Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how Robert Bell & Company Limited uses and protects any information that you give Robert Bell & Company Limited when you use this website.

1. Privacy Policy

Robert Bell & Company is committed to ensuring that your personal privacy is protected and treat all information held about you in accordance with current UK legislation. For these purposes Robert Bell & Company is considered to be a ‘data controller’ and as a consequence, we decide how and why the personal data that we collect is used, when you contact us or otherwise engage with us via our website or other media.

This Privacy Policy explains:

• What is personal information?
• How we collect personal information
• The personal information we may collect and process
• How your personal information may be used
• How we store and protect your personal information
• Website Cookies and how they are used
• Your personal information rights
• How long we will retain your personal data for?
• Updates to our privacy policy statement
• Your right to make a complaint.

2. What is personal information?

This is information that relates to you and identifies you personally, either alone or in combination with other information available to us.

3. How we collect personal information

We only gather the personal information we need for business purposes in order to provide you with the services you have requested or to comply with our regulatory obligations, as well as appropriate news and information where you have agreed to this.

• We collect information from you in many different ways and this will include, but is not strictly limited to, by telephone, post, your personal visits to our offices/meetings with our employees, text, email, use of social media, robert-bell.org online registration and information forms, online newsletters, information and feedback forms; as well as through other third party websites and property portals such as rightmove.co.uk, onthemarket.com, nethouseprices.co.uk, lonres.co.uk and mayfair.co.uk.
   
• When you access www.robert-bell.org information collected may include, but not be limited to:
  • Cookies data collection (see section 7).
  • Information as to what individual properties for sale or for rent you have accessed as a registered user.
  • Google Analytics (and other Google services/online third party information collection services) collating;
    • Information about the device and browser you are using to access the website e.g. type, version, operating system, etc.
    • Traffic data including the URL of the website that referred you to our website if applicable
    • Location data including geolocation
    • Weblogs and other communication data
    • Details of your interaction with social media
    • Your computer’s IP (Internet Protocol) address
    • The date and time of your visit and how long you remained on our website
    • The pages visited on our website and interactions performed.

4. The personal information we may collect and process

• This information may include, but not be limited to, your name and email address, contact telephone numbers for you, the sectors, geographic regions and pricing requirements within which you are interested in searching for property, your future communication preferences and personal financial or employment information disclosed as part of entering into a mutually agreed service transaction with our company.
• We may through a third party supplier, including but limited to Brief Your Market and MailChimp, make requests for personal survey responses to assist us in general business research and for assessing how we might improve our services.

5. How your personal information may be used

Your personal information will only be used in respect of our company’s 'legitimate interests' in offering its services to you and other customers.

• For the provision of our services and processing agreed to transactions

We need your personal information in order for us to provide you with the services you request, such as but not excluding others, buying, renting or letting property; buying and selling goods/chattels by auction, financial services, farming/agricultural business services and survey and valuation services.

Depending on which service you receive we may also need to share your personal information with a range of third parties including but not limited to, general building/maintenance service providers, local authorities, law enforcement agencies, utility companies, payment providers, credit referencing agencies, solicitors and conveyancers, estate agents, surveyors, financial services advisors, insurance providers and software and systems provides such as Brief Your Market, MailChimp, Expert Agent and others.

We require that these service providers and other third parties adhere to strict rules when processing your personal information, including to only use your personal information in accordance with our specific instructions (such as for the purpose of completing referencing or contacting you to arrange access to carry out necessary repairs) and the applicable laws.

• To allow us to meet our legal obligations as regards our agreed service requirements with you and other third parties

This may involve obligations, as part of our legitimate interests, in respect of, but not limited to legislative requirements such as the Right to Rent Checks under Section 22 of the Immigration Act 2014, and Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 and Estate Agency Act 1979, services standards, as well as obligations to our company’s professional regulatory body the RICS and the associate requirements of the membership of selective staff regulatory property institutions such as the CAAV, NAEA and ARLA.

• To assist in marketing, advertising and other communications of our services to you

When you register as an applicant, register to receive our online newsletters, enter into a service transaction with us, use our website, provide feedback on our service, the personal information acquired will be used to create your personal information profile. This may be used for the purposes of our legitimate interests, in order to send you appropriate marketing messages, including but not limited to, newsletters which are in line with any preferences you have told us about.

When we send you marketing emails we rely on your consent to contact you for marketing purposes. You are not under any obligation to provide us with your personal data for marketing purposes.  You can tell us that you do not want your personal information to be processed in this way at any time by contacting us at lincoln@robert-bell.org or, where relevant, by following the unsubscribe link in any marketing communication you receive from us.

• To enable us to improve our service and your user experience/assess and report on business performance

By providing our company with your personal information, on and offline, we may obtain an insight into how you interact with our services and we may use this and the personal information of other customers, as part of our legitimate interests, in assessing how we can improve our services and the means of communication by which we engage with you.

Your personal information may be anonymized in conjunction with that of other customers as part of our legitimate interest to assess how our company is performing and reporting performance standards for internal use and for external marketing purposes.

• For Robert Bell & Company staff personal security

Our company has a legitimate interest to request the provision of personal information required to enable and ensure our staff are safe when conducting out of office viewings, market appraisals and meetings. Such personal information will include, but not exclusively be limited to a customer’s full personal details, contact information and a verifiable residential address.

• In handling any legitimate customer support request

If you contact our company in respect of customer support, we will consider it as being part of our legitimate interests and that of your own in making this request for us to process personal information such as, but not limited to, an email address, telephone number and residential address, to ensure we provide you with the best possible service.

6. How we store and protect your personal information

The security of the personal information we hold on you is very important to us and we have procedures in place designed to prevent unauthorised access to your personal information;

• By issuing us with your personal information, you agree to its transfer, storing and processing as part of our company’s legitimate interests.
   
• Our client files are stored on our secure customer management systems.
   
• On our customer systems access is restricted to those within the company who are required to have access to your information for legitimate business purposes.
   
• Hard copy information files are stored in locked cabinets in the UK.
   
• We ensure access to personal information is restricted to employees and workers or other persons working within the company on a need to know basis only.
   
• General Data protection/GDPR 2018 training is provided to company employees and workers who need access to personal information.
   
• Your personal information is held in datacentres, some hosted by third-party data management providers servicing our company which have systems and procedures in place to protect against both unauthorised access and other external factors that could cause damage to your personal data. There are strict access requirements in place and access is restricted to those absolutely necessary.

• The digitised personal information we hold is stored in the UK on secure (password and firewall-protected) servers.
   
• All electronic transactions and data transmissions with robert-bell.org is encrypted by industry-standard SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology; and it has a SSL certificate from GlobalSign, a WebTrust-certified certificate authority.
   
• The transfer of information via the internet is never completely secure and as a consequence, we cannot guarantee the security of any information sent over the internet between your communication device and our website. Any such data transmission is at your own risk.
   
• Having received your personal information, we will apply strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access, as part of our secure backups and data disaster recovery procedures.

7. Cookies and how they are used

On accessing www.robert-bell.org, a request will be made for you to accept, or decline, the use of cookies which is a small text file stored in your computer’s browser.

• If you accept their use, this will provide you with the website’s full functionality and the cookies we use are only there to help enhance your user experience by allowing us to collect website statistics, assess your personal property interests and preferences and to personalise your browsing on repeat visits.
   
• Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, which we do not have any control over. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.
   
• Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies. See your browser Help or Tools for how to do this. You can manage your cookie preferences here. Please be aware that disabling cookies may negatively affect the functionality and use of this and many other websites that you visit.
   
• For more information about cookies visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
   
• Cookies on our www.robert-bell.org:
   
  • exp_last_visit - Sets the date and time that you last visited the site. Expiry time: 12 months. 
     
  • exp_tracker - Tracks the last 5 pages you viewed and is used primarily for redirection after some actions on the site. Expiry time: session.
     
  • exp_last_activity - Every time the page is reloaded the last activity is set to the current date and time. Used to determine form or login expiry. Expiry time: 12 months.
     
  • exp_stashid - This cookie generates a unique ID that relates to session values that determine the current state of the website and any actions you have performed. Expiry time: session.
     
  • exp_super_search_history - Remembers your search history in the property search on our site. Expiry time: 24 hours.
     
  • token - Used to secure contact form submissions. Expiry time: session.
     
  • exp_cookies_allowed, exp_cookies_accepted or exp_cookies_declined - Used to store your cookie preferences. Expiry time: 12 months.
     
  • _ga, _gat, _gid - These are set by Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics to anonymously track which pages you look at to help us improve the experience of our website. Find out more about Google Analytics Cookies here (https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage). Expiry time: 12 months.

8. Your personal information rights

The easiest way to discuss exercising your legal rights is to get in touch with us by emailing us at lincoln@robert-bell.org.

• The right to make a ‘subject to access request’

If you would like to inquire as to what personal information our company may hold about you, we can process such a request to provide you with a copy of any such information held upon receipt of proof of identity. We may charge an administration fee of up to £10 (plus VAT) to cover our costs for collating and providing you with this information. All subject access requests must be made in writing and addressed for the attention of The Data Controller, Robert Bell & Company, Old Bank Chambers, Horncastle, LN9 5HY.

•     The Right of Access

You are entitled to receive confirmation as to whether your personal information is being processed by us, as well as various other information relating to our use of your personal information. 

You also have the right to access your personal information which we are handling. 

• The Right of Rectification

You have the right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal information we hold about you. You also have the right to have incomplete personal information we hold about you completed, by providing a supplementary statement to us. 

• The Right to Data Portability

You have the right to receive the personal information we hold about you in a structured, standard machine-readable format and to send this to another organisation controlling your personal information.

• The Right of Erasure
  
  You have the right to require us to erase your personal information which we are handling in the following circumstances:
   
  • We no longer need to use your personal information for the reasons we told you we collected it for
     
  • Where we needed your consent to use your personal information and you have withdrawn your consent
     
  • You object to the use of your personal information and we have no compelling reason to carry on handling your personal information
     
  • Our handling of your personal information has broken the law
     
  • We must erase your personal information to comply with a law we are subject to.
     
• Your Right to Object
  
  You have the right to object to us processing your personal information in certain circumstances:
   
  • You have the right to ask us to not to process your personal data for marketing purposes, to alter your preferences for the type of marketing content you receive (such as properties for sale, information about related services etc) or to alter the methods via which you receive marketing correspondence from us(i.e. via email, post or phone call).
     
  • You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing links to you or by contacting us at any time.

9. How long will we retain your personal data for?

The length of time we hold our information for will vary dependent on the lawful basis for collecting and processing the data. We will hold the data supplied:

• Where there is a legitimate interest in doing so (such as where a client or customer has registered with us, expressing an interest in any of our services such as buying, selling, letting or renting a property through us) for a period of 7 years.
   
• Where a transaction has been entered into and there is a contractual necessity to do so or where there is a requirement to comply with legal obligations (for example in order to comply with the requirement of the TPO Code of Practice, both for sales and lettings agents, to maintain clear and full written records of transactions for a period of 6 years and to comply with the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 requirement to hold records for a period of 5 years).

10. Updates to our Privacy Policy Statement

We review our privacy statement in order to ensure that:

• It is free from errors and clearly visible on our website
   
• It contains information about your rights and our processing activities
   
• It is implemented and is compliant with the law
   
• If significant changes are made to this privacy statement you are informed by a posting on our website along with an updated version of the privacy statement.
   
• This privacy policy statement was updated on 18th December 2020.

11. Your right to make a complaint

• If you have any complaints as to how we have used your personal information contact us in the first instance at lincoln@robert-bell.org and we will try to resolve your complaint.
   
• If we fail to resolve this issue you do have the right to contact and complain to the Information Commissioner at the Information Commissioners Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Helpline number 0303 123 1113.