third party providers who supply services to us, or who process personal data on our behalf, access to your personal data in order to help us to process it for the purposes set out above. When doing so, we will ask them to confirm that their security measures are adequate to protect your personal data.
Within the purposes set out above we may share your personal data with the following third parties:
- In respect of any property you reserve from us, the sale of the property and/or the purchase of your existing property with our Part Exchange scheme, we will share your personal data with estate and managing agents, financial and legal advisors and any relevant mortgage provider, the National House Building Council or similar warranty provider, utility providers and local authorities.
- With your consent, we will also pass your personal data on to third parties, for example if you ask us to put you in contact with professional advisors.
- We may disclose your personal data to third parties working on our behalf to help us improve our services and products i.e. focus group recruitment or exit interviews, to request feedback from you on your experiences following development visits.
- We may disclose your personal data to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our contracts with you; or to protect our rights, property, or our safety and/or the safety of our customers, or others.
- We may need to confirm your identity before we provide products or services to you or your business. We may also share your personal information as needed to help detect fraud and money-laundering risks. We may use solicitors and other advisers for these purposes. We may allow law enforcement agencies to access your personal data. This is to support their duty to detect, investigate, prevent and prosecute crime.
- We may disclose your personal data to third parties in the event that we sell any of our business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective buyer of such business or assets. If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets.
Protecting your information
We will seek to keep your personal data secure by taking appropriate technical and organisational measures against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage.
Only authorised personnel and third parties will have access to your personal data.
If logging on to our website it is your responsibility to protect log in details. You must treat these as confidential and must not share or disclose your log in details to any other party.
We will retain your personal data for no longer than the period of time needed for the purposes that we collected the data and for as long as we have legal grounds to retain it. There is no fixed period after which all record of your personal data will be deleted as this will depend on the circumstances and the purposes of the processing but we will take steps and maintain policies to keep retention under proper review. We will not seek your consent before deleting any personal data.
Changes to this privacy notice
This Privacy Notice was issued May 2018. Any changes we may make to this Privacy Notice in the future will be posted on this website. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to this Privacy Notice.
Your rights of access to your personal data
You have the right to access your personal data including us providing to you, without charge, a copy (which may be in electronic form) of any of your personal data that we are holding or using (referred to as “processing”) or that third parties are processing on our behalf.
We will also provide to you, if you request it, the following information:
- The purposes of the processing.
- The categories of personal data concerned.
- The recipients or categories of recipient to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed, including recipients in countries outside the UK or international organisations.
- Where possible, the envisaged period for which the personal data will be stored, or, if not possible, the criteria used to determine that period.
- If the personal data was not collected from you, any information available to us as to the source of it.
Requests for this information or a copy of your personal data should be in writing to us as set out in the who we are section, enclosing proof of identification such as a copy of your passport, driving licence or other documentation confirming your name and address (for example a utility bill).
Your right of removal or correction of personal data and to restriction of processing
You have the following rights under GDPR:
- A right to request us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data (“Right to rectification”).
- A right to request us to delete any of your personal data. In certain circumstances (for example, where you have purchased a home from us) we may wish to retain data and if GDPR allows us to do so we will inform you of our grounds (“Right to erasure” or “Right to be forgotten”).
- A right to request us to stop or to restrict any aspect of the processing of your personal data. In certain circumstances we may wish to continue and if GDPR allows us to do so we will inform you of our grounds (“Right to restriction of processing”).
In each case we will tell you what action we are taking and we will also notify any third party to whom the data has been disclosed.
Your right to data portability
You have the right to receive from us the personal data that you have given us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format (“Right to data portability”) and/or to have the data sent by us directly to another party. Please note that this right only applies in certain circumstances, which is when we held the data on grounds of your consent or to perform a contract with you or for steps preparatory to such a contract and we were processing that data by automated means.
Your right to complain to the regulator
Please let us know if you are unhappy with how we have processed your personal data. You can contact us as set out in the who we are section.
You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) which is the UK supervisory authority for the processing of personal data. Further details are available on the ICO’s website.
Enquiries
If you have any questions, want more details about how we process your personal data, or if you wish to exercise any of your rights, you can contact us.