Privacy Policy for Clear Surveys Ltd.

Welcome to Clear Surveys Ltd’s Privacy Policy.

Clear Surveys Ltd respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (www.clearsurveys.co.uk) or interact with us offline, and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

1. Important Information and Who We Are

Controller Clear Surveys Ltd is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “Clear Surveys”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).

Contact Details If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:
• Full name of legal entity: Clear Surveys Ltd (Registered in England & Wales No. 11362981)
• Email address: info@clearsurveys.co.uk
• Telephone number: 01323 364 654
• Location: Seaford, East Sussex

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

2. The Data We Collect About You

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data: Includes first name, last name, and title.
• Contact Data: Includes billing address, property address (for surveying purposes), email address, and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data: Includes payment card details. Note: We do not store your full credit/debit card data. Online payments are processed securely by our third-party payment processor, Stripe.
• Transaction Data: Includes details about payments to and from you and other details of surveys, contract administration, or block management services you have purchased from us.
• Technical Data: Includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Usage Data: Includes information about how you use our website and services, collected via Google Analytics.

3. How Is Your Personal Data Collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you, including through:

• Direct interactions: You may give us your Identity, Contact, and Financial Data by filling in forms (such as our online contact form) or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
  • Order a survey online or offline;
  • Request a quote or enquire about our project/block management services;
  • Give us feedback or contact us.
• Automated technologies or interactions: As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical and Usage Data about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs, and similar technologies (such as Google Analytics and CAPTCHA security checks).

4. How We Use Your Personal Data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Performance of Contract: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you (e.g., conducting a Homebuyers Survey, Damp Survey, or acting as Contract Administrator).
• Legitimate Interests: Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (e.g., running our business, keeping our website updated and secure, responding to enquiries).
• Legal Obligation: Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation (e.g., maintaining financial records for HMRC).

Overseas Orders While we occasionally accept orders from overseas territories, all our surveying and management services are delivered, and the data is primarily processed, within the UK. All data collected from international clients is protected under UK GDPR standards.

5. Disclosures of Your Personal Data

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes outlined in Section 4:

• Stripe: We use Stripe to process all online payments. Your financial data is sent directly to Stripe via a secure, encrypted connection. You can read Stripe’s privacy policy on their website.
• Google Analytics & CAPTCHA: We use Google Analytics to understand website traffic and CAPTCHA to prevent spam on our contact forms.
• Service Providers: IT and system administration services (such as our website developers, Madison Web Solutions).
• Professional Advisers: Including lawyers, bankers, auditors, and insurers based in the UK who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance, and accounting services.
• HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC): Regulators and other authorities based in the UK who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.

6. International Transfers

We are based in the UK. However, some of our external third parties (such as Google and Stripe) may be based outside the UK so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring that appropriate safeguards are implemented, such as checking they operate under the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the UK-US Data Bridge.

7. Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. 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.

8. Data Retention

How long will you use my personal data for? We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or reporting requirements. By law, we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial, and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

9. Your Legal Rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, including the right to:

• Request access to your personal data.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you.
• Request erasure of your personal data.
• Object to processing of your personal data.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data (e.g., for analytics cookies).

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at info@clearsurveys.co.uk.

10. Cookies and Analytics

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and allows us to improve our site.

• Google Analytics: We use these cookies to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors, where visitors have come to the website from, and the pages they visited.
• Stripe: Uses cookies to process your payments securely and prevent fraud.
• CAPTCHA: Uses cookies/scripts to verify that a human is interacting with our forms and to prevent bot spam.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website (like online ordering) may become inaccessible or not function properly.