Privacy Statement
We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal information. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us in the event you have a complaint. We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.
Personal information we collect about you
We may collect and use the following personal information about you:
- Your name and contact information, including email address and telephone number and company details if applicable
- Information to enable us to check and verify your identity, e.g. your date of birth
- Your gender information, if you choose to give this to us
- Your billing information, transaction and payment card information
- Your contact history, transaction and instruction history with us
- Your nationality and immigration status and information from related documents, such as your passport or other identification, and immigration information, e.g. if you are a potential tenant applying for a tenancy
- Information to enable us to undertake Anti Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing electronic checks on you
- Information about how you use our website, IT, communication and other systems
- Your responses to surveys, competitions and promotions
This personal information is required to provide our services to you. If you do not provide personal information we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you
How your personal information is collected
We collect most of this personal information directly from you—in person, by telephone, text or email and/or via our website. However, we may on rare occasions also collect information from publicly accessible sources, e.g. Companies House or HM Land Registry. We may also collect information from other publicly accessible sources such as:
- Directly from a third party, e.g.: – sanctions screening providers; – credit reference agencies; – customer due diligence providers;
- From cookies on our website—for more information on our use of cookies, please see our cookies policy
How and why we use your personal information
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal information if we have a proper reason for doing so, e.g.:
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
- For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or
- Where you have given consent.
We use your personal information under the legitimate interest basis for using and processing. Legitimate Interest may be used as a basis for processing when we have a business or commercial reason to process your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.
When we use and process your personal information for our legitimate interest, we will consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection and any other relevant laws. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests – we will not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your valid consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
The table below explains what we use (process) your personal information for and our reasons for doing so:
| What we use your personal information for | Our reasons |
| To provide services to you | For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract |
| To prevent and detect fraud against you or Portland Estate Agents | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
| Conducting checks to identify our customers and verify their identity Screening for financial and other sanctions or embargoes Other processing necessary to comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, e.g. under health and safety regulation or rules issued by our professional regulator | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations |
| Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations |
| Ensuring business policies are adhered to, e.g. policies covering security and internet use | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
| Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
| Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
| Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, e.g. in relation to our financial performance, customer base, range of services or other efficiency measures | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
| Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
| Updating and enhancing customer records | For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
| Ensuring safe working practices, staff administration and assessments | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
| Marketing our services to: - existing and former customers; - third parties who have previously registered with us or expressed an interest in our services; - third parties with whom we have had no previous dealings | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party and contacts For our legitimate interests, when such information is in the public domain |
| Credit reference checks via external credit reference agencies | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party |
Marketing communications
We may use your personal information to send you updates (by email, telephone calls, SMS or post) about our services, including exclusive offers (mainly for free market appraisal of your property), or highlighting of current market trends and properties on the market that may be of interest to you.
We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for marketing purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your personal information’). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you marketing communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.
We will always treat your personal information with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes. You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications from us at any time by:
- Contacting us email – info@portlandestateagents.co.uk or by calling 0208 451 9844; or
- Using the unsubscribe link in marketing emails: this will unsubscribe you from all marketing communications but you will still be able to receive property details if you are an applicant buyer or tenant (subject to a separate unsubscribe option).
Who we share your personal information with
We routinely share personal information with:
- Third parties we use to help deliver our services to you, e.g. payment service providers, tenants’ vetting companies, electronic search providers, maintenance contractors, inventory companies etc;
- Software and system providers including but not limited to BriefYourMarket, PSG Group, Quickbooks etc. Website Hosts and analytics platform providers including but not limited to BriefYourMarket, Google Analytics.
- Other third parties we use to help us run our business, e.g. website suppliers, case management system providers etc.;
- Third parties approved by you, e.g. social media sites you choose to link your account to or third party payment providers;
- Credit reference agencies;
- Our banks;
We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal information. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers (where possible) to ensure they can only use your personal information to provide services to us and to you.
We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
We may also need to share some personal information with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.
Where your personal information is held
Information may be held at our offices and those of our third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described above (see above: ‘Who we share your personal information with’).
How long your personal information will be kept
Portland Estate Agents retain personal information you have provided for as long as is needed to provide you with an appropriate level of service, or until you request that it is deleted. Even if we delete your personal information, it may persist on back-up o archival media for legal, tax and regulatory reasons. We will not retain your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.
Where your data is stored
The data that we collect from you is stored on servers, which are hosted in a secure location in England UK. We do not store or process individuals data outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”).
Cookie Policy
A cookie is a small string of text that a website can send to your browser to store user information for the purposes of distinguishing your browser from a previous visitor by saving and remembering any preferences or passwords that may have been set while browsing that site. Currently this site uses (Google Analytics) cookies. You are free to refuse cookies from this website but this may prevent you accessing some parts of this site. Cookies do not store or pass any personal data from this website.
What information is automatically collected when you visit this site
When you browse on this site your e-mail address is not automatically collected but our server may automatically gather and store the following information about your visit:
- Your IP address.
- The type of browser and operating system used to access our site.
- The pages you visit.
- The date and time of your visit.
We analyse our website logs to constantly improve the value of the materials available on this website. Our website logs are not personally identifiable, and we make no attempt to link them with the individuals who browse the site. We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our website. An IP address only provides information about who your Internet service provider is. It cannot be used to personally identify you.
Your rights
In this section we have summarised the rights that you have under data protection law. Some of the rights are complex, applying only in certain circumstances and subject to certain exceptions, and in the interests of keeping this policy concise, not all of the details have been included in our summaries. Accordingly, you should read the relevant laws and guidance from the regulatory authorities for a full explanation of these rights.
You have the right:
- To object to us processing your personal information for marketing purposes. If you object, we will stop processing your personal information for this purpose. When we collect your data, you can choose whether you wish to receive marketing communications from us. If you wish to stop receiving marketing communications, you can opt out at any time by clicking an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of one of our emails.
- To access the information we hold about you and certain information about our processing of it and your rights in relation to it.
- In certain circumstances, to obtain erasure of the personal information we hold about you, subject to certain exceptions.
- To rectification of the information we hold about you.
- In certain circumstances, to restrict our processing of your personal information or object to us processing it. If you object, we will stop processing your personal information unless certain exceptions apply.
- Where our legal basis for processing your personal information is your consent or the performance of a contract and we process it by automated means, to be provided with the personal information we hold about you in structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to transmit the information to another controller.
- To not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly affecting you, subject to certain exceptions.
- Where our processing of your personal information is based on your consent, to withdraw that consent at any time. If you withdraw your consent, we will stop the relevant processing, but it will not affect the lawfulness of our processing before the withdrawal
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
Review of this Policy
We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated on 25th May 2018
If we change our Privacy Policy we will post the changes on this page and may place notices on other sections of the website and/or notify you by email.
Contacting us about this website
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this website, you can contact:
Portland Estate Agents
90 Walm Lane, London NW2 4QY
Email: info@portlandestateagents.co.uk
Telephone: 0208 451 9844
Registered Address:
90 Walm Lane, London NW2 4QY Company Registration No: 9055217