Gardeners East Dulwich Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners East Dulwich collects, uses, stores and protects your personal data. It applies to all Gardeners East Dulwich customers and prospective customers located in the East Dulwich area and surrounding neighbourhoods who enquire about, use, or have used our gardening and related services.

We are committed to handling your personal data in accordance with the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Act 2018 and other applicable data protection laws. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand how and why we use your information.

Data Controller

Gardeners East Dulwich is the data controller for the personal data described in this Privacy Policy. This means we decide how and why your personal data is processed when you deal with us as a customer, potential customer, or website visitor in the East Dulwich area.

Personal Data We Collect

We may collect and process the following categories of personal data about you when you contact us, request a quotation, or receive our services:

Identification and contact information, such as your name, postal address, service address, and general contact details that you choose to provide when you request a booking or quotation.

Service and contract information, such as details of the gardening services you request, images or descriptions of the garden or outdoor spaces where work is to be carried out, records of visits, dates and times of appointments, invoices and payment records.

Communication information, such as information you provide when you contact us with enquiries, feedback or complaints, and any notes we make in the course of handling your query, including records of conversations that relate to the services we provide.

Technical and usage information, such as basic information about how you interact with our website, where applicable. This may include standard log information and general device data. If we use cookies or similar technologies, this will be explained through a separate cookie notice where required.

We do not intentionally collect special category data such as health information, nor do we seek to collect data relating to children. Please avoid providing such information unless it is strictly necessary for the provision of our services.

Purposes and 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 may rely on the following legal grounds:

Contractual necessity. We use your personal data to provide you with gardening and related services you have requested or purchased. This includes taking steps before entering into a contract at your request, such as providing quotations, scheduling appointments, and managing ongoing services and payments.

Legitimate interests. We may process your personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate business interests and where your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. This may include managing and improving our services, maintaining business records, protecting our property and staff, and handling customer queries and complaints.

Legal obligations. In some cases, we must process your data to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, such as record keeping, accounting, and responding to lawful requests from public authorities.

Consent. Where required by law, we may rely on your consent, for example for certain forms of marketing. If we rely on your consent, you have the right to withdraw it at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.

How We Use Your Personal Data

We may use your personal data for the following purposes:

To respond to your enquiries, provide quotations, schedule visits, and deliver gardening services at your property in the East Dulwich area.

To issue invoices, process payments, and maintain accurate financial and transaction records.

To manage our relationship with you, including communicating about upcoming appointments, changes to services, and updates to our terms or policies.

To improve our services, by reviewing customer feedback, assessing service quality, and analysing general trends in demand for our services in the local area.

To handle any disputes, complaints or legal claims that may arise in connection with our services.

To comply with legal and regulatory requirements, including tax and accounting rules and any obligations to cooperate with law enforcement or public authorities.

Data Sharing and Processors

We do not sell your personal data. We may share your personal data with trusted third parties who act as data processors and who provide services that support our business. These may include:

IT and cloud service providers that host or support our systems used to manage bookings, customer records, or communications.

Accountants or bookkeeping services who assist us with financial record keeping and statutory obligations.

Payment service providers that process card or electronic payments on our behalf, where applicable.

These service providers act only on our instructions, are not allowed to use your personal data for their own purposes, and are required to protect it appropriately. We may also share personal data where required by law or where necessary to protect our rights, property or safety, or that of our customers or others.

International Transfers

If any of our service providers are located outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, and your personal data is transferred internationally, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place. These may include standard contractual clauses or other lawful mechanisms designed to protect your data and ensure it is treated securely and in line with applicable data protection laws.

Data Retention

We keep your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including for satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.

Customer and service records, including contact details, service history and invoices, are generally kept for a period that allows us to manage ongoing services and to comply with tax and accounting laws. After this period, data that is no longer needed will be securely deleted or anonymised.

Where we process your data based on consent, we will retain it until you withdraw your consent or until the data is no longer needed for the original purpose, whichever occurs first, subject to any overriding legal retention requirements.

Security of Your Personal 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 who need it for their work, using secure systems for storing records, and regularly reviewing our security arrangements.

No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we work to ensure that the level of protection we apply is appropriate to the nature and sensitivity of the data we hold.

Your Data Protection Rights

Under data protection laws, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. These rights apply to all Gardeners East Dulwich customers and prospective customers in the area, subject to certain conditions and legal limitations. Your rights include:

The right of access. You can request confirmation that we process your personal data and obtain a copy of the personal data we hold about you.

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

The right to erasure. In certain 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 and we have no legal obligation to retain it.

The right to restrict processing. You can ask us to limit the way we use your data in certain situations, for example while we are considering a request to correct your data.

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

The right to object. You can object to certain types of processing, including processing based on our legitimate interests, particularly where it relates to direct marketing.

The right to withdraw consent. Where we rely on your consent to process your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority if you believe that we have not complied with data protection laws. In the United Kingdom, this is the Information Commissioner s Office.

Updates to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, legal requirements or other factors. When we make changes, we will revise the date of the policy and make the updated version available. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we protect your personal data.