Privacy

Advice for Renters respects and protects the privacy of people who visit the website or who provide personal information when donating, registering for our newsletter or enquiring about our services.

Personal information about you is not disclosed to any third party without first receiving your permission, and we will only ever use your information for the purpose it was provided.

The privacy of our visitors is extremely important to us and therefore we encourage all users to read this policy very carefully because it contains important information regarding:

  • who we are;

  • how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information;

  • your rights in relation to your personal information; and

  • how to contact us in the event that you have any concerns about your personal information.

Who we are

Advice for Renters ('we', 'us', 'our') collect, use and are responsible for storing certain personal information about you (you’, ‘your', 'yours'). When we do so we are regulated by General Data Protection Regulations (“GDPR”) which apply across the European Union (EU) including the United Kingdom (UK).

The personal information we collect and use

Personal information is information which you can be identified from (and does not include any anonymised forms of information). Advice for Renters does not collect any unique information about you (such as your name, e-mail address, etc.), except when you specifically and knowingly provide such information.

1. Types of personal information

We may process the following types of personal information in relation to you:

  • Contact details when you sign up to our newsletter (Full Name, Email Address)

  • Contact details when you make a donation (Full Name, Address, Email Address)

  • Contact details if you make an enquiry for advice and support (Full Name, Phone Number, Postcode, Nature of enquiry)

  • Cookies

How your personal information is collected

This section describes how the above types of personal information are collected by us. Your personal information will be collected as follows:

1. Personal information obtained from you directly

We will sometimes obtain information from you directly:

Our website collects data when you register to receive our email newsletter. We collect this data, via the email address provided, to share with you relevant Advice for Renters/industry related content, namely:

  • Blogs and website articles produced by Advice for Renters on industry related topics

  • Invites to our events hosted by Advice for Renters

  • Relevant information on industry related topics produced by other organisations

If you make a donation or register for the newsletter your details are securely stored on our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System and/or email database. By providing personal details during registration, you are consenting to the use of those details for the purposes of identifying you as a unique user.

If you submit your data via the online form for the purpose of seeking advice we will hold that information separately and you will never be added to the CRM unless you opt in via a different channel. You will be contacted regarding your query and your data will be held for monitoring purposes but you will not be identified. If we open a case for you your information will be added to AdvicePro, our CMS (Case Management System) and additional data will be requested.

2. Personal information obtained by use of cookies or other automated means

We will sometimes obtain information via automated technology. This shall be by use of cookies and other similar technology. A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your computer or electronic device when you access our website. Similar technologies include web beacons, action tags, local shared objects (flash cookies') and single-pixel gifs. Such technologies can be used to track users' actions and activities, and to store information about them.

Advice for Renters does note and save information such as time of day, browser type, and content requested when you visit our website. This information is used to provide services that are more relevant to users. We do this by placing a piece of code on each web page. This provides statistical site usage information relating solely to Internet usage behaviour.

To collect this information, we use Google Analytics. We may also use ‘Cookies’ to collect other information that is not personal information (i.e. it will not identify you). Cookies are a means by which information relating to your internet activity (such as whether you have visited the Website before) is recorded on your hard drive and used by us to improve the Website. For example, Cookies may be used to gather statistical information that will assist in understanding what users find interesting and useful on the Website.

These Cookies are known as your ‘Unique Visitor Cookie’, which is a small piece of data or a number that identifies your computer, but cannot be used to identify you. This data is sent to your browser from a Web server and then stored onto your computer’s hard drive. Through modification of browser preferences, a user can elect to accept all Cookies by clicking the ‘Accept’ button, alternatively click ‘Read More’ to read our Privacy Policy.

If you do not consent, such technologies will not be used. Thereafter you can opt-out of using cookies at any time or you can set your browser not to accept cookies. However, some of our website features may not function as a result.

For further assistance in disabling Cookies, please consult your web browser’s “Help” file or visit the website at www.allaboutcookies.org

3. Changes to the way in which we collect your personal information

In the event that we obtain personal information in relation to you from any other source than those described above, we shall notify you of this.

How we use your personal information

1. General purposes

The information you provide will not be shared with our partners, without your explicit consent, aside from our service providers who operate elements of our service and process data on our behalf, and apart from your username, which will appear on blog entries, submissions to forums and other submissions you make for inclusion on the website.

The information you provide for advice will not be shared with anyone without your explicit consent.

All data collected will be held within the European Union and the European Economic Area or other territory complying with the legal and technical guidelines laid down for handling data from the European Union and will only be used for the specific purpose for which it was sought and to which you consented. It will not be used for any other purpose whatsoever.

2. Use of your information for marketing purposes

We will not use the information submitted through the Website for any other purpose if you indicate that you do not want us to, and we will not pass your contact details to any third party for making any marketing communication to you.

Lawful basis for processing of your personal information

We have described above the purposes for which we may process your personal information. These purposes will at all times be justified by UK data protection law.

1. General lawful bases

The lawful basis upon which we are able to process your personal data are:

(1) where we have your consent to use your data for a specific purpose;

(2) where it is necessary to enter into a legal contract with you or to perform obligations under a legal contract with you;

(3) where it is necessary to enable us to comply with a legal obligation;

(4) where it is necessary to ensure our own legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party (provided that your own interests and rights do not override those interests). Wherever we rely upon this basis, details of the legitimate interests concerned shall be provided to you;

(5) where we need to protect your own vital interests (or the vital interests of another person); and/or

(6) where it is needed in the public interest (or where we are acting in our official functions), provided that the task or function has a clear basis in law.

In general, in order to meet the purposes we have described above, we will process your personal information where we have your express consent on each occasion that the data is processed.

2. Lawful bases specifically applicable to marketing

We will only ever use your personal information to send you marketing directly where we have your explicit consent (which will be obtained in a format separately to this policy).

Sharing of your personal information

On any occasion where any of your personal information is shared with our service providers with your consent, we shall only permit them to process such information for our required purposes, under our specific instruction, and not for their own purposes. We are required to enter into a formal legal agreement to enable such sharing to take place.

We will not share your personal information with any third parties for marketing purposes without your explicit consent to this.

How long your personal information will be kept

All data collected will be held within the European Union and the European Economic Area or other territory complying with the legal and technical guidelines laid down for handling data from the European Union and will only be used for the specific purpose for which it was sought and to which you consented. It will not be used for any other purpose whatsoever.

Details of the data we hold on you will be provided upon request and any inaccurate or misleading data can be updated or changed however we are required to keep client files for 6 years before removing. Any request to update should be directed to the e-mail address shown at the bottom of this notice.

After the period described above, your information shall be properly deleted or anonymised.

Keeping your information secure

We will ensure the proper safety and security of your personal information and have measures in place to do so.

Advice for Renters is required by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to follow strict security procedures in relation to the storage and disclosure of information, which you have given to us, to prevent unauthorised access or use of such data.

We have proper procedures in place to deal with any data security breach, which shall be reported and dealt with in accordance with data protection laws and regulations. You shall also be notified of any suspected data breach concerning your personal information.

Children

Our website is not intended for children (anybody under the age of 18). We do not intend to collect data from children. Our services are also not aimed at children and we will only request information on client dependents once a case has been opened and any data collected will be relevant to the matter.

Your rights

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation, you have a number of important rights. In summary, those include rights to:

(1) fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your use personal information;

(2) access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Statement is already designed to address;

(3) require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold;

(4) require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations;

(5) receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and have the right to transmit this information to a third party in certain situations;

(6) object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing;

(7) object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you;

(8) object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information, or ask us to suspend the processing procedure in order for you confirm our reasoning for processing it;

(9) object to processing your personal information where we are doing so in reliance upon a legitimate interest of our own or of a third party and where you wish to raise to an objection to this particular ground;

(10) otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances;

(11) claim compensation for damages caused by our breach of any data protection laws; and/or

(12) in any circumstance where we rely upon your consent for processing personal information, you may withdraw this consent at any time.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on your rights under the General Data Protection Regulations.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights please contact: info@adviceforrenters.org.uk

Links to other sites

The websites links on the Advice for Renters website are developed by other people of whom we exercise no control. These sites may send their own cookies to users to collect data or solicit personal information.

We give no warranty or indemnity in relation to the content appearing on those websites or in relation to the administration of these websites.

Changes to the privacy policy

This privacy policy was published on 22nd October 2024

We may change this privacy policy from time to time and if you are impacted we will notify you of any changes by email.

Contacting us

The relevant email address to contact regarding your personal information is: info@advice4renters.org.uk

Any requests or questions regarding the use of your personal information should be made to the above email address.