Privacy policy

Purpose and legal basis for processing

We offer solar pv energy and related products and services to the business community. Therefore, our collection of personal data is limited to the personal information of individuals representing our customers that will enable us to manage our commercial relationship with you. We explain this further within this notice.

We’ll collect various types of personal information from you, and more details about how we’ll use it are set out below.

We’ve indicated whether we need to process your personal information using a different number of asterisks, as follows:

• * to enter into and/or to perform a contract with you
• ** to pursue our legitimate interests, provided that your interests and fundamental rights don’t override those interests
• *** to enable us to comply with our legal obligations
• **** with your consent

How we’ll use your information

When you request a quote from us via [our website, or by email, or telephone], we’ll need to collect all the following information about your business to allow us to provide that quote**:

• First and last name
• Business name
• Postcode of your business
• Email address
• Telephone number
• Type of energy quote
• Meter point administration number (MPAN)
• Meter point reference number (MPRN)
• How much electricity and – you can provide this in pounds or kilowatts per year/6-monthly/quarterly/monthly
• What time of day it’s best to call you

Onboarding you as a business customer

If you join us as a customer, we’ll need to collect the following additional information about you. This will allow us to complete your onboarding process (including verifying your identity and carrying out a credit check)* and to provide the products or services you’ve requested from us*:

• Personal details – title, name, phone number, email address,
• Job title (where you’re representing a limited company)
• Contact and billing address(es)
• Business bank account details

Credit checking

During the customer onboarding process and while you have an account with us, we may use the above personal information to search the files of credit reference and fraud prevention agencies.

This is for the purposes of making decisions about your customer account, assessing your creditworthiness and product suitability, checking your identity, managing your account, tracing and recovering debts, and preventing criminal activity**/***.

Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) collect and maintain information about credit behaviour. This includes data sourced from the Electoral Register, fraud prevention, and credit information – including details of previous credit applications and your payment history. It also includes public information such as County Court Judgements and bankruptcies. CRAs will give us information about you, such as your financial history.

When any credit check is carried out on you, your credit records (along with those of any financially-associated individuals such as your spouse or partner when you’re a sole trader) will be searched. The CRA will keep a record of this search and place a “footprint” on your credit file.

The information we provide to CRAs about you (e.g. your payment history, details of false or inaccurate information you’ve provided, or if we suspect fraud), may be provided to other organisations and used by them to:

• Help make decisions e.g. when managing credit and credit-related accounts or facilities
• Detect and prevent crime, fraud and money laundering
• Check your credit history
• Verify your identity
• Trace your whereabouts
• Undertake research, statistical analysis and systems testing

Other uses of your information

We may also use your personal information in the following ways: To allow you to access your information directly through our portals*

• To carry out market research**
• To provide you with information about other products and services that we offer, or which we feel may be of interest to you, where permitted by law including via our social media and digital campaigns**/****
• To create statistics and analyse customer profiles to develop and improve our products and services**
• To carry out testing of our IT systems and to develop and improve our systems**
  For debt collection purposes**

Change of purpose

We’ll only use your personal information 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 we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we’ll usually notify you and explain the legal basis that allows us to do so.

Disclosure of your information

We may share your personal information with the third parties set out below for the purposes described:

• If you’ve consented, we’ll share your personal information with third parties who may be able to offer products and services different to our own****
• We may share your information with third parties so we can enhance the data we already hold, and to make sure we have your most up to date contact information*
• If we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal information to comply with any legal obligation***
• In the event that we transfer, sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may (where relevant) disclose your personal information to the prospective seller or buyer*
• If we, or substantially all of our assets, are acquired by a third party, in which case personal information we hold will be one of the transferred assets*
• To protect the rights, property or safety of us, our customers and others. This includes exchanging information with other organisations (e.g. credit reference, fraud and theft prevention agencies) for the purposes of reducing credit risk, fraud and energy theft**

We require all service providers and partners that we share your personal information with to respect the privacy and security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We don’t allow our third-party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes, and only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Most of the personal information we collect about you is based in the United Kingdom or, in some cases, a service provider or their sub-processor based elsewhere in the European Union (EU). This means they’re required to comply with European data protection law.

Storage of your personal information

We’ll only keep your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the relevant purpose(s) we collected it for, as set out above in this notice, and for as long as we’re required to keep it for legal purposes.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider:

• The amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information
• The potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information
• The purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means
• The applicable legal requirements

For example, by law and for tax purposes, we must keep basic information about our customers (including contact, identity, financial and transactional data) for six years after they cease being a customer.

In some circumstances:

• You can ask us to delete your personal information (see “Your rights”, below, for further details)
• We may anonymise your personal information (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

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent your personal information from being: accidentally lost; used or accessed in an unauthorised way; altered or disclosed.

In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know that information. They’ll only process your personal information on our instructions, and they’re subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have procedures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify you, and any applicable regulator, where appropriate.

Your rights

Data protection laws provide you with the following rights where we’re processing your personal information (but not in respect of information about a corporation) to request:

• Access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”) – enabling you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that were lawfully processing it
• Correction of the personal information that we hold about you – enabling you to make sure we correct any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you
• Erasure of your personal information – enabling you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there’s no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you’ve exercised your right to object to processing (see below)
• Restriction of processing your personal information – enabling you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you e.g. if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it
• A copy of your personal information which you’ve provided to us – we must comply using a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You also have the right to transfer it, or to require us to transfer it directly, to another controller

You also have the “right to object” to the processing of your personal information where we’re relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there’s something about your situation that means you want to object to processing on this basis. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

You won’t have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights above). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively in such circumstances, we may refuse to comply with the request.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and to make sure of your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to make sure that no personal information is disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

You can call the ICO on 0303 123 1113 or send a letter by post to: Information Commissioners Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Alternatively, you can email casework@ico.org.uk

However, if you’re considering an approach to the ICO, we’d appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns beforehand. Please contact us, as set out below.

Changes to our privacy notice

If we make any changes to our notice in the future, we’ll update our website and, where appropriate, notify you in writing.

Contacting us

If you have any queries, comments or requests regarding this notice, or you’d like to exercise any of your rights as set out above, you can contact us as follows:

Gerard Ennis, Managing Director.
The Low carbon energy company ltd
01282 421489
info@lowcarbonenergy.co