Privacy Policy - Millwall Carpet Cleaners

This Privacy Policy explains how Millwall Carpet Cleaners collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects personal data when providing carpet cleaning and related services. It applies to all Millwall Carpet Cleaners customers in our service area, including prospective customers, current customers, and former customers who have interacted with us in connection with a booking, quotation, enquiry, or service visit.

1. Who We Are

Millwall Carpet Cleaners is a professional carpet cleaning service provider that processes personal data in order to deliver services, manage customer relationships, maintain records, and meet legal and regulatory obligations. We are committed to handling personal information in a lawful, fair, and transparent manner in line with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

2. Personal Data We Collect

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

Identity details such as your name and title.
Contact details including address, email address, and telephone number.
Service information such as booking details, property access notes, service preferences, and cleaning requirements.
Payment information such as payment status, transaction records, and invoicing details. We do not store more payment data than is necessary to complete and record the transaction.
Communication records including emails, messages, call notes, complaints, and feedback.
Technical and usage data if you interact with our digital systems, such as IP address, device type, browser type, and basic analytics information.
Special category data only where it is necessary and you provide it, for example if you voluntarily share information about allergies, health concerns, or access needs that may affect the safe delivery of services.

We aim to collect only the information that is relevant and necessary for the service requested. We do not intentionally collect more data than we need.

3. How We Use Personal Data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

To provide quotations and schedule services.
To carry out carpet cleaning and related work.
To manage customer accounts and service records.
To communicate about bookings, arrival times, service updates, and follow-up matters.
To issue invoices, process payments, and maintain financial records.
To handle complaints, refunds, or service disputes.
To improve our services, training, quality control, and customer experience.
To comply with legal obligations, such as tax and accounting requirements.
To protect our business, staff, customers, and property from fraud, misuse, or other unlawful activity.

Where we rely on a lawful basis other than consent, we will explain this where appropriate. Consent is not our only lawful basis, and in many cases we process data because it is necessary to perform a contract or comply with legal obligations.

4. Lawful Basis for Processing

We process personal data under one or more of the following lawful bases:

a) Contract

We process data when it is necessary to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, or to perform a contract with you. This includes managing bookings, delivering cleaning services, and handling payments related to the service.

b) Legal Obligation

We may process and retain data where we must do so to meet legal requirements, including tax, accounting, insurance, record-keeping, and consumer law obligations.

c) Legitimate Interests

We may process data where it is necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, provided your interests and rights do not override those interests. This may include managing customer enquiries, improving service quality, preventing fraud, safeguarding property, and maintaining internal administration.

d) Consent

In limited circumstances, we rely on your consent, for example where you choose to provide optional information or agree to certain non-essential communications. You may withdraw consent at any time, but this will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.

5. Data Retention

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. Retention periods may vary depending on the type of data and the reason it is processed.

Customer and service records are normally retained for a period necessary to manage the customer relationship and resolve any follow-up issues.
Financial and transaction records are retained for the period required by accounting and tax laws.
Communication records may be kept for a reasonable period to respond to enquiries, handle disputes, and improve service.
Job notes and property access information are retained only as long as needed for service delivery and related administration.

When personal data is no longer required, we will securely delete, anonymise, or otherwise dispose of it. Retention is reviewed periodically to ensure that data is not kept longer than necessary.

6. Processors and Sharing of Data

We may share personal data with trusted third parties that act as processors on our behalf or, in some cases, as independent controllers. These may include:

Payment service providers for processing card or online payments.
Accounting and bookkeeping providers for financial administration and tax compliance.
IT and system providers that support email, scheduling, storage, communication, or customer management systems.
Professional advisers such as accountants, insurers, legal advisers, or auditors.
Public authorities or regulators where disclosure is required by law.

Any processor we use is selected carefully and must provide appropriate safeguards for personal data. We require processors to handle data only on our instructions, to maintain confidentiality, and to implement suitable technical and organisational security measures. We do not sell your personal data.

7. International Transfers

If personal data is transferred outside the UK, we will ensure that appropriate legal safeguards are in place. These may include adequacy regulations, standard contractual clauses, or equivalent protection measures where required. We take steps to ensure that any cross-border transfer is compliant and secure.

8. Data Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against accidental loss, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. These measures may include access controls, secure storage, staff confidentiality obligations, and limited access to customer information. Although no system is completely secure, we continually review our practices to protect your information.

9. Your Rights

Under data protection law, you have several rights in relation to your personal data. These rights may apply depending on the circumstances and the legal basis for processing:

Right of access – you can request confirmation of whether we process your data and obtain a copy of it.
Right to rectification – you can ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
Right to erasure – you can request deletion of your data in certain situations.
Right to restriction – you can ask us to limit processing in certain cases.
Right to object – you can object to processing based on legitimate interests or direct marketing.
Right to data portability – you can request that certain data be provided in a structured, commonly used format where applicable.
Right to withdraw consent – where we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office if you believe your data protection rights have been infringed. We encourage you to contact us first so we can try to resolve any concerns directly and promptly.

10. Automated Decision-Making

We do not typically use fully automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects for customers. If this changes in the future, we will update this policy and provide any required information about the logic involved, the significance, and your rights.

11. Children’s Data

Our services are intended for adults arranging cleaning services for residential or commercial premises. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected such data without a valid legal basis, we will take appropriate steps to delete it.

12. 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 updated version will apply from the date it is published or otherwise communicated. We encourage customers to review this policy periodically so they remain informed about how their data is handled.

13. Summary of Key Principles

We collect only the personal data needed to provide and manage our services.
We process data on lawful bases including contract, legal obligation, legitimate interests, and consent where appropriate.
We retain data only for as long as necessary and then delete or anonymise it securely.
We use processors carefully and require them to protect your data.
We respect your rights and will respond to valid requests in line with applicable law.

Millwall Carpet Cleaners is committed to responsible data handling and to protecting the privacy of every customer in our area. Your trust matters to us, and we aim to process personal data with care, transparency, and respect.