PRIVACY
1. INTRODUCTION AND TERMS
1.1 Introduction
Your privacy is important to us and we take our responsibility regarding the security of the information that we hold about you very seriously.
To reflect the newest changes in data protection law, and our commitment to transparency, Roderick James Architects LLP has updated this Privacy Policy and made this available across all our websites.
1.2 WHO WE ARE
Roderick James Architects LLP (RJALLP) is an architectural practice with offices in Devon, Wiltshire and Scotland. RJALLP undertakes architectural work throughout the UK and the wider EU region.
RJALLP is registered as a UK based company (company number: OC303006) and is VAT registered (VAT number: 795332110).
RJALLP’s registered office address is:
Roderick James Architects LLP
Discovery House
Steamer Quay Road
Totnes
Devon
TQ9 5AL
RJALLP’s website addresses are as follows:
www.rjarchitects.co.uk
www.roderickjamesarchitects.co.uk
www.roderickjamesarchitects.com
www.roderickjamesarchitectsscotland.co.uk
www.roderickjamesarchitectsscotland.com
www.rjarchitectsscotland.co.uk
www.rjarchitectsscotland.com
www.baarn.co.uk
We may amend this privacy notice from time to time. If we do so, we will publish the amended privacy notice on our website and make copies available in all our offices.
If you want to request more information about our privacy policy or information regarding data protection you should contact us using the details provided below:
Mail:
FAO Data Protection Officer, Roderick James Architects LLP, Discovery House, Steamer Quay Rd, Totnes, TQ9 5AL.
Email:
Telephone:
01803 868000 (and ask to speak to the Data Protection Officer)
• How the law protects you
We are committed to protecting and respecting your personal data and privacy. This privacy and cookie policy relates to our use of any personal data we collect from you from any of our services. Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal data.
As well as this Privacy Policy, your privacy is protected by law. The General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) that comes into force on 25 May 2018 ensures that we use your personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so. This includes sharing it outside of RJALLP.
The law says we must have one or more of these reasons for using your data:
• To fulfil a contract we have with you to provide our services
• Where it is our legal duty
• When it is in our legitimate interest
• When you consent to the use of the data
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.
2. YOUR RIGHTS
2.1 Under the GDPR your rights are:
• To be informed – we must make available this privacy notice with the emphasis on transparency over how we process your data.
• Access – you are entitled to find out what details we may hold about you and why.
• Rectification – we are obliged to correct or update your details.
• Erasure – this is also known as the right to be forgotten.
• Restrict processing – you have the right to ‘block’ or suppress the processing by us of your personal data.
• Data portability – you have the right to obtain and reuse your personal data that you have provided to us.
• Object – you have the right to object to us processing your data in relation to direct marketing and or profiling.
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling – we do not use automatic decision making or processing.
3. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
3.1 We process personal data, which may include your name, address, family relationships, email addresses and telephone numbers. It also may include your IP address and cookies (website)
3.2 We will collect personal data from you in relation to the provision of our services to you, including details relating to your home address, site address, marital status, land ownership and bank accounts.
3.3 We may require documentary details from you such as a driving licence, passport or birth certificate, in order to comply with our obligations under identification, money laundering and anti-terrorism legislation.
3.4 Our collection methods are:
• via our website;
• through engagement (or potential engagement) of our services;
• by communications, including email, telephone, post or social media;
• networking;
• through engagement of service providers;
• via third parties and/or publicly available resources (for example from your employer or from Companies House).
3.5 When using our digital services, such as our website or other digital services, we gather data from you using cookies and other internet tracking software, such as Google Analytics. The purpose of this is to understand how you are using our services, and to provide you with better and enhanced information.
4. HOW YOUR DATA WILL BE USED
4.1 We use information held about you to:
• provide services to you under a contract, as set out in a Letter of Engagement between us;
• ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your devices;
• provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes or by Legitimate Interests;
• allow you to participate in interactive features of our service when you choose to do so, e.g. asking a question through our website;
• carry out necessary maintenance to our infrastructure;
• notify you about changes to our services;
• fulfil our legal obligations including money laundering and identification checks, complying with anti-terrorism financing and Criminal Finances Act legislation;
• use in the investigation and/or defence of potential complaints, disciplinary proceedings and legal proceedings; and
• enable us to invoice you for our services and investigate/address any attendant fee disputes that may have arisen.
4.2 If you refuse to provide us with certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you. Alternatively, we may be unable to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations.
• We may also process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in accordance with this notice, where we are legally required or permitted to do so.
• We also embrace the use of social media and may wish to process any comments made public by you.
5. LEGITIMATE INTEREST & MARKETING
5.1 We may process your data for the purposes of our own legitimate interests provided that those interests do not override any of your own interests, rights and freedoms which require the protection of personal data. This includes processing for marketing, business development, statistical and management purposes.
5.2 If you are an existing client or contact, we will send you information about other products, events and services that we feel may be of interest to you. You have a right at any time to ask us to stop contacting you for marketing purposes.
5.3 We will never sell your data to a third party for marketing purposes.
6. HOW WE WILL SHARE YOUR DATA
6.1 We will share your information within RJALLP for administration purposes, to develop ways to meet our clients’ needs and to carry out marketing activities. Otherwise your information will be retained within RJALLP except where disclosure is required or permitted by law or when we use third party service providers (data processors) to supply and support our services to you.
6.2 We may also pass your data to third party external organisations where we are required by law, where it is necessary to administer the relationship between us or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.
6.3 We use third-party service providers such as consultants, subcontractors and other organisations to help us provide services to you. These may include:
• Surveyors, Engineers, Aboriculturalists, Ecologists, Energy Assessors, Health & Safety Advisors, IT Specialists and Legal Advisors;
• Accounting services including Sage and associated invoice processing services;
• Timesheet services including Noveos;
• Planning Portal for submission of planning applications;
• Email and secure Document exchange systems including Microsoft 365, Dropbox, WeTransfer and Sharefile;
• Off-site storage and cleaning services.
6.4 All of our third party service providers are required to take commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect your personal data. We only permit our third-party service providers to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
6.5 As part of the services offered to you, we may send your data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). Where this is the case, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that your data is protected in the same way as if it was being used in the EEA. For example, where third party suppliers store data in the US, we will ensure that their services fall within the Privacy Shield. https://www.privacyshield.gov
7. DATA RETENTION
7.1 We will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it is collected.
7.2 When assessing what retention period is appropriate for your personal data, we take into consideration:
• the requirements of our business and the services provided;
• any statutory or legal obligations;
• the purposes for which we originally collected the personal data;
• the lawful grounds on which we based our processing;
• the types of personal data we have collected;
• the amount and categories of your personal data; and
• whether the purpose of the processing could reasonably be fulfilled by other means.
8. DATA DELETION
8.1 Under GDPR you have the right to erasure under specific circumstances. A request for your personal data to be deleted will be decided on a case by case basis and must be submitted in writing to the contact details provided in this policy.
9. DATA CORRECTION
9.1 We will correct or update your data at the earliest opportunity provided you make the request in writing to the contact details provided in this policy, clearly specifying which data is incorrect or out of date.
10. DATA SECURITY
10.1 We have put in place commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.
10.2 In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
10.3 We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
11. DATA INSPECTION
11.1 We strive to be as open as we can be in terms of giving people access to their personal data. A Subject Access Request under the GDPR is your right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. Such requests must be in writing to the contact details provided in this policy. If we do hold your personal data we will respond in writing within one calendar month of your request (where that request was submitted in accordance with this policy).
11.2 The information we supply will:
• confirm that your data is being processed;
• verify the lawfulness and the purpose of the processing;
• confirm the categories of personal data being processed;
• confirm the type of recipient to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed, and
• let you have a copy of the data in an intelligible form.
11.3 Please note that you may need to provide identification in order to prove who you are to access your data.
11.4 If you agree, we will try to deal with your request informally, for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the telephone.
11.5 In the instance that we do not hold information about you we will also confirm this in writing at the earliest opportunity.
12. COOKIES POLICY ON RJALLP WEBSITES
12.1 Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by most websites. These cookies used by our websites are completely safe and secure and will never contain any sensitive information. They are widely used in order to provide functionality to websites, or to help them work more efficiently. For example, to remember what you added to your My Images Lightbox, keep you logged in from page to page, etc.
12.2 Cookies used on the RJALLP websites are limited to PHP Sessions, Youtube and Google Analytics.
12.3 PHP Sessions: A PHP "session" is the time that a user spends on a website. This allows for functionality to be carried across a "session", even if you visit another site in between. PHP sessions are necessary for the functionality of the site. Session cookies will automatically be removed from your browser after a short time, normally 30 minutes after you leave a site.
12.4 YouTube: Features for sharing videos via YouTube, and remembering what videos you've seen.
12.5 Google Analytics are used by the vast majority of websites to collect information in an anonymous format that is useful to site owners, this may include the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. Google Analytics cookies can remain in your browser for a long time unless you change your browser settings to remove them after a given period or action, such as quitting the browser.
Anonymous information about visitors to our website is sent to our private Google Analytics Account. RJALLP does not share this information with any third party including Google. We specifically do not partake in Google "benchmarking" scheme.
To find out more about Google Analytics and Cookies see: https://developers.google.com/analytics
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
12.6 Third Party Cookies may be set by websites providing embed content on our website such as embedded video from Vimeo or YouTube, or Share Buttons used to interact with social media. RJALLP does not control the setting of third party cookies and you should check with the relevant third party website for more information about these.
12.7 Further Information: Cookies are simply tiny 'text files' which your browser stores on your computer just like it stores your History of websites visited somewhere. Typically, they contain two pieces of information: a site name and unique user ID. Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
13. CHANGES
13.1 We keep our privacy notice under regular review and you should check back regularly to ensure you are aware of changes to it. We may display this notice to you from time to time to help ensure you are aware of its contents.
14. WITHDRAWAL OF CONSENT
14.1 Where you have consented to our processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Please inform us immediately if you wish to withdraw your consent.
Please note:
14.2 The withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing.
14.3 If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to continue to provide services to you.
14.4 Even if you withdraw your consent, it may remain lawful for us to process your data on another legal basis (e.g. because we have a legal obligation to continue to process your data).
15. COMPLAINTS
15.1 You have the right to complain about the processing of your personal data. Please contact us using the details provided above. If you are still unsatisfied you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioners Office. (https://ico.org.uk/concerns)