Waste Collection Brentford Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Waste Collection Brentford collects, uses, shares, and protects your personal data when you use our services. It applies to all Waste Collection Brentford customers and prospective customers in our service area, including individuals, households, landlords, managing agents, and business clients.

We are committed to complying with the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018. This Privacy Policy is intended to provide clear and transparent information about our data practices and your rights.

Who we are and scope of this policy

Waste Collection Brentford provides waste collection and related services to residential and commercial customers in the Brentford area. For the purposes of data protection law, we are the data controller for the personal data described in this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy applies whenever you interact with us, including when you contact us by telephone, email, online forms, or in person, as well as when we provide on-site waste collection and associated services at your premises.

Personal data we collect

We may collect and process the following categories of personal data about you:

Identification and contact details, such as your name, address, property details relevant to collection, email address, telephone number, and preferred contact method.

Service and contract information, such as details of the services you request, service levels, collection schedules, bin or container identifiers, notes about access to your property for collection, and records of communications related to your service.

Billing and payment information, such as billing address, invoicing details, payment status, and limited payment information necessary to process transactions. If card payments are accepted, card details are handled by a secure payment processor and are not stored by us beyond what is necessary for payment confirmation.

Communications and correspondence, including emails, phone call notes, online enquiry forms, complaints, requests, feedback, and any other information you choose to provide when communicating with us.

Technical and usage information when you use our online services, such as basic device and browser information, date and time of access, and pages viewed. We only collect this information to the extent necessary to operate, secure, and improve our services and comply with legal or security requirements.

How we obtain your personal data

We collect personal data directly from you when you contact us, request a quote, set up or manage an account, pay for services, or communicate with us in any way. We may also receive personal data from third parties, such as property managers, landlords, or business partners who arrange services on your behalf, or from publicly available sources where appropriate and lawful.

Lawful bases for processing your data

We only process your personal data where we have a valid lawful basis under data protection law. Depending on the context, we may rely on the following lawful bases:

Contract. We use your personal data to enter into and perform a contract with you, including responding to service enquiries, providing waste collection services, managing your account, and handling payments and billing.

Legal obligation. We process certain data to comply with our legal duties, such as financial recordkeeping, tax and accounting requirements, health and safety obligations, and environmental or waste management regulations.

Legitimate interests. We process personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, and where these are not overridden by your rights and interests. This may include managing and improving our services, ensuring site and network security, preventing fraud or misuse, and handling queries, complaints, and service quality monitoring.

Consent. In limited situations, we may ask for your explicit consent to process your personal data, for example for certain direct marketing communications. Where we rely on consent, you are free to withdraw it at any time.

How we use your personal data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To provide waste collection and associated services, including arranging collections, managing access instructions, handling service changes, and responding to your requests.

To administer customer accounts, including setting up and maintaining records, issuing invoices, processing payments, recovering outstanding sums, and providing updates about your account.

To communicate with you, including responding to enquiries, providing service confirmations and reminders, handling complaints, and sending important notices about changes to services or this Privacy Policy.

To manage our business operations, such as planning collection routes, monitoring service performance, training staff, and improving our processes and customer experience.

To comply with legal and regulatory requirements, including environmental regulations, tax and accounting obligations, and requests from competent authorities where required by law.

To protect our rights, property, staff, and customers, including preventing and detecting misuse, security incidents, or fraud, and establishing or defending legal claims.

Data retention and storage

We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

Service and contract records, including contact details and service history, are generally retained for the duration of your relationship with us and for a reasonable period afterwards to handle queries, disputes, or legal obligations.

Financial and billing records are normally retained for a period required by tax and accounting law, which may be up to several years after the end of the relevant financial year.

Communications, complaints, and enquiry records are retained for as long as needed to manage your request and maintain a record of our interactions, and may be archived for a limited period for quality and legal purposes.

When personal data is no longer required, it is securely deleted, anonymised, or otherwise removed from our systems in line with our data retention procedures.

Data processors and third party sharing

We may share your personal data with trusted third parties who act as data processors on our behalf. These processors may include customer management and billing providers, secure payment processing services, IT and hosting providers, call handling and communications platforms, and professional advisers such as accountants or auditors.

Where we use processors, they only process your personal data in accordance with our instructions, must implement appropriate security measures, and are bound by contractual obligations to protect your data and keep it confidential.

We may also share personal data with other third parties where necessary and lawful, such as regulatory authorities, enforcement agencies, or legal advisers where required to comply with legal obligations or to protect our rights, property, staff, or customers.

We do not sell your personal data and do not share it with third parties for their own independent marketing purposes.

International transfers

If your personal data is transferred outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your data in accordance with applicable data protection law. This may include using standard contractual clauses or ensuring that the destination country has been recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection.

How we protect your data

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure, or access. These measures include access controls, staff training, secure storage and transmission practices, and regular review of our security arrangements.

While no system can be completely secure, we take reasonable steps to ensure that your information is treated safely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. These may include:

The right of access, to obtain confirmation of whether we process your personal data and to receive a copy of the data, together with information about how it is used.

The right to rectification, to have inaccurate or incomplete personal data corrected or updated.

The right to erasure, also known as the right to be forgotten, in certain circumstances where there is no longer a lawful basis for us to continue processing your data.

The right to restrict processing, to limit how we use your personal data in certain situations, for example while a complaint or correction request is being considered.

The right to data portability, to receive certain personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine readable format and to transmit it to another controller, where applicable.

The right to object, to object to processing based on our legitimate interests or for direct marketing purposes. We will respect your objection unless we have compelling legitimate grounds or legal reasons to continue.

Where we rely on consent, the right to withdraw that consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

You also have the right to raise a concern or lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority if you believe your data protection rights have been infringed. We encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve any issues.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, legal requirements, or data protection practices. Any changes will be made available through our usual communication channels. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically so that you remain informed about how we handle your personal data.

Contacting us about privacy

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, our data protection practices, or your rights, or if you wish to exercise any of your data protection rights, you can contact us using the usual contact details for Waste Collection Brentford. We will respond to your request as soon as reasonably possible and within the timeframes required by data protection law.