Privacy Policy

Gardeners Plumstead Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Gardeners Plumstead collects, uses, stores and protects personal data of customers in Plumstead and the surrounding area. It also explains your rights under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

This Privacy Policy applies to all Gardeners Plumstead customers and prospective customers in our service area, whether you contact us online, by post or in person, and whether you book a one off job or ongoing services.

Who we are and scope of this policy

Gardeners Plumstead provides gardening and related services to residential and commercial customers in Plumstead and the wider local area. For the purposes of data protection law, Gardeners Plumstead 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.

By using our services or contacting us, you acknowledge that you have read this Privacy Policy. We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services or legal requirements. The version published on our website is the one that applies.

Personal data we collect

The personal data we collect will depend on how you interact with Gardeners Plumstead. We only collect information that is relevant to providing and managing our services. The categories of personal data we may collect include:

Identification and contact details such as your name, postal address, service address, billing address, and any contact preferences you provide.

Communication details such as information you provide when you contact us with an enquiry, request a quotation, make a complaint or provide feedback, including the content of emails, letters or messages and notes of conversations.

Service information such as details about the type of garden or outdoor space you have, access arrangements, photographs you provide or that we take for quotation, planning or record keeping, details of previous work carried out and any specific requirements or instructions you give.

Transaction and account data such as records of services requested, dates of visits, invoices issued, amounts paid, payment status and basic payment reference information. We do not store full card numbers or bank account details where payments are processed through third party providers.

Technical and usage data such as basic information collected when you visit our website, including your approximate location, pages visited, the device and browser used and how you reached the site. This may involve the use of cookies or similar technologies where allowed by law and your browser settings.

Marketing preferences such as whether you wish to receive updates, promotions or service reminders from Gardeners Plumstead and how you prefer us to contact you.

Lawful basis for using your data

We only use your personal data when we have a lawful basis to do so under data protection law. Gardeners Plumstead relies on the following lawful bases:

Contract. We process your personal data where it is necessary to enter into or perform a contract with you, such as providing quotations, scheduling and delivering gardening services, issuing invoices and managing payments.

Legal obligation. We use and retain certain information where we are required to do so by law, for example to comply with tax, accounting or other regulatory obligations.

Legitimate interests. We process personal data for our legitimate business interests, provided that your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. This includes activities such as managing and improving our services, handling enquiries, protecting our business, keeping appropriate records, and sending limited service related updates or offers to existing customers.

Consent. In some cases we rely on your consent, for example where we send certain types of direct marketing communications or set non essential cookies, in line with applicable law. Where we rely on consent, you have the right to withdraw it at any time.

How we use your personal data

Gardeners Plumstead uses the personal data we collect for the following purposes:

To provide quotations for gardening and related services, including assessing the work required, planning visits and communicating with you about your request.

To set up and manage your customer account, schedule and deliver services, record work carried out, and ensure that our teams have the information they need to complete the job safely and efficiently.

To process payments and manage invoicing, including issuing invoices, recording payments received, and following up where payments are late or outstanding.

To respond to your enquiries, feedback or complaints and to resolve any issues or disputes relating to our services.

To manage and improve our business operations, for example to monitor the performance of our services, train staff, improve our website and develop new services.

To send you service related information such as booking confirmations, reminders of upcoming visits, changes to scheduled work, and important updates to this Privacy Policy or our terms.

To send you marketing communications about services that may be of interest to you, where we are permitted to do so by law and in line with your preferences. You can ask us to stop sending marketing at any time.

To protect our rights, property and safety and those of our staff, customers and the public, including preventing and detecting fraud or misuse of our services and enforcing our contractual or legal rights.

Data sharing and processors

Gardeners Plumstead does not sell your personal data. We only share personal data where necessary for the purposes described in this policy and where there is a lawful basis to do so.

We may share your personal data with carefully selected third parties who act as data processors on our behalf. These processors may include service scheduling or customer management platforms, payment processing providers, accounting or bookkeeping services, information technology and hosting providers and marketing or communication service providers.

Where we use processors, we require them to process your personal data only in accordance with our instructions, to keep it secure and confidential, and to comply with applicable data protection law.

We may also share personal data with professional advisers such as accountants or legal advisers, and with public authorities or law enforcement where we are legally required to do so or where it is necessary to protect our legal rights.

If any of our processors are located outside the United Kingdom or European Economic Area, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal data in accordance with data protection law, for example by using standard contractual clauses or equivalent protections.

Data retention

Gardeners Plumstead keeps personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including satisfying legal, accounting or reporting requirements.

In general, customer account and service records are kept for the duration of your relationship with us and for a period afterwards, typically up to six years, to comply with tax and contract law and to handle any potential disputes. Quotations that do not lead to a booking may be kept for a shorter period where relevant for our business records.

We may keep some information for longer where required by law or in connection with legal proceedings. When personal data is no longer needed, it will be securely deleted, anonymised or archived so that it can no longer be linked to an identifiable individual.

Security of your data

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal data we hold against unauthorised access, accidental loss, destruction or damage. These measures include limiting access to personal data to those employees and processors who need it to carry out their duties, using secure systems for storing and transmitting data where appropriate, and reviewing our security practices periodically.

While we take reasonable steps to protect your personal data, no system can be completely secure. You are responsible for keeping any account details or passwords confidential and for notifying us promptly of any suspected misuse of your information.

Your data protection rights

As a customer of Gardeners Plumstead in our service area, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data under data protection law. These rights include:

Right of access. You have the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you, together with information about how we use it.

Right to rectification. You have the right to ask us to correct or complete any personal data that is inaccurate or incomplete.

Right to erasure. In certain circumstances you have the right to ask us to delete your personal data, for example where it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected or where you withdraw your consent and there is no other lawful basis for processing.

Right to restriction. You can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data in certain situations, such as while we investigate a concern you have raised about the accuracy of the data.

Right to object. You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests as the lawful basis, including for direct marketing. We will stop processing your data for those purposes unless we have compelling legitimate grounds to continue.

Right to data portability. Where our processing is based on your consent or on a contract and carried out by automated means, you may have the right to receive the personal data you provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and to ask us to transmit that data to another controller where technically feasible.

Right to withdraw consent. Where we rely on your consent to process personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdrew consent.

You also have the right to raise a concern or complaint with the relevant supervisory authority if you are unhappy with how we handle your personal data. We would encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve the issue.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Gardeners Plumstead may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will take effect when the revised policy is published on our website or otherwise made available to you. We recommend that you review this page periodically to stay informed about how we protect your personal data.