Privacy Policy

Who is this privacy notice for

This Privacy Notice applies to information we collect about customers and businesses who interact with Gold Standard Pest Solutions Ltd (Gold SPS), whether that be contracting our services, receiving our newsletter or interacting with us on social media platforms. It explains what personal information may be collected and how we use it. 

Who we are

We are Gold Standard Pest Solutions Ltd. A UK-based registered company (registration number 11385907) specialising in pest, bird & wildlife management.  We are committed to delivering fast and effective pest solutions across all sectors, protecting the health and wellbeing of our customers. All the while, seeking to care for the environment.

We are also committed to protecting personal data shared with us and complying with data protection law to its fullest extent. This Privacy Notice explains how we use and protect personal information, to show that we are adhering to the DPA 2018 and UK GDPR, and the Privacy and E-Communications Regulations in respect of marketing compliance.

The DPA 2018 and UK GDPR requires every organisation that processes personal information to be registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Our registration number ZB917159 and you can find us on the Information Commissioner’s register and search for us by using our registration number.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about how your personal information is used, please contact our Director, Wendy Jarvis, by email at: office@goldsps.co.uk

Our address is: Old Friary, Hook Green Road, Southfleet, Gravesend, Kent, DA13 9NQ

Personal Information

What Personal Information do we collect about you and how can we use this lawfully

The following sections explain the types of data we collect and the legal basis, under current data protection legislation, on which this data is processed. Most of the information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:

• Service Enquiries
• Tendering or pricing a survey
• Contracting our pest management services
• Reporting issues for investigation
• Administering your account with us
• Invoicing and financial transactions
• Responding to any concerns or complaints
• Collecting client reviews to evaluate and promote our services
• Sending you relevant and proportionate marketing content
• Limited analytics on our web traffic
• Legal compliance and financial audit purposes
• Recruitment

Service enquiry – If you enquire about our services, as a residential customer, we will collect your name, email address, telephone number (mobile and landline if you have one), and your postal address. Occasionally, our customers may disclose health information in relation to the products we use, but we do not record these disclosures.

If you are a business customer, we will collect the organisation you work for, your name and contact details (phone and email), and the location of the premises needing our services.

This will be collected either via the website, email or telephone depending on your preferred contact method. As it is necessary for us to collect that data to enable us to respond to your enquiry in the way you would expect we have a legitimate interest to process that data. You can request for your information to be deleted at any time, however we might not be able to provide you with our services or a reply if you request deletion of your information.

Service Commissioning – If you commission our services, we will be entering into a contractual relationship with you and this is our legal basis for processing your information. We will collect any organisational details; contact details and any details of contacts you provide us with to enable us to fulfil our contractual obligations towards you.

We also will process limited financial details for the purpose of invoicing and financial transactions.

After engaging our services we may send you a short feedback form. The information you provide will only be used to improve our services and, where you have agreed, to promote our services to potential customers via our website, social media channels and platforms such as Check-a-trade.

Sub-Contractors – As a BPCA Approved Contractor who we may commission to provide a service on our behalf, we will collect your name, contact details and bank details for invoice processing. In these instances, we are entering into a Contractual relationship with you when we issue the relevant Purchase Order for services.

Recruitment – Where we advertise and recruit new employees, we will collect your name and contact details, previous employment details (including references) and where appropriate, relevant qualifications. Where declared, we may collect health information in order to make any required reasonable adjustment for interview purposes. For recruitment purposes we are reliant on the processing being both in our legitimate interest (hiring employees) and to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract – in this instance a contract of employment.

Website traffic analytics – We use Google Analytics to monitor website traffic. This helps us understand how you interact with our websites, measure the effectiveness of our websites and improve user experience. When you accept cookies on our sites you are consenting to the cookie being deployed. We consider it is our legitimate interest to understand the nature of your engagement if you accept cookies.

Types of information

The types of information that we may collect or hold about you are:

• Where you have contracted our services, we will hold your contact details including your name, email address, and phone number (mobile and occasionally landline)
• Where it differs from the billing address, we may hold the premises address for a eradication service
• For service enquiries, we will simply hold your name, email address, and phone number
• For marketing and newsletter purposes we may hold your name, contact details including email, and communication preferences
• For recruitment purposes we may hold your CV including your personal contact details, your career history and any declared health issues.
• We cannot identify individuals from our web analytics data, although Google Analytics does capture such aspects as date and time of visits, pages visited and scrolled, and outbound clicks.

Sources of information
Your information may be sourced directly from you or a business representative when you contact us. This information will be captured from enquiries, requests for services details and responses to advertised vacancies.

Legal basis for communications
Where we send marketing emails, we will only contact you:

(a) where you are a business and our services may be of specific relevance to you (Legitimate Interest); or

(b) where you have signed up to our newsletter (Consent)

You may unsubscribe at any time via the link at the bottom of any marketing email from us, or by contacting: officer@goldsps.co.uk

Who may we share your information with

We, like many businesses, work in partnership with a number of third-party suppliers:

Partner	Purpose	Location
Service Tracker	Provision of CRM services to us	Service tracker is hosted and delivered by Force.com. Force.com, is part of the Salesforce Platform, and hosts its data—including Service Tracker—in Salesforce’s global cloud infrastructure. For our data Saleforce use UK based servers. Their Privacy notice is here.
Xero	Accounting software	Xero are our accounting software and payroll service providers. Xero are based in New Zealand but have dedicated servers and offices in the EU for EU and UK based users. Their privacy notice is here.
AJ Accounting Services	Audit and Management Accounting	AJ Accounting are a Kent based accounting and business advisory service, who provide a variety of taxation and management accounting services to us.
Recruitment	BPHR	We partner with BPHR consultancy services to support our recruitment processes.  Their privacy policy is here.

 

Outside of our contracted suppliers we will only share your information where we may be legally required to do so.

How long we keep your data
We take the principles of data minimisation seriously and ensure that we only ever ask for the minimum amount of data for the associated purpose and delete that data once it is no longer required.

• XERO, as our accounting platform, defaults to a seven-year retention period for financial transactional data.
• As a contractor, we will retain your engagement details for seven years for financial and audit purposes.
• As a customer who receives marketing information from us, we will hold your information in perpetuity. If you unsubscribe from our marketing emails, we will retain limited details in order to suppress further contact with you.
• As someone who is successfully recruited to join us, your information is transferred to our personnel files and will be retained for the duration of your employment plus six years. We will keep the details of unsuccessful candidates for a maximum of one year.

Security

We ensure that your contact information is kept safe and secure and have appropriate technical and organisational security measures are in place to protect the limited amount of identifiable data that we do hold.

Where we outsource data processing e.g. to Service Tracker, we ensure that robust and appropriate contracts are in place and of course, we excel at exacting rigorous due diligence on our suppliers.

Rights you have over your data

You have a number of rights under UK data protection law. These are listed below, along with our contact details, should you wish to make a request. 

• Informed: You have the right to be informed about how we handle your personal data.  This privacy statement is one of the ways we do this.
• Access: You have the right to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you and the purposes for which we are using it. ‘Personal data’ is any information which can directly, or indirectly, identify you.
• Rectification: You have the right to ask us to change any details that we hold which are incorrect, inaccurate or need updating.
• Erasure (known as the ‘right to be forgotten’): You have the right to ask us to delete your personal details under certain circumstances. We will assess any deletion request on a case-by-case basis. If you subscribe to our email list, we can quickly fulfil your request, but in other circumstances there may be reasons why we need to keep information about you. 
• Object: You have the absolute right to object to receiving direct marketing from us.  You also have the right to raise an objection about how we are handling your personal information.
• Restriction: You have the right to ask us to restrict or suppress your personal information. This would mean we’d store it but not use it.
• Portability: You have the right to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services.  Due to the nature of our organisation, we do not believe this right is likely to apply.

You also have the right to make a complaint if you believe we have not handled your information appropriately. We would prefer that you contact us in the first instance so we can discuss your concerns and put things right, but you also have the right to escalate your concerns at any time to the UK Regulator (The Information Commissioner) by contacting them here  

If you would like to access the rights listed above, or any other legal rights you have over your data under current legislation, please get in touch with us by emailing at: office@goldsps.co.uk

Marketing

E-mail campaigns and newsletters

Gold SPS issues periodic newsletters to customers and businesses who have engaged with us or signed up to our newsletter. Business to business marketing does not require explicit consent provided the content of the communication is relevant to the recipient.

Recipients may unsubscribe at any time by simply hitting the unsubscribe link in the email.

Social Media Advertising

Gold SPS do not undertake paid advertising on social media platforms, although you may come across us naturally in your newsfeed as we post regularly about our products, services and exhibition attendance.

Cookies

Our site uses very few cookies, but we do utilise Google Analytics to track engagement with our websites. We will always ask for your Consent before deploying non-essential cookies to your devices.

Our promise to you:

• We will keep your information secure and confidential.
• We do not spam you with marketing although we do send business to business marketing emails from time to time – you are in control of how we communicate with you – you can opt in or out or change your preferences at any time through the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any marketing email received.
• We will not sell your data to a third party.
• We will not share your data with a third party save for our contracted suppliers and sub-contractors in order to fulfil a service.
• We know how to manage your information appropriately and in line with legal and regulatory requirements.