What we need
Neill Clerk Estate Agents is a “controller” of the personal information that you provide to us when you instruct us to act on your behalf.
We have clients and customers. If you are listing a house with us either as a landlord looking to rent a property or as an owner selling a property, you are a client of ours. If you are a tenant or a (potential) viewer of one of our properties then you are a “customer” in terms of this notice.
When you become a client (or customer) of Neill Clerk Estate Agents, we will collect, store and use the personal information that you provide to us in your instructions and during the course of our business relationship. We may ask you for additional personal information during the course of our relationship, which shall be collected, stored and used in accordance with this privacy notice.
Why we need your personal information – contractual purposes
We need to collect our clients’ (and to a more limited extent, our customers) personal information so that we can provide you with estate agency services and carry out our obligations in terms of our contract with you and the services you have asked us to provide. We will use our clients’ personal information to:
- provide you with advice regarding the sale of your property, including by communicating with you by email, letter and/or telephone;
- represent you as your Estate Agent in connection with the work you have instructed us to do on your behalf;
- respond to and communicate with regarding your questions, comments, support needs or complaints, concerns or allegations in relation to complaints and disciplinary procedures, for example, we will use your personal information to investigate your complaint, take disciplinary action, etc; and
If you do not provide us with all of the personal information that we need to collect then this may affect our ability to provide perform our contractual obligations to you.
Why we need your personal information – legitimate purposes
We also process personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests to:
- promote our services by sending clients communications with information for upcoming events and updates;
- providing those who have registered an interest in our property matching service, both rental and purchases, with details of properties they might be interested in.
Where we process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to us using your personal information for the above purposes. If you wish to object to any of the above processing, please contact our offices. If we comply with your objection, this may affect our ability to undertake the tasks above for the benefit of you.
Why we need your personal information – legal obligations
We are under a legal obligation to process and or retain certain personal information, relating to our clients for the purposes of complying with our obligations under:
- the Law Society of Scotland requirements;
- Our obligations in respect of Anti Money Laundering Laws; and
- For the purpose of verifying your identification where we have witnessed any document on your behalf or notarised any document on your behalf.
Who we share your personal information with
We may be required to share personal information with statutory or regulatory authorities and organisations to comply with statutory obligations. Such organisations include: The Law Society, HMRC, Revenue Scotland for the purposes of meeting our obligations under law society regulations; paying taxes on your behalf and making reports in respect of money laundering if same is suspected.
We may also share personal data with our professional advisors for the purposes of taking advice.
Neill Clerk Estate Agents employs third party suppliers to provide services for us. These include services like IT support, surveyors, search companies, tenancy referencing agencies, etc. These suppliers may process personal data on our behalf as data controllers or as data processors. Where they are controllers they have their own obligations regarding privacy notices like this and where they are processors they are subject to written contractual conditions to only process that personal data under our instructions and protect it.
Neill Clerk Estate Agents also employs third party suppliers, where appropriate to provide services on your behalf. These include things like experts such as Local Authorities, financial institutions, , property factors, Insurance Companies, Surveyors, House Builders, Search companies etc. These suppliers may process personal data on our behalf as data controllers or as data processors. Where they are controllers they have their own obligations regarding privacy notices like this and where they are processors they are subject to written contractual conditions to only process that personal data under our instructions and protect it.
In the course of performing our obligations under our contract with you, depending on what type of work you have instructed we may share your data with third parties such as Neill Clerk & Murray Solicitors, other Solicitors, Local Authorities (where appropriate), Financial Institutions, The office of the Public Guardian, tracing agents, Property factors, Insurance Companies, Surveyors, Search companies, the DWP, valuers, auctioneers, house clearance specialists, estate agents, structural engineers, timber specialists, tradesmen, Landlord registration, safe deposit scheme, courts and tribunals, a tenancy referencing agency, utility providers.
In the event that we do share personal data with external third parties, we will only share such personal data strictly required for the specific purposes and take reasonable steps to ensure that recipients shall only process the disclosed personal data in accordance with those purposes. This is a general privacy notice covering all work we do. If you wish to check specifically who we are sharing your information with, for your particular case, please ask us.
How we protect your personal information
Your personal information, whilst your file is current, is stored in your paper file and on our electronic filing system. We also keep back data storage tapes to ensure we can back up our systems in the event of a catastrophe in our offices (such as fire). These back up tapes are kept off site but still within the UK. Our servers are based in the UK, and are accessed by our staff for the purposes set out above. After your file is concluded, we arrange for it to be either stored here on our premises or for it to be scanned and stored by file scanning and storing company.
If we are required to transfer your personal information outwith the EU for any purpose, we will provide you with information regarding the safeguards that we have put in place with the recipient country to protect your personal information.
How long we keep your personal information
We keep our clients’ personal data for a period of five years after the business is concluded. We have in place a system to regularly go through our files and destroy same at the appropriate time.
Your rights
You can exercise any of the following rights by writing to us at Neill Clerk Estate Agents, 3 Ardgowan Square, Greenock, PA16 8NW
Your rights in relation to your personal information are:
- you have a right to request access to the personal information that we hold about you by making a “subject access request”;
- if you believe that any of your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you have a right to request that we correct or complete your personal information;
- you have a right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information for specific purposes; and
- if you wish us to delete your personal information, you may request that we do so
Any requests received by Neill Clerk Estate Agents will be considered under applicable data protection legislation. If you remain dissatisfied, you have a right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk
‘Right to be forgotten’
You can instruct us to delete all data relating to you by completing the form below.
[contact-form-7 id=”44866″ title=”Instruction to delete data”]
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