1. Information Covered by this Policy
This Privacy Policy was last updated in January 2019.
This Privacy Policy applies to the use and processing of personal information collected and used by Alexander Lawson Surveyors Ltd.
The phrases ‘Alexander Lawson Surveyors Ltd’, ‘us’ or ‘we’ or ‘our’ shall, when used herein, and include Alexander Lawson, on behalf of and in respect of whom this policy is made.
By using our websites, including mobile websites or otherwise providing your personal information to us, you agree to the collection, use and sharing of your information in accordance with this policy.
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully and contact us if you have any questions.
Personal information is information, or any combination of separate pieces of information, that could be used to identify you as an individual. Should you have any queries in respect of this policy or our use of personal data, please contact the Alexander Lawson Surveyors Ltd Data Protection Officer – info@alexanderlawson.com
This policy also governs the use of computer Cookies as reference in section 10 of this policy.
This policy should be read in conjunction with our website terms and conditions which may be found here.
Our Personal Information Contact Form can be found here.
2. Information Alexander Lawson Collects
We may collect information about you from a variety of sources. This includes information we collect directly from you; information we collect when you visit our websites, view our online content or use our other services; and information we collect about you from other sources.
Information we collect directly from you
We collect information directly from you when you call or email us, or complete the Get in Touch, Quick Enquiry or Contact Form sections included on our website, or otherwise provide information directly to us. The following are examples of information we may collect directly from you:
- Your Name
- Email address (work or personal)
- Postal address
- Contact Numbers
- Signature
- Financial information (such as a credit card or bank details)
- Information needed for a tenancy agreement, such as smoker, address id / photo id (such as copy of passport or driving licence), any pets, children ages
- Future communication preferences
Information we collect when you visit our websites, view or marketing emails, or use our mobile applications or other services
We use cookies and other technologies to collect information view or marketing emails or use our mobile applications or other services. The following are examples of information we may collect with these technologies:
- IP address
- Information about your device browser and operating system
- Web pages you view
- Links you click
- Alexander Lawson emails you open
Information Alexander Lawson may collect from other sources
We may obtain information about you from other sources, including publicly available sources, such as the Land Registry, social media platforms or referral agents, etc. Examples of information we may collect from other sources are:
- Postal address
- Email address
- Telephone Number
- Publicly observed activities or information made available by you to the public, such as blogs, videos, internet postings, and user generated content.
3. How Alexander Lawson Use and Process this Information
We use the information we collect to provide you with our products, offers and services, to deliver to you marketing information and other content tailored to your interests, and to conduct other Alexander Lawson business operations such as accounting. The following are examples of how we may use the information we collect:
- Answer your questions or respond to your requests.
- Enhance our products and services.
- Invite you to events promoting our, and other company’s services.
- Create and manage your account.
- Process payment for purchases or other services.
- To identify and prevent fraud.
- Send you email and/or postal messages with information about other Alexander Lawson services and other content we think may be of interest to you.
- Telephone you about Alexander Lawson services and other content we think may be of interest to you.
- Develop and provide Marketing tailored to your interests, including internet-based marketing.
- Personalise your experience on our websites by presenting products and information tailored to you.
- Allow you to participate in social sharing on our websites.
- Analyse the use of, and develop, our products, services and marketing. Enforce our Terms and Conditions and otherwise manage our business.
Alexander Lawson will only process your information in accordance with the lawful basis of legitimate interest. If we receive any requests related to, for example, a product or service, a call-back, or specific marketing materials; we will use your personal information to fulfil your request.
Legitimate Interest means the interests of our company in conducting and managing our business to enable us to provide you with the best services / products and property advice we can.
Where we need to manage your account and protect you against or identify possible fraudulent transactions, we will do so in accordance with our legal obligation placed on us under law.
We will seek consent from you if we need to process your data for solely identified purposes. To ensure meaningful consent is obtained from you, Alexander Lawson will provide you with reasonable notice ensuring that your consent is provided on an informed basis. We will provide you with a mechanism to withdraw your consent at any time from our marketing correspondence.
4. Information Sharing
Alexander Lawson believe we have a strong and trusted relationship with our clients, and we do not share your personal information to marketers outside of Alexander Lawson. We share your personal information within Alexander Lawson, and we will, at your consent, ask other service areas to contact you. We may from time to time share your personal information, with your consent to third-parties who provide complimentary services to our own, for example lawyers/solicitors and mortgage lenders. When we have your consent, we will tell you who these third-parties are.
Co-promotions with Carefully Selected Business Partners
We from time to time may collect personal and other information for a co-promotion or joint program with a business partner and share your information with that business partner. For these programs we will make clear at the point of collection that the information will be shared with ourselves and the participating business partner(s) and ask for your consent as required by applicable laws.
Third-party service providers
We engage third-party service providers to perform a variety of business operations on our behalf. In so doing, we may share your personal information with them. We provide our service providers with only the personal information they need in order to perform the services we request, and we contractually require that they protect this information appropriately and not use it for any other purpose.
For example, we may rely on a third-party service provider to:
- Fulfil your service requests and answer your questions. For example, we may need to provide your information to a service company who perform repairs.
- Host our sites and deliver our email or other communications.
- Conduct research and analyse data to improve our products, services and sites.
- Perform other services that we request.
Where permitted by law, we combine personal information about you that Alexander Lawson has collected with personal information about you that a business partner has collected so we can jointly send tailored promotional communications to you. In such instances, our business partner will not be permitted to use Alexander Lawson data or the combined data for its own, independent marketing purposes. Our service provider will only be allowed to use the combined set of information to send you joint communications that we hope will be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive these joint communications, you can always opt out by following the instructions provided in any such communication or through this Privacy Policy as indicated above.
Other situations
We may transfer or otherwise process your personal information:
- As part of a future sale of Alexander Lawson to another company.
- When we have received your instruction to pass the sale of your property to another agent
- To protect, defend or exercise the rights and property of Alexander Lawson (including enforcing our Terms and Conditions).
- When required by law and/or government authorities.
5. Personal Information Retention
We will retain Personal Information for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.
6. Your communication options
We give you choices about how we communicate with you.
Email Communications
You can stop receiving promotional email messages from Alexander Lawson by following the opt-out/ unsubscribe instructions provided in any such message you receive.
Postal Mail
You can stop receiving promotional postal mail from Alexander Lawson following the opt-out instructions that may be included within those communications, or accessible from this Privacy Policy.
You can also stop receiving promotional email or postal communication through this Privacy Policy.
SMS Messaging
Alexander Lawson do not use SMS messaging to contact our clients.
7. Your Information and Your Rights
To the extent provided for by applicable law, you have certain rights in respect of the management of the personal data we hold about you. Section 17 of this policy contains a link to our Contact form which you may use to assist is in complying with your rights as a Data Subject.
Right to Access
If you wish to know the personal information that we keep about you then please use the form in Section 17 to request information. We may request further information to prove who you are before we release this information. The information is provided free of charge though repeated requests may require us to charge a reasonable fee to provide the information.
Right to Rectification
We take steps to keep your personal information accurate. If you believe that the information, we have about you is incorrect then please use the link in Section 17 and we will update the information we have.
Alexander Lawson will respond to your request and update your information in a reasonable time frame.
Right to Erasure
When you register or complete a Contact Us form on our website this information is stored in a secure database on the site. If you wish for this to be deleted, then please complete the form in Section 17. Deleting the online information will not remove other information that we hold about you. Please use the same form in order for us to process your request. Alexander Lawson will respond to your request and remove information in a reasonable time frame. Please note erasure is not always possible as there may be overriding regulatory and legal requirements that will prevent this.
Right to Restrict Processing and the Right to Object
You have the right to request us to stop processing your personal data. This could be by unsubscribing from our marketing emails by taking the appropriate action. In this instance we will retain a copy of your personal data but will stop processing your personal information. If you decide to change your marketing preferences with us then this may restrict certain types of information but allow you to receive other information of your choice.
Right to Data Portability
If you wish to move a copy of the personal information, we hold about you to a third-party, at your request, then we will provide this data in a suitable machine-readable format such as a CSV file or computer documents. Alexander Lawson are not responsible for how the third-party process the information or how it is imported into their systems.
8. Your Consent
Where you have provided consent for our processing of your personal data, you may withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us as described. We will cease processing your personal data as soon as reasonably practicable following our receipt of your withdrawal.
9. Complaints
If you consider that we have processed personal data in violation of applicable law, please contact us as described. If you consider that we have processed personal data in violation of applicable law and failed to remedy such violation to your reasonable satisfaction, you may also lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office.
10. Cookies and Other Technologies
Alexander Lawson and any third-party service providers use a variety of technologies to assess how our sites or mobile applications are used, to personalise your experience and to deliver you marketing, including online content, tailored to your interests. Some technologies we may use include the following:
Cookies
A cookie is a small file placed on your device when you visit a site that can be understood by the site that issued the cookie. Cookies are created when your browser loads the website. The website sends information to the browser which then creates a text file. Cookies are stored on your device for various periods of time, from as short time as the duration of your browsing session to several months.
Every time you come back to the website, the browser retrieves and sends cookies to the server, which helps to improve your experience of the website by:
- Remembering settings, so you don’t have to re-enter them every time you visit.
- Remembering your last properties and searches, helping you to keep on top of new listings.
- Measuring use of the website so that we can see where we can improve.
You can manage and/or delete these small files from your device, but please be aware that this will limit the functionality that we are able to offer to you.
To learn more about cookies and how to manage them please visit Allaboutcookies.org.
Other Technologies
We use third-party web analytics services on our Sites, such as those of Google Analytics. These service providers help us analyse how visitors use the Sites. The information obtained for this purpose (including your IP address and other information collected by automated means) will be disclosed to or collected directly by these service providers. To learn more about Google Analytics, and how to opt out, please click here.
11. Links to Third Party Sites and Social Media
Alexander Lawson websites may include links to third-party sites. Alexander Lawson does not control these third-party sites, and we encourage you to read the privacy policy, or statement of every site you visit.
12. Information Security
Alexander Lawson is committed to keeping personal information secure. We have implemented technical, administrative and physical procedures designed to protect personal information from loss, misuse or alteration.
We limit access to personal information to those who have a business need. We keep personal information only for so long as deemed reasonably necessary.
13. Data Transfers
We may transfer the personal information we collect about you to recipients in countries other than the country in which the information originally was collected. For purposes of email marketing, we use MailChimp which is an American based company. MailChimp participates in and has certified its compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. MailChimp are committed to subjecting all Personal Information received from European Union (EU) member countries and Switzerland, respectively, in reliance on each Privacy Shield Framework, to the Framework’s applicable Principles. To learn more about the Privacy Shield Frameworks, and to view certification details, visit the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Privacy Shield website: https://www.privacyshield.gov/welcome
14. Children’s privacy
Our websites are not directed to and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
15. Links to other websites and apps
Our websites may provide links to other websites and apps for your convenience and information. These websites and apps may operate independently from us. Linked sites and apps may have their own privacy notices or policies, which we strongly suggest you review. To the extent any linked websites or apps are not owned or controlled by us, we are not responsible for their content, any use of the websites or apps, or the privacy practices of the websites or apps.
16. Updates to our Privacy Policy
We will post changes to this Privacy Policy and indicate the effective date when this Privacy Policy is updated. If we make any material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by sending an e-mail to the e-mail address you most recently provided us or by posting notice of the changes on this site.
17. Questions & Concerns and How to Contact Us
If you have any questions or comments, or if you want to update, delete, or change any Personal Information we hold, or you have a concern about the way in which we have handled any privacy matter, please use our Contact form to send us a message. You may also contact us by postal mail or email at:
Alexander Lawson Surveyors Ltd
Attn. Data Protection Officer
info@alexanderlawson.com
Bentinck House
3-8 Bolsover Street
London
W1W 6AB