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Privacy Policy

Introduction

Welcome to AHR’s privacy notice.

AHR respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Please use the Glossary below to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy notice.

Important information and who we are

Purpose of this privacy notice
This privacy notice aims to give you information on how AHR collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide to us through this website when you sign up to our newsletter, when you take our services as a client or if you work with us as a supplier.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

Controller
AHR Group Limited is part of a group of different legal entities which includes AHR Management Services LLP, AHR Group Limited, AHR Building Consultancy Ltd and AHR Architects Ltd (and, for the purposes of this Policy, the aforementioned entities are referred to in this Policy as “AHR Group”). This privacy notice is issued on behalf of the AHR Group (as previously defined) so when we mention "AHR", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy notice, we are referring to the relevant company in the AHR Group responsible for processing your data. AHR Group Limited is the controller and responsible for this website.

We have appointed a group to be responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the Privacy Team using the details set out below.

Contact details
Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: AHR Group Limited (company number 4364250)
Group responsible for data privacy: Privacy Team
Email address:hello@ahr.co.uk
Postal address: Personal data enquiries should be directed to Privacy Team, AHR Group Limited, Norwich Union House, High Street, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD1 2LF, United Kingdom.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy notice and your duty to inform us of changes
This version was introduced 9 July 2024 and historic versions can be obtained by contacting us.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together follows:

Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier (should we introduce a login area on our website), marital status, title, date of birth and gender

  • Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier (should we introduce a login area on our website), marital status, title, date of birth and gender
  • Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
  • Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us or products or services we have bought from you.
  • Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data (should we introduce a login area on our website), browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, page views and visit lengths, website navigation paths, referral source, pattern of website use, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
  • Profile Data includes your username and password (should we introduce a login area on our website), purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
  • Usage Data includes information about how you use our website and services.
  • Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We may also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with our services). In this case, we may have to cancel a service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

  • Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
    • contact us to discuss or explore our services;
    • create an account on our website (should we introduce a login area on our website);
    • take any service from us;
    • request marketing to be sent to you; or
    • give us some feedback.
  • Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.
  • Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
    • Technical Data from analytics providers such as Google based outside the UK.
    • Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services.
    • Identity and Contact Data from publicly availably sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the UK.

How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you or in order to take particular steps at your request prior to entering into a contract.
  • Where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
  • Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

See “Lawful Basis” in the Glossary below to find out more about the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Please refer to page 6 of the attached policy to view the table

Marketing
We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. We have established the following personal data control mechanisms:

Promotional contact from us
We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which services, events and general information may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have consented to such or if you have requested information from us or purchased services from us and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third-party marketing
We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any company outside the AHR group of companies for marketing purposes.

Opting out
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 message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of taking a service from us or other transactions between us.

Cookies
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy.

Change of purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table above.

  • “Internal Third Parties” as set out in the Glossary below.
  • “External Third Parties” as set out in the Glossary below.
  • Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

We may share your personal data within the AHR Group of companies within the UK.

Many of our external third parties are based outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

  • We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the UK.
  • Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific standard contractual terms approved for use in the UK which give the transferred personal data the same protection as it has in the UK.
  • Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the UK-US data bridge (via the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the UK and the US.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal and other requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our clients and suppliers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being clients or suppliers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request Erasure below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out under “Your Legal Rights” below, please contact us.

No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights).

However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Glossary


Lawful Basis
Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

Third Parties

Internal Third Parties
Other companies in the AHR Group of companies acting as joint controllers or processors and who are based in the UK and provide similar services to AHR Group Limited and IT and system administration services.

External Third Parties

  • Service providers acting as processors based in the UK who provide IT and system administration services.
  • Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in the United Kingdom who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
  • Contractors acting as processors with whom we may need to share personal data in connection with the delivery of our services to clients.
  • Recipients of award/tender submissions acting as processors, where we may need to include details of contractors in such submissions.


Your Legal Rights
You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for that particular use of your data and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services or aspects of our services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.