Keeping your information safe

The Home Improvement Consumer Protection Scheme (HICS) (“We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This policy sets out the basis on which we collect and process personal data.

For the purpose of the Data Protection legislation and rules (the Act), HICS is the entity and data controller responsible for holding and using your data. HICS is a consumer protection scheme and works to ensure compliance with the rules of the scheme. We may share data and information with other parties, and this is explained in the policy below.

Information we may collect about you 

We collect and process data about our members and their clients for the installations they undertake, as well as from general enquiries about the scheme. We may, therefore, collect and process the following type of data about you if you have signed up to our newsletter, when work is carried out for you by a scheme member, you make an enquiry with us, you are a scheme member, or you are an employee/director of a scheme member.

For clients of our scheme members or the public:

• Information that our members provide about you via our on-line registration system or manually. This would include your name and address along with information about the work which has been undertaken. We hold and use this information as it is in our and our members’ legitimate interests to do so. The information is used for the purposes of the scheme, the provision of the benefits it provides and monitoring the conduct of our members.
• If you contact us, by way of any enquiry, including a complaint about a member, we will retain a record. We will usually take details of your name and address along with details of your enquiry and our reply. We hold and use this information as it is in our and our members’ legitimate interests.
• We may also ask you to complete a survey following the completion of your installation, which we use to monitor quality control and satisfaction with members, Individual feedback is not shared with members. We do this where we hold information about work you have had done by one of our members. We hold and use this information as it is in our and our members’ legitimate interests. 
• If you have signed up to our newsletter. This includes your name and email address.

For members or employees of members:

• Information that you or your employer provide either manually or through our on-line registration system, which may include your name and address along with information about your role in the member firm. Information may be provided as part of an application for membership or to enable us to administer the scheme. (and the contract you enter for this). Where you are an employee of the member we hold and use the information as it is in our legitimate interests to do so.
• If you contact us, by way of complaint or otherwise, we will keep a record of that. Where you are the member we hold and use the information as part of your agreement with the scheme. Where you are an employee of the member we hold and use the information as it is in our legitimate interests to do so.
• We may obtain credit checks, identity checks and other due diligence checks carried out against you, your address(es) or your business(es) and copies of any references taken or provided. This information is obtained from third parties such as credit reference agencies. We collect this information where you are the member, applying to be a member or have significant control of a member. We hold and use this as part of our entry into a contract with a member.
• If you have signed up to our newsletter. This includes your name, company name and email address.

Uses made of the information

We may use information held about you in the following ways:

• To provide you with information concerning and to administer the scheme in accordance with its rules and best practice. We provide this support to members, their employees, those who have used a member for services and the public. Personal data is not made available other than to those it concerns, to members who have provided the data to us or as set out in this policy.
• To obtain the insurance cover which is a requirement of the scheme. We will share any details which an insurer requires of a member and their employees. For each policy we will share the data of the member’s customer and they will be provided with an insurance policy confirming their cover. We will provide the information to the scheme’s insurance broker(s) and to the insurer who provides the cover. The insurer will process the information as data controller as they have a legitimate interest in this to provide the required cover.
• To provide members and their employees with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you.
• To carry out our obligations and enforce our members’ obligations under the membership contract.
• To notify members about changes to the scheme.
• To contact consumers with surveys that we use for research or quality control purposes.
• To provide you with our newsletter or marketing information, where you have consented to do so. You may withdraw your consent by emailing communications@hicsscheme.org.uk or by unsubscribing when you receive the newsletter or marketing information.

Disclosure of your information 

We may disclose your personal information to certain third parties. These will be to our suppliers and advisors who process information for us under contractual arrangements; to credit and fraud reference agencies and identity checkers who act under agreements with us but also have a legitimate interest in your data (this is only for members/member employees); to regulatory bodies or bodies providing support for the scheme (such as other consumer schemes, consumer codes, trading standards authorities and legal or regulatory authorities).

We will provide Data about you to our designated insurance broker(s) for the scheme and they will provide it to any selected insurer. This data will be used by the broker and the insurer as it is in our and the members’ legitimate interests for this data to be used to provide insurance relating to the work which has been provided. We have carefully assessed this use of data to ensure that it will provide a benefit to the data subject as they will receive the benefit of the cover at no additional cost to themselves. If you require details of the insurer this will be included in the insurance policy provided to you when work is registered with us.

If you provide us with personal data about another individual, you acknowledge that you have permission from that individual to do so and that they understand how we will process their personal data. We recommend that they read this Privacy Notice.

 

Your rights

You have a number of rights in relation to your personal information.

These are:

• The right to confirm if we are using data about you and to access details about what we are using and how.
• The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioners Office.
• The right to request we rectify any inaccurate data corrected or to have data which is incomplete for the purpose we hold it completed.
• The right to be forgotten. Which is the right to ask us to delete information about you and if it is appropriate to do so we will do so.
• The right to restrict what we do with data in specific circumstances, including where the accuracy of the data is contested, processing is unlawful data or if we only need the data to meet legal requirements.
• The right to receive the data we hold about you in a format you can use to transfer the data electronically elsewhere.

• The right to object to further processing of your data if it is inconsistent with the main reason for which it was collected.

We will retain your data for as long as it is reasonably required for our legitimate purposes and for no longer.

IP addresses and cookies 

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your Internet Protocol (IP) address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. They help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. We take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that all data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy including when it leaves the EEA. Where data leaves the EEA, it is subject to contractual requirements to ensure the rules continue to apply. Data will at all times remain subject to the provisions of the Act.

Links

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any data about you to these websites.

Changes to our privacy policy 

We regularly review, and where necessary, update our privacy information. Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to The Data Protection Officer, HICS, Centurion House, Leyland Business Park, Centurion Way, Leyland, Lancashire, PR25 3GR. You can contact us via email at info@hicsscheme.org.uk or reach us by telephone on 0333 323 2655. 

You can also contact the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

 

Version 2: 1st April 2023