Data Protection and Protection of Information for Landlords - HAS Property Management

Data Protection and Protection of Information for Landlords

Privacy Policy – Landlords

This privacy policy sets out how HAS Property Management uses and protects any information you provide to us.

HAS Property Management  is committed to ensuring that your right to privacy and confidentiality is protected. Any personal identifiable information (PII) by which you can be identified is regulated by the Data Protection Act (and from 25th May 2018, by the General  Data Protection Regulation). You can be assured that we will only use your information in compliance with these laws and accordance with this privacy policy.

Key Details

The Data Protection Act requires every organisation that procceses personal information to register with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Any personal information provided or obtained by HAS Property Management is used and processed only for its own legitimate purposes.

Personal information collected about you

We will collect the following information about you that will be held securely on a central database:

  • Name
  • Business name
  • Contact information including email address and telephone number
  • Demographic information such as postcode, communications and preferences
  • Banking details

The information we collect is necessary for us to be able to provide you with the services you require, for the effective management of HAS Property Management. Refer to the section below ‘What we do with your information’ for further details.

Where we collect your information from

The following are the different sources we may collect personal data about you from:

  • Directly from you. This is information you provide when you make an enquiry by visiting the office, a telephone enquiry, fill out an online enquiry ( including via a third party website) and complete an application form.
  • When you access HAS Property Management’s social media. We might also obtain your personal data through your use of social media such as Facebook etc, depending on your settings on these services, please refer to their privacy notices, which will tell you how to do this.

What we do with your information

What we do with the information we gather:

  • Internal record keeping, accurate accounting and financial reporting and compliance purposes.
  • Processing of payments and fees
  • To contact you in response to a specific enquiry, complaint or issue with a property.
  • We may use the information to improve our service
  • We may use your email address to contact you for purposes that relate to your property, to respond to your questions or queries.
  • We may use your information for statistical reporting services, archiving for historical purposes.
  • We are obliged to process our information in compliance with any lawful request made by order or the court or under police warrant.

Our legal basis for processing your information

For any user of our services, support, advice or guidance, our processing is necessary for our legitimate interest in that we need the information in order to provide these services to you.

Consequences of not providing your information

If you do not provide the personal data necessary, or withdraw your consent for the processing of your personal data, it will be almost impossible for HAS Property Management to provide you with service, support, advice or guidance.

HAS Property Management must also have access to some of your information in order to operate and to comply with legal obligations.

How Long we keep your information for

How long we keep your information will depend on the purpose or purposes for which we use it. While you are a user of the services provided by HAS Property Management, or a visitor to our website, we will only retain your information for as long as is necessary for those purposes and to comply with statutory or regulatory retention periods.

What we will not do with your information

HAS Property Management respects your rights under data protection laws and takes our obligations seriously. Any information provided to us is used and protected by us for our own legitimate purposes. Your rights to privacy, confidentiality and information security are highly important to us, we do not and will not share, swap or sell your information with any other organisation for their own purposes.

Information Sharing

HAS Property Management will share your information for it’s own purposes and only where necessary, with:

  • Service providers and associated companies
  • Employees of HAS Property Management

Any sharing will be carried out under formal non-disclosure agreements and only after due diligence processes have been followed to ensure that those we work with support our claims and objectives.

Information security and how we store your information

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure and that your rights to privacy and confidentiality are protected. We take information governance and security seriously and have technical and organisational measures in place that include ensuring all anti-virus, anti-spam and software packages are up to date, correctly configured firewalls, encryption, secure file transfer protocols, trust policies, processes and staff training to manage and protect your personal information in order to prevent unauthorised access, unlawful processing, accidental loss, damage, or disclosure.

All information you provide to us is stored securely by HAS Property Management and governed by IT Security Policy and Procedures. Your information remains under the control of HAS Property Management at all times. You have the right to access your information at any time. Refer to the section below ‘ Your Legal Rights’.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to us online; any transmission is at your own risk. Once information is received we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access, loss or damage.

Website Cookies

A  cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive, smart phone, tablet or other device and are used to improve your on-line experience by almosy every website.  Once you agree the cookie file is added to your computer and the cookies help analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications  to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor it’s operation to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use cookies for a variety of reasons, such as to monitor how many people have visited our website and tracking the interest in a property listed by HAS Property Management.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore , we cannot be responsible  for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement.

Your Legal rights

Individuals have specific rights contained within data protection laws that relates to their personal information.  These rights can be enforced against any organisation, from any sector, that holds your information. This section will detail what these rights are and how you can exercise them.

  1. You have the right to be informed of how and why your information is being used and who it is being shared with. This right relates to the first data protection principle of fair and lawful processing and the second data protection principle that relates to processing personal information for specified and lawful purposes. Both of these principles obligates organistaions to be open, honest and transparent with what and how they use personal information.
  2. You have the right to access information about you. This is called a Subject Access Request. This means you can have a copy of your personal information held by HAS Property Management. If an exemption is being relied on to restrict your right to access specific details that contain your information, you are entitles to know which exemption applies. There is no charge for a Subject Access Request and  HAS Property Management must provide you with a  copy within 30 days.
  3. You have the right to have any incorrect or inaccurate information about you rectified or erased from our records. If we are holding information about you that you know or feel is incorrect you have the right to have this corrected.
  4. You have the right to be forgotten. This means you have the right to ask HAS Property Management to delete or remove your information from our systems where there is no lawful reason for its continued processing.
  5. You have the right to restrict processing of your information. For example, you can request that we do not use your information in a way that will cause you any distress such as the publication of your photograph on our website or social media.
  6. You have the right to withdraw consent. If you have given your consent to us using your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. (although if you do so, it does not mean that anything we have done with your personal data with your consent up to that point is unlawful).
  7. You have the right to object to automated decisions and profiling. This right relates to decisions being made about you by automated or mathematical reasoning applied by a computer. There is no human input to the decision-making process.
  8. You have the right to data portability. This means you have the right to move your information from one database to another. For example, you could ask to move all of your personal data from one utility to another.

Our Lawful obligations

All organisations that process personal information are under strict obligations that govern how they use and process personal information. Predominantly these are found within the data protection principles:

  1. Fair and Lawful processing. This means we need to tell you about how and why we collect and use your information. HAS Property Management does this through data protection statements and privacy notices.
  2. Specified and legitimate purpose(s). This means that we need to be clear, honest and transparent as to the purpose(s) that we use your information for. This is also achieved through the use of data protection statements and privacy notices.
  3. Adequate, relevant and not excessive. This relates to the capture of information about you not being excessive for the intended purpose. For example asking for your banking details when they are not required would be excessive.
  4. Accurate and where necessary up to date. This relates to our obligations around the management of your information.
  5. Not kept for longer than necessary. This principle means that the information held about you cannot be held indefinitely. Your information can only be retained for the purpose(s) required and to comply with certain other legal obligations. For example tax law requires information to be retained for seven years. HAS Property Management will retain your information to conform with legal requirements and for as long as is justifiable for the management and historical account of our work.

Appropriate security against unlawful and unauthorised processing. This obligation means that organisations are under a lawful duty to protect your information. Information security comes in different forms from physical security, technical and organisational measures to restrict access to your information and protect it from unlawful or unauthorised disclosure.