​SWMAS: Customer personal data and privacy policy

How we use your personal information

This privacy notice is to let you know how companies within our Group promise to look after your personal information. 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 notice explains how we do this and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

The new Data Protection law is effective from 25 May 2018.

This notice sets out your rights under the law. We’ll update it again from time to time and you can find the latest version on our website here.

Who we are

SWMAS Group is made up of different legal entities as follows:

  • SWMAS Group Ltd
  • SWMAS Ltd

We'll let you know which you have a relationship with, when you take out a product or service with us.

If you have any questions, or want more details about how we use your personal information, you can ask us by calling 01278 767 010.

How the law protects you

As well as our Privacy Promise, your privacy is protected by law. This section explains how that works.

Data Protection law says that we are allowed to use personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so. This includes sharing it outside SWMAS Group. The law says we must have one or more of these reasons:

  • To fulfil a contract we have with you, or
  • When it is our legal duty, or
  • When it is in our legitimate interest, or
  • When you consent to it.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. But even then, it must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you. If we rely on our legitimate interest, we will tell you what that is.

Here is a list of all the ways that we may use your personal information, and which of the reasons we rely on to do so. This is also where we tell you what our legitimate interests are.

What we use your personal information for

Our reasons

Our legitimate interests

  • To manage our relationship with you
  • To develop new ways to meet our customer needs and to grow our business
  • To develop and carry out marketing activities
  • To study how businesses use products and services from us and other organisations
  • To provide advice or guidance about opportunities available to businesses, our products and services and products or services available from third parties
  • To develop and manage our brands, products and services
  • To test new products
  • To manage how we work with other companies that provide services to us and our customers
  • To deliver our products and services
  • To manage and process customer and supplier payments
  • To collect and recover money that is owed to us
  • To manage our risk
  • To monitor customer satisfaction, handle complaints and improve our service
  • To obey laws and regulations that apply to us
  • To comply with the requirements of contracts we deliver
  • To undertake audits and compliance checks
  • To exercise our rights set out in contracts and agreements
  • Your consent
  • Fulfilling contracts
  • Our legitimate interests
  • Our legal duty
  • Keeping our records up to date, working out which of our products and services may interest you and telling you about them
  • Understanding customer needs
  • Developing products and services
  • Monitoring our performance and your satisfaction with our products and services
  • Seeking your consent when we need to contact you
  • Being compliant with legal requirement
  • Managing our risks

Groups of Personal Information

We use many different kinds of personal information, and group them together like this.

Type of personal information

Description

Contact

Where you work and how to contact you

Socio-Demographic

This includes details about your work or profession, nationality and education

Transactional

Details about payments to and from your business and us

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, the address where you connect a computer to the internet, or where you work

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, surveys, questionnaires and conversations between us

Open Data and Public Records

Details about you that are in public records, such as on Companies House, 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 if you are or have been an employee or associate working for us

Any permissions, consents or preferences that you give us. This includes things like how you want us to contact you, whether you get paper documentation, or prefer large-print formats

Other types of personal information that we will only collect in special circumstances relating to legal or contractual requirements

Type of personal information

Description

Sensitive Personal data - the law and other regulations treat some types of personal information as special

We will only collect this data under special circumstances relating to legal or contractual requirements and we will notify you if this is the case

  • Racial or ethnic origin
  • Religious or philosophical beliefs
  • Trade union membership
  • Genetic and bio-metric data
  • Health data including gender
  • Criminal convictions and offences

Data relating to children

We have no need to collect or process personal data about children

We will verify individuals ages, where appropriate, to ensure that we do not collect or process information of this type

  • Data relating to children

Where we collect personal information from

We may collect personal information about you (or your business) from other companies within the SWMAS Group and from these sources:

  • Data you give to us
  • When you apply for our products and services
  • When you talk to us on the phone or face to face
  • When you voluntarily give your business card to a representative of SWMAS Group
  • When you use our websites, mobile device apps, web chat or online services
  • In emails and letters
  • In invoices or other documents
  • In business meetings, reviews, events and workshops
  • If you take part in our surveys, workshops or promotions
  • If you visit us and provide your details for registration or as a means of accessing our premises or guest Wi-Fi service

Data we collect when you use our services. This includes the amount, frequency, type, location, origin and recipients

Payment and transaction data.

Profile and usage data. This includes the profile you create to identify yourself when you connect to our internet, mobile and telephone services. It also includes other data about how you use those services. We gather this data from devices you use to connect to those services, such as computers and mobile phones, using cookies and other internet tracking software.

Data from third parties we work with:

  • Companies that introduce you to us
  • Business advisers
  • Trade associations
  • Local Authorities and Economic Development agencies
  • Public sector funding bodies
  • Associates working on our behalf
  • Social networks
  • Public information sources such as Companies House
  • Government and law enforcement agencies.

Who we share your personal information with

We may share your personal information with companies within the SWMAS Group and these organisations:

  • Agents and advisers who we use to help run our services, collect what you owe, manage payroll, book-keeping and explore new ways of doing business
  • Any party linked with marketing or delivering products or services to our customers
  • Companies we sub-contract our services to
  • Companies we have a joint venture with or we are working in partnership with
  • Organisations you introduce to us or we introduce to you. Unless expressly advised to the contrary, we may pass your details to third parties where we believe you may be able to offer services to them
  • Researchers acting on our behalf

If legally required to do so we may share your data with:

  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities
  • Fraud prevention agencies

We may also share your personal information if the make-up of SWMAS Group changes in the future. We may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business, or our assets, or we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. During any such process, we may share your data with other parties. We’ll only do this if they agree to keep your data safe and private. If any such changes to our Group happen, then other parties may use your data in the same way as set out in this notice.

We may use your information to:

  • Confirm your identity, role and authority to act on behalf of your organisation
  • Help prevent fraud and money-laundering
  • Fulfil any contracts you or your business has with us or that we have with third parties

We will keep personal information for different lengths of time depending upon the nature of any consent we have and the obligations we may have with third parties, in particular in relation to our contractual needs to provide an audit trail to support our activities.

The information we use

These are some of the kinds of personal information that we use:

  • Name
  • Date of birth
  • Business address
  • Contact details, such as email addresses and phone numbers
  • Data relating to your or your business performance, products or services
  • Employment details (for our employees)
  • Data that identifies computers or other devices you use to connect to the internet. This includes your Internet Protocol (IP) address

Sending data outside of the EEA

We will only send your data outside of the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) to:

  • Follow your instructions
  • Comply with a legal duty
  • If we do transfer information to our agents or advisers outside of the EEA, we will make sure that it is protected in the same way as if it was being used in the EEA. We’ll use one of these safeguards:
  • Transfer it to a non-EEA country with privacy laws that give the same protection as the EEA
  • Put in place a contract with the recipient that means they must protect it to the same standards as the EEA

If you choose not to give personal information

We may need to collect personal information by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you or third parties.

If you choose not to give us this personal information, it may delay or prevent us from meeting our obligations. It may also mean that we cannot offer or perform our services. It could mean that we cancel or cease to deliver a product or service you have with us.

Any data collection that is optional would be made clear at the point of collection.

Marketing

We may use your personal information to tell you about relevant products and offers. This is what we mean when we talk about ‘marketing’.

The personal information we have for you is made up of what you tell us, and data we collect when you use our services, or from third parties we work with. We study this to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you.

We can only use your personal information to send you marketing messages if we have either your consent or a ‘legitimate interest’. That is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. It must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you.

If you are an existing customer of a company in the SWMAS Group we will continue to market our products and services to you where we believe this will be of value.

If you give us your business card we will add you to our marketing list unless you ask us not to do so.

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages by contacting us at any time.

Whatever you choose, you'll still receive certain important information where we still have a legitimate reason to contact you.

We may ask you to confirm or update your choices, if you take out any new products or services with us in future. We will also ask you to do this if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

If you change your mind you can update your choices at any time by contacting us.

How long we keep your personal information

We will keep your personal information for as long as you are a customer of any company in the SWMAS Group.

After you stop being a customer, we may keep your data for one of these reasons:

  • To respond to any questions or complaints
  • To maintain records according to rules or contractual obligations that apply to us

We may keep your data if we cannot delete it for legal, regulatory, audit compliance or technical reasons. If we do, we will make sure that your privacy is protected and only use it for those purposes.

Individuals with whom we have had contact have the right to request a copy of the personal data that we hold about them. In such cases, they will be required first to prove their identity in order to protect the true individuals regarding whom such requests are made. We may charge for you at our standard hourly rate if the data request is deemed to be excessive or requires significant processing.

How to get a copy of your personal information

You can access your personal information we hold by writing to us at this address:

Personal data controller, SWMAS Group Ltd, Somerset Energy Innovation Centre, Woodlands Business Park, Bristol Road, Bridgwater, TA6 4FJ.

Letting us know if your personal information is incorrect

You have the right to question any information we have about you that you think is wrong or incomplete. Please contact us if you want to do this and we will take reasonable steps to check its accuracy and correct it.

What if you want us to stop using your personal information?

You have the right to object to our use of your personal information, or to ask us to delete, remove, or stop using your personal information if there is no need for us to keep it. This is known as the ‘right to object’ and ‘right to erasure’, or the ‘right to be forgotten’.

There may be legal or other legitimate reasons why we need to keep or use your data.

We may sometimes be able to restrict the use of your data. This means that it can only be used for certain things, such as for our audit compliance or to exercise our legal rights. In this situation, we would not use or share your information in other ways while it is restricted.

You can ask us to restrict the use of your personal information if:

  • It is not accurate
  • It has been used unlawfully but you don’t want us to delete it
  • It is not relevant any more, but you want us to keep it for use in legal claims
  • You have already asked us to stop using your data but you are waiting for us to tell you if we are allowed to keep on using it

If you want to object to how we use your data, or ask us to delete it or restrict how we use it, please contact us.

How to withdraw your consent

You can withdraw your consent at any time. Please contact us if you want to do so.

If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. If this is so, we will tell you.

Privacy by design

Privacy by design is achieved by our implementation of appropriate processes, contracts, forms and procedures and regular training for our staff to ensure that they are aware of the importance of keeping personal data private and comply with company policy.

How to complain

Please let us know if you are unhappy with how we have used your personal information. You can contact us using the details above.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Find out on their website how to report a concern.

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For any queries relating to this subject please write to us at:

Personal data controller, SWMAS Group Ltd, Somerset Energy Innovation Centre, Woodlands Business Park, Bristol Road, Bridgwater. TA6 4FJ

Alternatively, you can email [email protected]


 

​The document was last updated on 16/02/22. Updates to this policy may be posted here from time to time.