Privacy Policy - Croydon Carpet Cleaners

This Privacy Policy explains how Croydon Carpet Cleaners collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects personal data. It applies to all Croydon Carpet Cleaners customers in our service area, including anyone who books, enquires about, or receives carpet cleaning, upholstery cleaning, stain removal, rug cleaning, or related services from us. We are committed to handling personal information in a lawful, fair, and transparent way in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

By using our services, you acknowledge that we may process your personal data as described in this Policy.

1. Information We Collect

We collect only the information we need to provide our services, manage our business, and comply with legal obligations. Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect the following categories of personal data:

Identity details such as your name.
Contact details such as your address, telephone number, and email address.
Service details such as the type of cleaning requested, property access notes, preferred appointment times, and any instructions relevant to the service.
Payment details where needed to process payments, refunds, or invoices.
Communication records including messages, call notes, complaints, and feedback.
Technical information if you interact with our digital systems, such as basic device or browser data, where relevant for security or system performance.
Special category data only if you voluntarily provide it and only where it is necessary, for example information about allergies, sensitivities, or health conditions that affect cleaning products or service delivery.

We do not intentionally collect more data than is necessary. If you provide information about another person, you must ensure you have the right to share it with us.

2. How We Use Personal Data

We use personal data for the following purposes:

To provide quotes and arrange appointments.
To deliver carpet cleaning and related services safely and effectively.
To manage customer relationships and respond to queries.
To process payments and maintain accounting records.
To handle complaints, service issues, and follow-up work.
To maintain business records and improve service quality.
To comply with legal, tax, insurance, and regulatory obligations.
To protect our business, staff, customers, and property.

We do not sell your personal data. We only use your information for legitimate business purposes and in line with the principles of data minimisation and purpose limitation.

3. Lawful Basis for Processing

Under data protection law, we must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. The lawful bases we rely on are:

Contract

We process your data when it is necessary to perform a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. This includes providing quotes, arranging appointments, completing cleaning services, and issuing invoices.

Legal Obligation

We process some data where we are required to do so by law, including tax, accounting, fraud prevention, and record-keeping requirements.

Legitimate Interests

We may process data where it is necessary for our legitimate interests, provided your interests and rights do not override those interests. This may include managing bookings, improving our services, keeping business records, preventing misuse, and handling customer communications. When relying on legitimate interests, we consider the nature of the data, the purpose of the processing, and the impact on your privacy.

Consent

Where we process special category data or send optional marketing communications, we will rely on your consent if required. You may withdraw consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.

4. Data Retention

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, and to meet legal, accounting, or reporting obligations. Retention periods vary depending on the type of data and the reason for processing.

Customer service and booking records are generally retained for a period necessary to manage ongoing relationships and resolve queries.
Financial and tax records are retained for the period required by law.
Complaint and communication records may be kept for a reasonable period to support service quality and dispute handling.
Consent-based data is kept only while consent remains valid or until it is no longer needed.

When data is no longer required, we will delete it securely or anonymise it so that it can no longer be linked to an identifiable person.

5. Processors and Data Sharing

We may share personal data with trusted third parties who act as processors on our behalf. These processors only handle your data according to our instructions and are required to protect it appropriately. Examples may include:

Payment service providers who process card or electronic payments.
Accounting and bookkeeping providers who help us manage invoices, receipts, and statutory records.
IT and cloud service providers who support data storage, email systems, or operational tools.
Customer communication providers who help us manage messages or service updates.
Professional advisers such as insurers, lawyers, or auditors where necessary.

We may also disclose personal data if required by law, a court order, a regulator, or to protect our rights, customers, staff, or property. All processors are selected carefully and must meet appropriate data protection and security standards.

6. Data Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal data from unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration, or disclosure. These measures may include access controls, secure storage, staff confidentiality requirements, and restricted data sharing. While no system can be guaranteed completely secure, we work to reduce risk and review our safeguards regularly.

7. International Transfers

If any processor stores or accesses data outside the United Kingdom, we ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place, such as approved transfer mechanisms and contractual protections, so your data remains protected to UK GDPR standards.

8. Your Rights

You have a number of rights under data protection law. These rights may apply depending on the circumstances and the legal basis for processing:

Right of access – to request a copy of your personal data.
Right to rectification – to ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
Right to erasure – to request deletion of your data in certain circumstances.
Right to restriction – to ask us to limit how we use your data in certain cases.
Right to object – to object to processing based on legitimate interests.
Right to data portability – to receive certain data in a structured, commonly used format.
Right to withdraw consent – where processing is based on consent.

Please note that some rights may be limited where we need to keep data for legal, contractual, or legitimate business reasons.

9. Children’s Data

Our services are intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children unless it is necessary in the context of a service and provided by a parent, guardian, or authorised adult. If we learn that we have collected data from a child without appropriate authority, we will take steps to delete it where required.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in law, our services, or our data handling practices. Any updated version will apply from the date it is published or otherwise made available. We encourage customers to review this Policy periodically to stay informed about how we protect personal data.

11. Summary of Our Approach

In short: we only collect the data we need, we process it for clear and lawful purposes, we keep it for no longer than necessary, we use trusted processors where required, and we respect your privacy rights. Our aim is to handle customer information responsibly, transparently, and in a way that meets the standards expected under data protection law.

This Privacy Policy applies to all Croydon Carpet Cleaners customers in our area and is designed to support lawful, fair, and secure handling of personal information.