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Privacy Policy
Excel Property Services is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected and our use of your personal data is governed by this Privacy Notice. This notice is intended to explain how we use your personal data and what your rights are in relation to how we use your information.
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WHO WE ARE
Hexlink Limited t/a Excel Property Services (the ‘Company’) is a Limited Company in England and Wales with registered number 04684693. The Company’s registered office is at Unit 3, Gateway Mews, Ringway, Bounds Green, London N11 2UT. The Company’s trading address is 146 Finchley Road, Hampstead, London NW3 5HS.
The Company is the “Controller” for data protection purposes. This means that the Company collects and holds your information and decides what it will be used for. The Company is subject to the requirements of data protection legislation applicable to the UK and must use your personal data in accordance with the law. The Company is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), with registration number ZA429758.
References to “Excel Property Services”, “our”, “we” or “us” in this policy describes the Company and the website which you are visiting.
Any reference to “you” or “your” refers to anyone whose personal data we process.
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HOW YOU CAN CONTACT US
We have appointed Kiri Kyriacou as our Data Protection Manager and you can contact him to discuss this privacy notice any data protection related issues or queries.
Telephone: 020 7691 9000
Email: kiri@excel-property.co.uk
Post: 146 Finchley Road, Hampstead, London, NW3 5HS
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WHAT IS PERSONAL DATA?
Personal data is information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. What identifies an individual could be as simple as a name, contact details, date of birth, bank account details or could include other identifiers such as an IP address or a cookie identifier, or other factors. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
Personal data may also include special categories of personal data (relating to health, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or political opinions and sexual orientation) or criminal conviction and offenses data. These are considered to be more sensitive and we may only process them in more limited circumstances.
Any references to personal information in this privacy notice will include personal data, and where relevant, special categories of personal data.
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HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA
- We collect your name and contact details (such as phone number, email address and postal address) directly from you whenever you interact with us by visiting our website and submitting our contact form, visiting/telephoning our offices, corresponding with us by post/email, contacting us through social media or otherwise.
- When you visit our website we may automatically collect technical data including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform;
- We may sometimes receive personal data about you from various third parties and publicly available sources, including but not limited to:
- Social Media Companies (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+) when you interact with our brand through these platforms
- Enquiries through property portals (Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket) when you request further information on a property or request information or contact from us
- Previous or current landlords for the purpose of referencing
- Previous or current employers for the purpose of referencing
- Credit reference agencies
- Companies House
- HM Land Registry
- Other estate/letting/relocation agents
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TELEPHONING OUR OFFICES
We do not record incoming and outgoing telephone calls.
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THE TYPES OF PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT?
In addition to collecting your name and contact details (telephone numbers/email addresses) whenever you engage with us if we are providing a service to you and where we are required to do so by law, we will collect information relating to your identity. This will be at least one form of photographic identification (such as a passport or a driving licence) and one form of documentation with proof of your residence (such as a council tax or utility bill).
Depending on the service that we provide to you we will also collect additional personal data as detailed below:
If you are selling or letting a property through us we will collect:
- Full name(s) of the legal owner of the property to be sold or let
- Details as to your ability to sell or let the property such as a Power of Attorney, Guardianship Order or Grant of Probate, where you are not the legal owner
- Bank account details
If you are renting a property through us we will collect:
- Previous landlord(s) details
- Bank account details/statements
- Financial/employment details
- Any specific access requirements so that we can find a property that suitable for your needs
- Details/documents which confirm you have the legal right to rent a property in the UK to carry out our required checks under the “Right to Rent” scheme – this will include but not be limited to biometric residence card, current immigration documents. The documents required will depend on your circumstance.
If you are purchasing a property through us we will collect:
- Any specific access requirements so that we can find a property that suitable for your needs
- Financial information
- Information to identify the controllers/beneficiaries if the purchaser is an entity at the point of a formal offer to purchase to meet anti-money laundering and counter terrorist requirements.
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THE LEGAL BASIS FOR PROCESSING YOUR PERSONAL DATA
Under data protection legislation we can only use your personal information if we have a legal basis for doing so. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
- Contract – the processing is necessary to perform a contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you
- Legitimate interests – the processing is necessary for us to carry out activities for which it is in Excel Property Services’ legitimate interests to do so and provided that your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests
- Legal obligation – the processing is necessary where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation
- Consent – where you have given clear consent to processing for a specific purpose
In more limited circumstances we may also rely on the following legal bases:
- Vital interests – the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person i.e. to protect a life
- Public task – the processing is necessary where we need to perform a task in the public interest or for official purposes
In the event that we require to process special categories of personal information and criminal conviction information this will be done with your explicit consent, in which case we will explain the purpose for which the information will be used at the point where we ask for your consent.
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HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
If you are selling, letting, buying or renting a property through us we will keep your information confidential and will not disclose it to third parties unless disclosure is:
- Necessary as part of the property services we are providing to you (to perform our contract with you);
- Necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party (in other words, we have a compelling justification for the disclosure);
- Required by law or our professional rules;
- Authorised by you; or
- Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person i.e. to protect a life.
We use your information primarily to provide property services to you (to perform our contract with you) and this will require us to disclose relevant information about you directly to the other party(ies) to your property transaction and their legal representative in order to progress your transaction. Please contact us if you have any queries about this. Your information will be also used for accounting and billing purposes.
We may work with other professionals to assist you and progress your property transaction, and, may need to disclose relevant information about you to them. We will discuss this with you when you appoint us and throughout the course of your transaction. We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We will seek your written consent as to whether you are happy for us to outsource relevant aspects of your file as appropriate to our providers. If you would like more information about our outsourcing arrangements, please contact us. Examples include:
- Relocation and other Estate Agents that are acting for one of the parties to your property transaction
- Accredited Energy Assessors to carry out an energy efficiency assessments of the property
- Surveying companies for surveying services required for the sale/purchase of the property
- Third party contractors who provide services to the property for maintenance and repairs such as plumbers/electricians/builders/carpenters
- Utilities suppliers/local authorities where we are required to do so to adhere to a tenancy agreement
- Referencing companies to assess your suitability to rent a property
- Inventory companies who conduct check ins and check outs
- Government approved tenancy deposit protection scheme to register a tenant’s deposit
- Block management companies where the property to be sold/let is a leasehold property
We also use your information to manage our business effectively. This includes sending you marketing information from time to time after you have engaged us to provide services or received services from us either which may be similar and of interest to you or where you have expressly indicated that you would like to receive such information in order for us to promote our business, brand and products. You have the right to opt out receiving such information at any time.
Other uses of your personal information include:
- Where we are required to share your personal information with our regulators, governmental or quasi-governmental organisations, law enforcement authorities and with courts, tribunals and arbitrators as may be required from time to time in order to comply with our regulatory and legal obligations
- Where we need to share your personal information with any employee of Excel Property Services on a “need to know basis” to ensure we are able to perform our obligations to you
- If we sell any part of our business and/or integrate it with another organisation your details may be disclosed to our advisers/prospective purchasers. If this occurs the new owners of the business will only be permitted to use your information in the same way as set out in this Privacy Notice
- Where we use third party services providers, such as IT systems suppliers who process personal information on our behalf
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REFUSING TO PROVIDE PERSONAL DATA OR CONSENT TO SHARE
If you refuse to provide personal information that enables to perform the property services requested (such as, contact information so that we can provide you with feedback on viewings/offers where you require us to sell/let your property) it may not be possible to proceed with the service required and this will be explained when this is the case at the point where we collect information from you. This will also apply where information is not provided to enable us to comply with our legal obligations (such as, details/documents which confirm you have the legal right to rent a property in the UK under the “Right to Rent” scheme).
If you withhold your consent for us to share your personal information with a third party service provider (such as, a referencing company to assess your suitability to rent a property) this may limit the options available to you, for example, we could not recommend you as a tenant. Details of any third party service provider we propose to use to progress your property transaction are available on request.
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Privacy Policy
During the progress of your transaction, we may hold your information both electronically and in paper format. We will use all reasonable measures to ensure that your information remains confidential and will advise you immediately if we believe that any of your information has been released. We ensure access to personal information is restricted to staff members who have a legitimate reason for accessing your file, such as support staff working on your file and senior members of the Company for the purposes of supervision, checking your file for quality purposes or to deal with any complaints. Training is provided to any staff members who need access to personal information.
We will aim to communicate with you by such method as you request. More often than not this will be by email (but may be by telephone if it is appropriate) if you provide us with an email address, unless you advise us in writing that you do not wish us to do so. You acknowledge that email may not be secure. Email will be treated as written correspondence and we are entitled to assume that the purported sender of an email is the actual sender and that any express or implied approval or authority referred to in an email has been validly given. Please be aware that the Company may monitor and read any email correspondence travelling between you and any mail recipient at the Company as part of its monitoring activities to ensure compliance with its Information Management & Security Policy.
Where you provide us with email addresses for sending material to, you are responsible for ensuring that your arrangements are sufficiently secure and confidential to protect your interests. You must tell us if this method of communication is not secure so that we can use an alternative method.
The internet is not secure and there are risks if you send sensitive information in this manner or you ask us to do so. Please be aware that the data we send by email is not routinely encrypted. We will take reasonable steps to protect the integrity of our computer systems by screening for viruses on email sent or received. We expect you to do the same for your computer systems.
It is very unlikely that we will ever change our bank details during the course of a transaction. Always query emails supposedly from us where the sender’s email address does not match our domain excel-property.co.uk, or where the format, style or content is not usual. We will always check when we receive an instruction to amend our record of a customer’s details. If you receive any communications purporting to be from this Company, that you deem suspicious or have any concerns about (however slight), please contact our office by telephone straightaway.
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HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DATA
The period for which we will keep your personal information will depend on the type of service you have requested from us. The retention period may be longer than the period for which we are providing services to you where we have statutory or regulatory obligations to retain personal information for a longer period, or where we may need to retain the information in case of a legal claim.
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OVERSEAS TRANSFER OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
If you are a selling, letting, buying or renting a property through us we may transfer some of your personal data to the other party to your property transaction, who may be residing or travelling outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). We will only do this where it is necessary for the performance of a contract we have entered into with you or where necessary for the performance of a contract made in your interests between us and a vendor or landlord. We must make you aware that countries outside of the EEA do not have the same data protection laws as the UK or Europe and therefore you may not have the same level of protection in those countries that you have here in the UK with regards to the use and security of your personal data.
We will bring it to your attention where a transfer of your data outside of the EEA is due to occur. If you do not wish us to transfer your data outside of the EEA in the circumstances mentioned, we may not be able to provide you with our services or we may not be able to facilitate the property transaction on your behalf.
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YOUR RIGHTS IN RELATION TO PERSONAL DATA
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides a number of rights in relation to your personal information, these include the right to:
- Be informed about how we collect and process your personal data
- Obtain access to your personal data (subject access) by making a request
- Request to have inaccurate personal data rectified, or completed if it is incomplete
- Request the erasure of your personal data (“the right to be forgotten”) in certain circumstances, where the data is no longer required to be held by us under legal obligation, contractual obligation, legitimate interest or other lawful basis
- Request the restriction or suppression of your personal data in certain circumstances, where the data is inaccurate, no longer required to be held by us but you require us to keep it to enable you to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim or you have raised an objection to our use of your personal information
- Receive personal data (portability) in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format. This right relates to personal data that you have provided to us that we need in order to perform our agreement with you and personal data where we are relying on consent to process your personal information
- Object to the processing of your personal data where we are relying on legitimate interests or exercise of a public interest task to make the processing lawful. If you raise an objection we will carry out an assessment to determine whether we have an overriding legitimate ground which entitles us to continue to process your personal information
- Not be subject to wholly automated decision making and profiling which produce legal effects or which could have a similarly significant effect on you
These rights are not absolute rights (they are not rights that will be automatically granted), as we have to consider whether there are any reasons why we cannot meet your request. For example, we will not be able to delete data that we are legally obliged to keep. We will let you know if we not able to meet your request and the reason why (where it is appropriate to disclose this information to you).
Where you provide consent to us using your personal data for marketing purposes, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time by informing your file handler or contacting our designated Data Protection Manager.
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COMPLAINTS & CONTACT DETAILS
If you have any complaints about the way we use your personal information please contact our designated Data Protection Manager (kiri@excel-property.co.uk) who will try to resolve the issue.
If we cannot resolve any issue, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are not happy with the way that we handle your personal data. You can contact the ICO at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF or by calling the ICO’s helpline on 0303 123 1113.
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LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES
This Privacy Notice does not cover any links to other websites that have been included on our website. Please read the Privacy Notices on the other websites that you visit.
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CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY
This privacy notice is reviewed regularly and was last updated on 21 July 2018.