Privacy Policy - Gardeners West Green

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners West Green collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects personal data when providing gardening services to customers in the West Green area. It applies to all Gardeners West Green customers in the area, including anyone who requests a quote, books a service, receives ongoing maintenance, or communicates with us in connection with our work. We are committed to handling personal information in a lawful, fair, and transparent way in line with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

By using our services, you acknowledge that we may process personal data as described in this policy. We only collect information that is necessary for legitimate business, administrative, and legal purposes, and we take appropriate measures to keep it secure.

1. Data We Collect

Gardeners West Green may collect and process different categories of personal data depending on how you interact with us. This may include:

Identity details such as your name and title.
Contact details such as address, email address, and telephone number.
Service information such as the type of gardening work requested, preferred timings, property access instructions, and service history.
Billing and transaction data such as payment status, invoices, and records of amounts owed or paid.
Communication records including messages, notes from phone calls, and any correspondence about quotes, appointments, complaints, or follow-up work.
Technical data such as limited website or device information if you submit an enquiry online, where applicable.
Photographs or site notes where needed to document work carried out, estimate jobs, or record completed services.

We do not intentionally collect special category data unless you choose to provide it and it is necessary for a specific lawful purpose. If such data is ever received, it will be handled with additional care and only where permitted by law.

2. How We Use Personal Data

We use personal information only for purposes connected to our services and operations. These purposes may include:

Responding to enquiries and providing quotations.
Planning, delivering, and managing gardening services.
Scheduling visits and coordinating access to properties.
Preparing invoices and processing payments.
Maintaining service records and customer preferences.
Handling complaints, queries, and follow-up requests.
Meeting legal, tax, accounting, and insurance obligations.
Protecting against fraud, misuse, or unauthorised access.

We only process the minimum amount of data needed for each task. Where practical, we use data minimisation and purpose limitation principles to reduce the amount of personal information retained.

3. Lawful Basis for Processing

Under GDPR, we must have a valid legal basis for processing personal data. Gardeners West Green relies on the following lawful bases:

Contract

We process personal data when it is necessary to enter into or perform a contract with you. This includes arranging garden services, carrying out work, billing, and managing customer requests.

Legitimate Interests

We may process data where it is in our legitimate interests to operate and improve our business, provided these interests do not override your rights and freedoms. Examples include maintaining records, ensuring efficient scheduling, preventing misuse, and improving service quality.

Legal Obligation

We may process and retain certain information to comply with legal requirements, including accounting rules, tax obligations, record-keeping duties, and responses to lawful requests from authorities.

Consent

In limited situations, we may rely on your consent, for example where it is required for a specific communication or optional use of data. If we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time. Withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before consent was withdrawn.

4. Data Sharing and Processors

We do not sell personal data. However, we may share information with carefully selected third-party service providers acting as processors on our behalf. These processors only handle data under our instructions and must protect it appropriately.

Examples of processors may include:

Payment processors that help complete transactions securely.
Accounting or bookkeeping providers that manage financial records.
Scheduling or administration tools used to organise appointments and work orders.
IT, cloud storage, or software providers that support our business systems.
Professional advisers such as insurers, auditors, or legal advisers where necessary.

We may also disclose data if required by law, to enforce our rights, or to protect the safety, property, or legal interests of Gardeners West Green, our customers, or others.

Where third-party processors are used, we take reasonable steps to ensure they offer appropriate safeguards, including confidentiality, security measures, and contractual commitments consistent with GDPR requirements.

5. Data Retention

Gardeners West Green keeps personal data only for as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected and in line with legal and operational requirements. Retention periods may vary depending on the type of data and the reason for processing.

As a general approach:

Customer and service records are retained for the period needed to manage the service relationship and any follow-up issues.
Financial and tax records are kept for the period required by law.
Correspondence and complaint records may be retained for a reasonable period to resolve disputes and improve services.
Unused enquiry data may be deleted sooner if no further contact is expected and no legal reason remains to keep it.

When data is no longer needed, we will delete it securely or anonymise it so that it can no longer identify you.

6. Data Security

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access, alteration, or disclosure. These measures may include secure storage, access controls, staff awareness, and limiting access to information on a need-to-know basis.

While no system can be guaranteed completely secure, we work hard to protect the information entrusted to us and to respond appropriately if a data incident occurs.

7. Your Rights Under GDPR

If your personal data is processed by Gardeners West Green, you have a number of rights under data protection law. These rights may apply depending on the circumstances and lawful basis involved.

Right of access – you can request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Right to rectification – you can ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
Right to erasure – you can ask us to delete personal data in certain situations.
Right to restrict processing – you can request that we limit how we use your data in certain cases.
Right to object – you can object to processing based on legitimate interests in certain circumstances.
Right to data portability – you can request that certain data be provided to you or another controller in a machine-readable format.
Right to withdraw consent – where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, we will review your request and respond in line with applicable law. We may need to verify your identity before responding to protect your information.

Please note that some rights are not absolute and may be limited where required by law or where we have a compelling legitimate ground to continue processing.

8. International Transfers

Where any processor or service provider stores or processes data outside the UK, we will take appropriate steps to ensure adequate protection is in place. This may include using recognised transfer safeguards and ensuring that equivalent data protection standards are maintained.

9. Children’s Data

Our services are intended for adult customers and property managers. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children unless it is incidentally provided by an adult customer in connection with a service request. If we become aware that we have collected child-related data without a proper basis, we will take steps to delete it where appropriate.

10. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, legal obligations, or data handling practices. Any updated version will apply from the date it is made available. We encourage customers to review this policy periodically so they remain informed about how their data is handled.

11. Summary of Our Commitment

Gardeners West Green is committed to treating personal data responsibly, securely, and in accordance with GDPR principles. We collect only what we need, use it for clear and lawful purposes, keep it only as long as necessary, and respect your rights over your information.

We believe privacy should be straightforward. Our approach is to handle all customer data in a way that is lawful, transparent, and proportionate, while supporting reliable gardening services for customers across the West Green area.