Privacy Policy - End of Tenancy House Cleaning

This Privacy Policy explains how End of Tenancy House Cleaning collects, uses, shares, stores, and protects personal data when providing cleaning services. It applies to all End of Tenancy House Cleaning customers in the area, including prospective customers, current customers, former customers, and anyone who communicates with us in relation to a booking, quotation, invoice, or service request.

We are committed to handling personal data in a lawful, fair, and transparent way in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018, and any other applicable privacy laws. This policy is designed to help you understand what information we collect, why we collect it, how long we keep it, who may process it on our behalf, and what rights you have.

1. Personal Data We Collect

We may collect and process the following categories of personal data:

Identity information: name, title, and any relevant identification details you provide.
Contact information: telephone number, email address, and service address.
Booking and service information: requested service type, property details, access instructions, dates and times, cleaning preferences, and notes related to the job.
Payment and billing details: payment status, invoice information, and transaction references. We do not keep more payment data than is necessary for accounting and legal purposes.
Communication records: messages, emails, call notes, complaints, feedback, and any other correspondence relating to the service.
Technical and usage data: if you interact with our digital systems, we may collect IP address, device details, browser type, and basic usage information for security and operational purposes.
Property-related information: information you provide about the property being cleaned, including access arrangements, occupancy status, and areas requiring special attention.

We aim to collect only the personal data needed to deliver our services effectively and manage our business responsibly. We do not intentionally collect special category data unless it is necessary and you have provided it voluntarily, or unless another lawful condition applies.

2. How We Use Your Personal Data

We use personal data for the following purposes:

to provide quotations, confirm bookings, and deliver end of tenancy cleaning services;
to communicate about appointments, access requirements, service changes, or follow-up matters;
to issue invoices, process payments, and manage accounts;
to handle complaints, queries, and customer support;
to keep business and accounting records;
to improve service quality, manage performance, and monitor customer satisfaction;
to comply with legal, tax, insurance, and regulatory obligations;
to prevent fraud, misuse, or unlawful activity;
to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims where necessary.

We will not use your personal data for purposes that are incompatible with the reasons we collected it, unless we have a lawful basis to do so and, where required, we notify you of the change.

3. Lawful Basis for Processing

We process personal data only where we have a lawful basis under data protection law. Depending on the situation, our lawful bases may include:

Contract: processing is necessary to enter into or perform a contract with you, such as arranging and carrying out a cleaning service.
Legal obligation: processing is necessary to comply with legal requirements, including tax, accounting, and record-keeping duties.
Legitimate interests: processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as managing bookings, protecting our business, maintaining service quality, and responding to enquiries, provided these interests do not override your rights and freedoms.
Consent: in limited situations, we may rely on your consent, for example where you voluntarily provide optional information that is not required for the service.

Where consent is used as the lawful basis, you have the right to withdraw it at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before consent was withdrawn.

4. Sharing Your Personal Data and Processors

We may share personal data with trusted third parties when necessary for the operation of our business and the delivery of our services. These third parties act either as processors or independent controllers, depending on the circumstances.

Examples of processors may include:

payment service providers that handle transactions;
accounting, bookkeeping, and invoicing software providers;
customer relationship management or scheduling systems;
IT hosting, cloud storage, and email service providers;
document storage and backup providers;
professional advisers such as accountants, lawyers, or insurers, where necessary.

We require processors to handle personal data securely, to act only on our instructions, and to use appropriate technical and organisational safeguards. We do not sell personal data. We do not share personal data with unnecessary third parties.

In some cases, we may disclose data if required by law, court order, regulatory authority, or to protect our legal rights, property, or safety, or the rights, property, or safety of others.

5. Data Retention

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, including to meet legal, accounting, tax, and insurance requirements. Retention periods may vary depending on the type of data and the reason for holding it.

Booking and service records: retained for a reasonable period after the service to manage enquiries, disputes, and follow-up matters.
Invoice and accounting records: retained for the period required by applicable tax and accounting laws.
Complaint and correspondence records: retained for as long as needed to resolve the issue and for a limited period afterwards.
Marketing or consent-based records: kept until you withdraw consent or ask us to stop using them.

When personal data is no longer needed, we will securely delete, anonymise, or destroy it. We review our retention practices regularly to ensure we do not keep data longer than necessary.

6. Data Security

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against accidental loss, unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These measures may include access controls, secure storage, staff confidentiality obligations, and restricted sharing of information on a need-to-know basis.

While no system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, we take data protection seriously and work to reduce risks to your personal information.

7. Your Rights

Under data protection law, you may have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

Right of access: to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Right to rectification: to request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data.
Right to erasure: to request deletion of your data in certain circumstances.
Right to restriction: to request that we limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
Right to object: to object to processing based on legitimate interests or direct marketing.
Right to data portability: to request that certain data be provided to you or another controller in a structured, commonly used format, where applicable.
Right to withdraw consent: where we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection authority if you believe your data protection rights have been infringed. We encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve your concerns directly and promptly.

8. Automated Decision-Making

We do not normally use automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. If this changes, we will update this policy and provide any required information about how such processing works and the rights available to you.

9. Children’s Data

Our services are intended for adults arranging property cleaning services. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children in the normal course of business. If we become aware that we have collected such data without a lawful basis, we will take appropriate steps to delete it.

10. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, legal requirements, or how we process personal data. Any updates will apply from the date of publication of the revised policy. We encourage you to review it periodically to stay informed about how we protect your information.

11. Summary of Key Points

We collect only the personal data needed to provide end of tenancy cleaning services and manage our business.
We process data on lawful bases such as contract, legal obligation, legitimate interests, and consent where appropriate.
We may use trusted processors for payments, accounting, IT, storage, and administration.
We keep data only as long as necessary and then delete or anonymise it securely.
You have rights over your personal data, including access, correction, deletion, objection, and withdrawal of consent.

By using our services, requesting a quotation, making a booking, or communicating with us about an end of tenancy cleaning service, you acknowledge that your personal data will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

This policy applies to all End of Tenancy House Cleaning customers in the area.