Privacy Policy

Introduction

Whyte & Barrie are committed to safeguarding the privacy of persons for whom we process Personal Data.

Whyte & Barrie is the trading name of WBCS (SCOTLAND) LIMITED – registered in Scotland with Company Number 423303 and having our HEAD OFFICE at: Suites 7&8, Waverley House, Caird Park, Hamilton, ML3 0QA.

This Privacy Policy explains how we will treat Personal Data processed by us, in accordance with data protection legislation, and with the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’).

Definitions:

• Personal Data – includes any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘Data Subject’) who can be identified, directly or indirectly by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.
• Processing – means any operation or set of operations which is performed on Personal Data or on sets of Personal Data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaption or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.
• Consent – (1) By consenting to this Privacy Notice you are giving us permission to process your Personal Data specifically for the purposes identified within this Privacy Notice.  (2) You have a right to withdraw your consent to our processing your Personal Data at any time, and we have outlined the requirements and process for doing so below.

1. What information we collect and where we collect it from.

We will only process such Personal Data which is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for processing.

Personal information we collect:

Typically, the type of information which Whyte & Barrie collect may include:

• Name
• Address and contact details, including postal, email and telephone
• Details of your representatives, professional advisers or agents as appropriate
• ID information e.g. passport, drivers licence
• Details necessary for payments both to and from you
• Employment details/status
• Financial data such as financial position, status and history, including bank details, credit rating and NI number
• Information obtained in the course of providing services to you, including letters, emails, conversation and other communications between Whyte & Barrie and you

We may process the following kinds of Personal Data from your visit to our website:

• information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website (including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths);
• your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website;
• information regarding referrers and exit points to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website;
• information that you provide to us by subscribing to our email notifications and/or newsletters (including your name and email address) (you can inform us at any time you no longer require our email notifications/ newsletter);
• information that you provide to us when using the services on our website, or
• that is generated by use of those services (including the timing, frequency and pattern of service use);
• information relating to any purchases you make of our services or
• any other transactions that you enter into through our website (including your name, address, telephone number and email address);
• information contained in or relating to any communication that you send to us or
• send through our website (including the communication content and metadata associated with the communication);
• information necessary to provide third parties with statistical information about our users;
• information required to deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to our website;
• information required to keep our website secure and prevent fraud;
• information required to verify compliance with the terms and conditions governing the use of our website (including monitoring private messages sent through our ‘Contact Us’ page on our website); and
• any other personal information that you choose to send to us

Where we collect personal information:

In the general conduct of our business as Chartered Surveyors, Property Consultants and Commercial Estate Agents information may be obtained, verbally, in writing, or provided using a standard form, over the internet, via email or by telephone but Whyte & Barrie collect only that information which is relevant to the services being provided by us:

• Directly from you
• From a relative or next of kin
• Organisations or other businesses that introduce you, including but not limited to your professional advisers, agent or representative, financial institutions, online platforms or introducers.
• Publicly available resources, including Government, Land or Police registers or any public register/agency
• Credit / Default Agencies
• Internet and social networking sites
• Title and search Agencies
• Intermediaries, professional advisers and representatives acting for you as a client
• Solicitors, Intermediaries, expert witnesses, courts, tribunals, adjudicators, arbiters or others whom we engage (or who have engaged us) in relation to products and services which we provide to you.
• Through consent to third parties disclosing information about you to us that they have collected
• We, our service providers and partners, collect certain information by using automated means, such as cookies and web beacons, when you interact with our advertisements, mobile applications, or visit our websites, pages or other digital assets. The information we collect in this manner may include: IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URLs and information on actions taken or interaction with our digital assets.
• We may use third-party web analytics services on our websites and any mobile apps, the analytics providers that administer these services use technologies such as cookies and web beacons to help us analyse how visitors use our websites and apps.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you disclose to us the Personal Data of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that Personal Data in accordance with this policy.  If we need to obtain Special Personal Data from you, other than as required by law, we will tell you why, and how the information will be used.

2. What purposes and how we use your information

• Providing and managing your account
• Supply of products and services to you.
• Conflict of interest checks
• To act as you Commercial Property Agents
• To act as your professional advisers
• Communicating with you
• Verification of identity
• Supplying you with information by email or post, which is relevant to your instruction or request to us e.g. Home Report provision, Valuations, Advice Reports etc.
• Providing information to your appointed (selling) agent, advisers or representatives, in accordance with your instructions
• Process payments / transactions including: Fees, accounting, invoicing, collection, complaints, credit checks and related dispute resolution activities
• Protect against and prevent fraud, unauthorised transactions, money laundering (please see below), tax evasion, claims, other liabilities and manage risk, integrity, compliance and security of business processes.
• Analysis of cookie and website data for improvement of website and search functionality
• Evaluate your interest in employment, contact you regarding possible employment opportunities, pre-employment checks and assessing employee suitability

Anti-Money Laundering

We are required to comply with certain regulations for example the “Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (referred to as “the Regulations).” Whyte and Barrie may be required to obtain certain information from you to comply with regulations. The information provided will only be used by Whyte & Barrie to comply with the Regulations and will not be shared with any other party unless we are required to do so under law.

Lawful basis of processing:

The legal basis for processing your personal data is your consent. In certain circumstances we may otherwise process your personal data if WBCS (SCOTLAND) LIMITED t/a Whyte & Barrie has a legitimate interest in doing so and WBCS (SCOTLAND) LIMITED t/a Whyte & Barrie is not infringing any of your rights and freedoms.

When WBCS (SCOTLAND) LIMITED t/a Whyte & Barrie processes your personal data for our legitimate interests, we will consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection and any other relevant law. Our legitimate business interests do not necessarily override your interests and we will not use your personal data in circumstances where your rights and freedoms are impacted unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law.

Your information may lawfully be used as follows:

• Performance of a contract: where you enter into a contract with, or instruct professional services provided by Whyte & Barrie and we need to process your information as part of this undertaking
• Legitimate interests: some information is processed by Whyte & Barrie in exercise of its legitimate interests which may include: fraud prevention, risk assessment, due diligence, network and information security, suppressions and managing opting out of communications, direct marketing, monitoring, web analytics, cloud storage, acquisitions, updating client/customer details, lettings, sales and other core products or services provided by the data controller.
• To ensure we have no CONFLICT OF INTEREST in accepting and processing your (or any other clients) instructions.
• Public interest: some information is processed in accordance public interest.
• Consent: where we process information under consent we will seek your clear and unambiguous consent prior to processing your data.

Disclosing Personal data:

We may disclose your Personal Data to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.

We contractually require service providers to safeguard the privacy and security of personal information they process on our behalf and authorise them to use or disclose the information only as necessary to perform services on our behalf or comply with legal requirements

We will not, without your express consent, supply your Personal Data to any third party for their or any other third party’s marketing purposes.

Any third party who we share your Personal Data with are obliged to keep your details securely and when no longer needed, to dispose of them in accordance with our approved procedures.

If we pass your Special Personal Data on to a third party, we will only do so once we have obtained your explicit consent unless we are required to do so by law.

Therefore, we may disclose your Personal Data:

• to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
• in connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;
• to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);
• to the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business; or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling.
• to relevant regulatory/public bodies, credit agencies, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC),
• we may share information about you, if required legally, to prevent harm or financial/reputation loss, for investigation of suspected or actual fraudulent or illegal activities.
• to prospective employers requesting references with your written consent
• to Landlords and landlord’s agents, sellers and seller’s agents, professional advisers or appointees in relation to the sale or lease of property.
• We may be required to provide personal data to comply with legal obligations, in the course of legal proceedings, to comply with a court order or on the instructions of a government body.

Except as provided in this policy, we will not provide your Personal Data to third parties without first obtaining your consent.

3. How long we keep your personal information

Retaining Personal Data:  Your information will not be kept for longer than necessary in relation to the purposes for which it has been provided.  Your personal information will only be held for as long as is legitimately required by Whyte & Barrie and to comply with best practise and/or legal requirement.

4. How your information will be stored

• We will store your information securely, protected by the GDPR.
• Personal Data that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.
• Unless we advise you otherwise, we will retain your Personal Data in accordance with legal requirements and best practice.
• We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information.
• We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall-protected) servers.

5. Internet Security/Websites

You must acknowledge that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

Third Party Websites – Our website may include hyperlinks to, and details of, third party websites.  We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies.  A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

• We use only persistent and session cookies on our website.
• Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies.
• Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.
• If you block cookies, you may not be able to use all the features on our website.
• You can delete cookies already stored on your computer.
• We also use Google Analytics on our website.

6. Updating Personal Data

You are responsible for letting us know if the Personal Data that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

7. Transfers of Personal Data

NEW OWNERSHIP:  If part or all the ownership of WBCS (SCOTLAND) LIMITED t/a Whyte & Barrie or any of its products or services are sold or transferred, your personal data will be transferred to the new owner but subject to the same protections, terms and conditions set out within this Privacy Policy.

THIRD COUNTRIES:  Whyte & Barrie do not trade out-with the UK but if we need to transfer Personal Data for processing to a Third Country (which is to say a country outside of the EU), we will only do so, where we have either:

• taken an adequacy decision;
• lawful binding corporate rules are in place;
• lawful model contract clauses are in place;
• we have obtained your specific consent to the proposed transfer, and you have been advised of the possible risks of such transfers;
• the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract between ourselves, or are part of the implementation of pre-contractual measures taken at your requests;
• the transfer is necessary for the conclusion or performance of a contract concluded in the interested of you, and us, and another party;
• the transfer is necessary for important reasons of public interest;
• the transfer is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; and / or
• the transfer is necessary to protect the vital interests of you or others, where you are physically or legally incapable of giving legal consent.

8. Your Rights and Choices

Your rights regarding the personal information we maintain about you enable you to exercise choices about what personal information we collect from you, how we use that information, and how we communicate with you.

You have the following rights regarding the Personal Data which we hold about you:

• right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you;
• right of rectification – you have a right to correct Personal Data that we hold about you that you think is inaccurate or incomplete;
• right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the Personal Data which we hold about you to be erased from our records;
• right to restriction of processing – in certain circumstances you have a right to restrict the processing of Personal Data;
• right of portability – you have a right to have the Personal Data we hold about you transferred to another organisation;
• right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing, such as direct marketing; and
• right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you have the right not to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling.
• If you would like Whyte & Barrie to delete, block or anonymise information we hold about you, you can contact us outlining what information you would like deleted, blocked or anonymised.
• To update your preferences, ask us to remove your information from our mailing lists or submit a request to access, update, correct or delete your personal information, please contact us as specified in the “How To Contact Us” section below.

Opting out of processing:

• You can opt out collection of personal information by automated means e.g. when visiting our website or visit third-party websites and interact with our adverts, by using the Cookie Consent tool displayed in the website (the browser you use may provide options on how to opt out of receiving certain types of cookies). However, without cookies you may not be able to use all the features and/or online services stated on the website.
• You can at any time tell us not to send you marketing communications by contacting Whyte & Barrie as indicated below.

Withdrawal of consent:

• If we obtain your information by consent you have the right to withdraw any consent you previously provided to us.
• If we process your information under legitimate interest you can object at any time on legitimate grounds, to the processing of your personal information.
• The right to consent removal may be limited in some circumstances by legal reasons and you will be informed appropriately.

9. Complaints Procedure and Right to Legal Redress

• If we refuse your request under rights of access as stated above, we will provide you with a reason why.
• If you wish to make a complaint about how your Personal Data is being processed by us, or any third party on our behalf, we would be grateful if you would in the first instance contact our Data Protection Officer (currently Mr. Scott Cameron) at our HEAD OFFICE stated above, who will make every effort to resolve your issue to your satisfaction.
• You also have the right to complain directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office: www.ico.org.uk and seek other legal remedies.

Contact Us / Complaints and Feedback

To make a complaint about a breach of your personal information, applicable privacy laws / principles or to raise a concern about Whyte & Barrie privacy practices or, if you would like access and/or to update information or preferences you provided to us

Our Contact Details:

Whyte & Barrie is the trading name of WBCS (SCOTLAND) LIMITED – registered in Scotland with Company Number 423303.

POST:  HEAD OFFICE at: Suites 7&8, Waverley House, Caird Park, Hamilton, ML3 0QA

TELEPHONE: 01698 891400

E-MAIL: administrator@wbcs.co.uk

DATA PROTECTION OFFICER: Scott Cameron – tel: 01698891400

WEBSITE: Owned and operated by Whyte & Barrie

This Policy is generally available to clients / customers / employees and third parties.