What does this Privacy Policy cover?

At Arun Estate Agencies Ltd (Arun Estates) we are committed to ensuring that your personal information and privacy are protected. This privacy policy explains how we use the personal information you provide to Arun Estates. References to “Arun Estates”, “us”, or “we” relates to all brands and subsidiary companies of Arun Estate Agencies Ltd (Reg No. 2597969). This includes:

  • Wards (sales & lettings)
  • Cubitt & West (sales & lettings)
  • Douglas Allen (sales & lettings)
  • Pittis (sales & lettings)
  • Fine & Country (Canterbury, Newport & Loughton)
  • Home in One (insurance administration)
  • Mortgage Matters Direct
  • Arun Land & New Homes
  • Home in One Financial Services Ltd

“Privacy Policy” and “Internet and Cookies Policy” links are available on all of our websites and will be regularly reviewed and updated as necessary to keep you accurately informed.

Further information about Arun Estates can be found at: https://www.arunestates.co.uk

How we use your data

In the general course of business, Arun Estates will process the personal information you provide to us, primarily to assist you in achieving the purpose for which you provided it to us. This includes the selling, buying and renting of property and associated services of arranging a mortgage, providing legal services and/or lettings management services, as relevant and necessary to your needs.

Any personal information that you provide to us will only be processed and/or shared in accordance with The Data Protection Act 2018 & The General Data Protection Regulations 2018 UK – collectively referred to here as DPA 2018. At least one of the following legal bases will always apply:

Legal Obligation – necessary for compliance with our legal obligations

This includes (but is not limited to) all laws relating to residential estate agency. In particular Estate Agents Act 1979, Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007, DPA 2018, Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs), Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 (BPRs), Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, Consumer Rights Act 2015, Competition Act 1998, Landlord & Tenants Act 1985, Energy Act 2011, Money Laundering Regulations 2007, Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, Bribery Act 2010 and Modern Slavery Act 2015.

From time to time we may be asked to provide your data to assist in government department investigations e.g. Police, HMRC, Local Authorities. We will always check to ensure that such requests are legitimate and have relevant DPA 2018 exemptions before sharing information.

Contractual – necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us or pre-contractual requests made by you

This includes all contracts our customers enter into with us or our business partners, including (but not limited to) all forms of property marketing agreements, landlord, tenant and tenancy agreements, the arranging of mortgages and insurance products, Homewise marketing agreements etc.

Some examples of where it would be necessary to process and/or share information to perform a contract would be:

  • Marketing properties for sale or let and introducing buyers or tenants
  • Marketing properties on Social Media as agreed
  • Using your contact details to arrange viewings and negotiate offers
  • Progressing sales and tenancies to a successful conclusion
  • Applying to purchase Shared Ownership properties – this requires obtaining extensive and detailed information on behalf of the Housing Association
  • Referencing tenants and carrying out Right to Rent checks via Let Alliance
  • Facilitating tenancies between the parties, including guarantors
  • Progressing mortgage applications with lenders to a successful conclusion
  • Mortgage contingency services as contractually agreed
  • Letting Management providers e.g. Verismart, Fixflow & JPM
  • Processing of applications for and administration of selected insurance products with external providers e.g. Legal & General & Flatfair
  • Accounting processes e.g. Barclays Bank, Sage software
  • Software providers and their contracted processors, as necessary to support our business needs

In addition, our internal call centre will have access to your contact information in order to assist you when your local branch is busy taking other calls.

Legitimate Interests – processing/sharing information for the benefit of you, us and other parties on which your transaction depends. It will not be processed or shared on this basis if it would be detrimental to you to do so.

This primarily involves providing you with information about additional services we offer within Arun Estates that will help you to achieve your property aims.

Some examples of this are:

  • If you wish to buy a property and require a mortgage, we may invite you to meet with one of our in house mortgage advisors
  • If you are selling or buying a property, we may invite you to speak to one of our conveyancing panel firms
  • If you are looking for a property to buy, we may offer to assist you with selling your property
  • If you are selling your property, we may offer to assist you with buying a new property
  • If you are aiming to buy a property to let, we may discuss our lettings management service with you
  • If you are a landlord, we may send you details of any new investment opportunities we think may be of interest to you
  • If you have a property which is not attracting high enough offers, we may discuss the possibility of letting in the short term while the market improves
  • If we have arranged a fixed rate mortgage for you, as part of that service we may contact you towards the end of the fixed rate period to discuss the most attractive re-mortgage rates for your benefit

Information will only be shared by Arun Estates where it is in the legitimate interests of both the company and its customers or where consent has been obtained. Some examples are:

  • Providing seller’s contact details to surveyors to arrange survey appointments
  • Sharing information essential to understanding progress or delays in a transaction you are involved with
  • Providing tenant’s contact details to contractors to arrange repairs
  • Providing tenant’s contact details to external providers to carry out periodic inspections and check out reports

Consent – where you have given your consent for us to process and/or share your information in a particular way for a specific reason.

This includes every form of data processing and/or sharing that is not included in the above sections. Where you have provided consent, you may be contacted by carefully selected and professional third parties in relation to a product or service which may be of interest to you. This may include (but is not limited to) referrals to our conveyancing panel firms operated by Martin Tolhurst Solicitors for Wards and by MoveWithUs/Simplify in other areas. It could also include referrals for the provision of additional legal services and consent from landlords or tenants for referrals to energy or media providers.

If you have agreed to market your property using the Modern Method of Auction, which is operated by I Am Sold (IAS), or if you are a prospective buyer interested in a property marketed by Modern Auction, your contact details and other necessary information will be provided to IAS to facilitate the sale or purchase.

The data you provide may be used for any or all of the following reasons:

  • To contact you in order to carry out your instructions to us
  • To provide you with information, products and services which you have requested from us
  • To help you with information, products and services connected with and relevant to your property aims and in your interests e.g. mortgage, conveyancing services, lettings management services etc.
  • To provide customer support e.g. out of hours phone services, website live chat facility etc
  • To process payments and transactions
  • To notify you about changes to our services

The information we use is normally restricted to the information you provide to us. This includes (but is not limited to) your full name, postal address, email address, telephone numbers, date of birth, demographic information, identification and proof of address documents and proof of funds as we are legally required to obtain from buyers. We also source information which is already in the public domain e.g. government, commercial and opted in marketing sources which is collated using APIs such as “Twenty CI”, “Twenty EA” and “T2A” operated by Simunix Ltd.

As with many large organisations, communications by telephone may be recorded for the purposes of monitoring and improving our customer service standards.

In the case of electronic communications, Arun Estates may use the information provided by customers in an existing business relationship or one that has ended within the last 18-24 months or one that is currently being negotiated. Otherwise we will contact you by post and include a method for opting out of future mailing.

We will not share your personal data outside of Arun Estates other than as described in this Privacy Policy or without your verbal or written consent.

Should you wish to withdraw your consent at any time, please contact us using the details provided below.

Third parties

We will never sell your data to any third party.

As Data Controller, we may instruct third parties to act on our behalf as Data Processors. We will only share your data with such companies, strictly in accordance with a contractual arrangement between us and them to provide specific services on our behalf. Such contracts commit those third parties to ensuring compliance with DPA 2018 in relation to the protection of your personal information and privacy.

Examples of this are:

  • IT companies who provide software tools and support for our databases, websites and other business systems.
  • Business software development and digital data collection companies to offer you a secure way of providing us with your personal information, perform research and analysis so that we can develop and implement initiatives to improve our services to you

These include; Blacksmiths (Finch), Software Craftmanship, Starberry Limited, One Trust, Matterport, Dashly Limited and Mortgage Brain Limited.

IT service providers may operate inside or outside of the UK but are contractually bound to uphold the obligations of DPA 2018.

We may also share your data with third parties to assist you with your property related needs across sales, lettings, conveyancing and mortgage services as explained above.

In order to comply with our legal obligations, we utilise online search providers to verify the identity of our customers. This includes Smartsearch and Experian, who retain a record of the search data and may share this with third parties in accordance with their Privacy Policies. Such searches leave a soft trace only and do not affect our customer’s credit rating.

Outside of these scenarios, the information we share with third parties offering support services will be restricted to property details only and will not include personal data. Examples of this are the companies who operate the ‘live chat’ facility on our website and those who handle our ‘out of hours’ telephone calls.

We may use your data for internal analysis to monitor and improve the services we provide.

In the event of you escalating a complaint to The Property Ombudsman redress scheme, we are required to provide them with a complete record of our dealings with you and they may utilise your contact information for their compliance mornitoring/survey processes.

Security of Your Data

We will securely retain all paper files containing your data in cabinets and within offices or central storage facilities, which will be locked when unattended.

Electronic data is securely held and protected by anti-virus software and firewalls. Our servers are subjected to regular penetration tests to check that they are securely protecting your data. Data held on laptops is password protected and subject to the same anti-virus software and firewalls.

Personal data is held on iPads and mobile telephones through the Acaboom App, which facilitates business relationships with customers who have requested to use our services. The App is deactivated from devices immediately if lost, stolen or if staff leave our employment.

As with any company, we are unable to provide absolute guarantees due to the ever-increasing sophistication of criminal activity. However, we will do everything reasonably possible to ensure that your data is protected.

When visiting properties and taking images or videos, we will endeavour to exclude images of individuals, documents or other items which might be considered as personal data. To assist our staff in achieving this, please ensure that you remove everything that you do not wish to be seen in our marketing material.

How long we will keep your information for?

Arun Estates will retain your data for as long as is necessary to provide you with the services requested until your property needs are met and to comply with our internal and regulatory requirements. This will vary according to the extent of your relationship with us. For example:

Data relating to an inactive customer e.g. a person whose property is not currently on the market (whether appraised by us or not), or who is not actively viewing properties will be retained for a period of up to 2 years from the time we last had communications with you, depending on whether your property needs have been met or not.

Data relating to a prospective buyer/tenant e.g. a person who has been introduced to one or more properties, either by way of a viewing appointment or by giving verbal/written property information, but who is not involved in a transaction or any other business activity through us, will be retained for 2 years after the last related property has been withdrawn. This is in order to ensure a complete record of activity against each corresponding property.

Data relating to a seller/buyer/landlord/tenant who has entered into a contract or is involved in any business transaction with us will be retained for a period of 7 years from the end of the business relationship.

Data relating to mortgage customers will be retained for between 6 years and the lifetime of the mortgage, depending on the retention policy which was in place when the mortgage was arranged.

Data provided by customers raising service concerns will be retained for a period of 7 years.

In line with the legal and contractual obligations detailed in this Privacy Policy, including the associated data retention periods, the right to be forgotten cannot be exercised, prior to our stated data retention periods, if you have conducted any business with Arun Estate Agencies Ltd, including any or all of the scenarios detailed above. However, we reassure you that we will not retain your data for any longer than is necessary, it will be held securely during our retention periods and deleted promptly when they expire.

How to contact us if you have concerns

Should you have any queries in respect of this Privacy Policy or our use of your data, we would welcome the opportunity to resolve your concerns directly in the first instance. Please email us at: data.protection@arunestates.co.uk or telephone on 01702 540802.

The Data Controller is Arun Estate Agencies Ltd.

If we are unable to resolve your concerns, The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) are the appointed regulators for DPA 2018 and can be contacted by email at:
www.ico.org.uk or by telephone on 0303 123 1113.

[Rev 07.2022]

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