Privacy Policy - Sidcup Carpet Cleaners

This Privacy Policy explains how Sidcup Carpet Cleaners collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects personal data relating to our customers, prospective customers, and website or service users. It applies to all Sidcup Carpet Cleaners customers in the area, including individuals who enquire about, book, receive, or have previously received our carpet cleaning and related services.

We are committed to handling personal data in a lawful, fair, and transparent manner in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. This policy should 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 over your information.

1. Information We Collect

We may collect and process personal data directly from you, from third parties acting on your behalf, or from records created during the course of providing our services. The type of information collected depends on the nature of your enquiry, booking, or service request.

Categories of personal data may include:

Identity details such as your name.
Contact details such as your telephone number, email address, and service address.
Service information such as details about the cleaning services requested, appointment dates, job notes, and any preferences you share.
Payment-related information such as payment confirmation, invoicing records, or partial payment details where necessary. We do not retain card security codes.
Communication records including messages, enquiry details, complaints, feedback, and correspondence relating to appointments or service issues.
Technical data where applicable, such as basic device or browser information if you contact us through digital channels. This may include limited metadata used for system security and performance.
Special instructions that may relate to access, property conditions, or health and safety considerations relevant to delivering the service.

We only collect information that is relevant and necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. We do not intentionally collect more data than is required to provide and manage our services.

2. How We Use Your Personal Data

We use personal data for specific and limited purposes connected to our services. This includes handling enquiries, managing bookings, delivering cleaning services, communicating with you, and meeting legal or business obligations.

We may process your data to:

respond to enquiries and provide quotations;
schedule, confirm, reschedule, or complete appointments;
deliver carpet cleaning and related services;
manage customer accounts and service records;
issue invoices, maintain financial records, and process payments;
deal with complaints, disputes, and service follow-up;
improve our operations, training, and customer experience;
maintain safety, security, fraud prevention, and service quality;
comply with legal, accounting, and regulatory requirements.

Where we use personal data for service quality or internal administration, we do so on a need-to-know basis and in a manner consistent with data minimisation principles.

3. Lawful Basis for Processing

Under data protection law, we must have a lawful basis to process your personal data. Depending on the context, we may rely on one or more of the following legal bases:

Contract

We process personal data where it is necessary to enter into or perform a contract with you. This includes preparing quotations, confirming bookings, carrying out cleaning services, and managing payments or service-related communications.

Legal obligation

We may process information where required to comply with legal obligations, including tax, accounting, record-keeping, and other regulatory requirements.

Legitimate interests

We may process data where it is necessary for our legitimate business interests, provided those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms. This may include service administration, fraud prevention, service improvement, and maintaining business records.

Consent

In limited cases, we may rely on your consent, for example where you choose to receive certain types of optional communications or where consent is otherwise required by law. You may withdraw consent at any time where it is the basis for processing.

We do not rely on consent where another lawful basis is more appropriate, such as when processing is necessary to fulfil your booking or comply with legal obligations.

4. Sharing and Processors

We may share personal data with trusted third parties that help us operate our business. These third parties act as processors when they process data on our instructions and are required to protect it appropriately.

Examples of processors or service providers may include:

booking and scheduling systems;
accounting and invoicing services;
payment processors;
IT support and cloud storage providers;
email and communications tools;
customer management systems;
professional advisers such as accountants or legal advisers, where necessary.

We may also disclose personal data where required by law, court order, or lawful request from a public authority. If a business transaction occurs, such as a reorganisation or transfer of assets, personal data may be transferred as part of that process, subject to appropriate safeguards.

We do not sell your personal data. Any sharing is limited to what is necessary for the purposes described in this policy.

5. Data Retention

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including satisfying legal, accounting, and reporting obligations. The exact retention period depends on the type of data and the reason it was collected.

In general:

booking and customer service records are kept for the period needed to manage the relationship and handle follow-up issues;
financial and invoicing records are retained for the period required by tax and accounting law;
complaint and dispute records may be kept longer where needed to resolve the matter or defend a legal claim;
information no longer required is securely deleted or anonymised.

Where we no longer need your personal data, we will take reasonable steps to ensure it is securely removed from our systems or made non-identifiable.

6. Data Security

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against accidental loss, unauthorised access, misuse, alteration, or disclosure. These measures are designed to reflect the nature of the data and the risks involved.

Security measures may include access controls, secure storage, staff confidentiality obligations, password protection, and limiting access to those who need the information for legitimate business purposes. While no system can be guaranteed completely secure, we work to maintain a level of protection appropriate to the information we handle.

7. Your Rights Under Data Protection Law

You have a number of rights regarding your personal data. These rights apply subject to legal conditions and exceptions. We will respond to valid requests in accordance with applicable law.

Your rights may include:

Right of access – to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Right to rectification – to ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
Right to erasure – to request deletion of your data in certain circumstances.
Right to restriction – to ask us to limit how we use your data in certain situations.
Right to object – to object to processing based on legitimate interests or direct marketing where applicable.
Right to data portability – to request that certain information be provided to you or another controller in a structured format, where the law applies.
Right to withdraw consent – where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time.

If you exercise any of these rights, we may need to verify your identity before responding. We aim to deal with requests promptly and within the time limits set by law.

8. Children’s Data

Our services are generally directed at adults. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children except where it is incidentally provided by an adult customer in connection with a service appointment. If we become aware that we have collected information from a child without appropriate authority, we will take steps to delete it where required.

9. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in the law, our operations, or the way we handle personal data. The latest version will apply to all current and future customers in the Sidcup area from the date it is published. We encourage you to review this policy periodically so you remain informed about how we use personal data.

10. Summary of Our Commitments

Sidcup Carpet Cleaners is committed to processing personal data lawfully, fairly, and transparently. We collect only the information needed to provide our services, use it for legitimate business and legal purposes, and retain it only for as long as necessary. We also use trusted processors under proper safeguards and respect your rights over your personal information.

This Privacy Policy is intended to provide clear information about how we handle personal data for customers in the Sidcup area. By using our services, you acknowledge that your personal data may be processed in accordance with this policy.