Privacy policy

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives more rights to you as an individual and more obligations to organisations holding your personal data.

One of the rights is a right to be informed, which means we have to give you information about the way in which we use, share and store your personal information.

This is the privacy statement for Stewart Milne Group and its subsidiary companies. Please read it carefully. You use this site and agree to communicate with us if you agree with this Privacy Statement.

We are committed to protecting you and your family’s personal data and information. This policy applies to any personal information or “personally identifiable data” that we collect from you and how we look after it.

Please read this policy carefully. By using any of our websites, and any services we offer via our websites, you are agreeing to the processing of your data as set out below. 

We are committed to safeguarding your personal information and we comply with all data protection laws including:

• The Data Protection Act 1998; 
• GDPR - General Data Protection Regulations; and
• Any regulations made under or to supplement either of the above, relating to the personal information that we collect about you.

We may collect personal information:

• If you visit any of our offices or developments.
• If you visit/access one of our websites and complete any of our website forms for a service request.
• If you contact us by telephone, email, SMS, letter or any other form of messaging.
• If you access information about our developments and/or new homes via a third-party provider, such as a property portal e.g. Rightmove or others.
• Whenever you enter into any transaction with us, whether it’s in person or any other way.
• If you request information from us with a view to entering into a transaction with us.  If you are purchasing or thinking about purchasing a home from us, or if you ask us to contact you with properties/developments that may be of interest to you we may gather additional information. Whenever we do this, we will tell you why we are collecting this information and how we will use it. 

Information we may collect from you could include:

• Name
• Email address
• Postal address
• Telephone or mobile number

As well as information about:

• Your use of our website.
• The purpose of your visit to our website or the reason you made contact with us.

This policy also covers our use of any of your personal information, whether provided to us in person, over the phone, via email, SMS or any social messaging, via website forms, property portals or in other correspondence. 
 

Requests for additional information

Queries via social media

Our social media pages, such as Twitter and Facebook, are monitored by a third-party company. They pass any customer queries, questions or complaints onto the most appropriate person in our team, so that we can respond accordingly.

IP addresses

When someone visits any of our websites,

www.stewartmilnehomes.com 
www.stewartmilnetimbersystems.com
www.stewartmilne.com or
www.countesswells.com

We routinely share personal information with:

• Third parties we use to help deliver our services, e.g. IT service providers such as hosting service providers, marketing and messaging platform providers and suppliers used to help us organise and run events
• Our professional services advisers (such as a lawyers, accountants and auditors)
• Google Analytics – we work with Google Analytics to automatically collect information including: IP address; MAC (Media Access Control) address; unique identifier or other persistent or non-persistent device identifier; device software platform and firmware, mobile phone carrier and geo location data to help us understand your use of our website such as how often you return, what parts of the website you visit, how you use the website and how long you spend on the website. This third party provider is prohibited from using our data for any other purposes. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html to read the Google Analytics Privacy Policy. We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal information. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your personal information to provide services to us and to you.
• We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
• We may also need to share some personal information with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.

CCTV and call monitoring 

Some of our developments and Sales Offices use CCTV to make sure we provide a safe and secure environment for all visitors to our premises and to ensure the protection of our employees and property.  

Stewart Milne currently do not employ call monitoring or recording. This policy will be updated to reflect any change in this setup.

We do not sell customer’s personal data to third parties and will only use your personal information to provide you with details of our own products, properties or developments which we believe will be of interest to you. In addition, we may use your information to:

Contact you. If you have indicated a specific interest in a property/development, or a particular area in which we have properties/developments available.

Provide a relevant service. If you have contacted us for a specific purpose or accessed our services by completing a website form and not opted out, we’ll take into account your perceived preferences for a specific property type or development. In the event that you do not wish to receive this personalised service, you can unsubscribe from our emails at any time or contact us to remove you.

Improve our service. We provide information to third parties for research and analytical purposes, so that we can improve the services we offer you.  

Any personal information given to us for a specific use or purpose will not be used for any other purpose without your notification and (where appropriate) permission.

We may contact you:

For legitimate purposes aligned with our contract.

In relation to a previous communication from you. This includes any comment or complaint concerning us, our services, properties or developments, or any previous contact we may have had with you.

If you requested further information or signed up to a product, property or development, whether directly through us or via a third-party provider, such as a property portal.

If you have expressed an interest in a specific product, property or development. 

To provide you with additional information concerning a specific property/development, type of property/ development or similar properties/developments to those in which you have expressed an interest.

For marketing purposes if you have chosen to receive a service from us by completing one of our website forms and not opted out, in accordance with this policy, see section 6. 

We will only contact you for marketing purposes, via email, SMS or phone, if you have agreed to this or where you have requested a service from us and not opted out.  You can easily unsubscribe from any of those sources at any time.

We will deem a service request to be any of the following:

• Arrange a visit– to request a viewing. In this instance we will call you to arrange a suitable time for an appointment for you to visit one of our developments.
• Mortgage Assistance – If you would like to use the service of an independent financial advisor.
• Request a brochure – when you request to download a brochure of one of our developments.
• Future Developments – When you want to be kept up to date with a future development we will keep that information and contact you by the method you have selected.

Information emails/SMS/phone calls

We offer regular information by emails, telephone and SMS communications concerning our properties and developments.

Tailoring our service to you

We may personalise our communications with you based on the information you provide to us and the information we obtain when you use our platforms.

Third parties

We do not allow the information we hold about you to be used for advertising purposes or contact from third parties. However, if you show an interest in a specific property/development or type of property/development via a third-party website, such as a property portal, this is outside of our remit – we have no control over who else can contact you.

Your information will be kept private and confidential, except where we are obliged/permitted to share it with third parties by law (e.g. Government bodies, law enforcement agencies and similar).

We will retain your information within Stewart Milne Group, except :-

• Where you have requested that we share the information with you or have given your permission.
• Where you have requested to use an Independent Financial Advisor for Mortgage purposes.
• To fulfil our contractual obligations to you: In connection with any property you are in the course of purchasing or have purchased from us, or which you had previously sought to purchase from us. This could include: 
• For the purposes of carrying out a survey in relation to your experience with us.
• Where you have agreed for a subcontractor to carry out work to a property which you have purchased.
• For statistical or similar analysis in relation to purchase or use of our properties, products or any service we provide.

When you enter into a contract with us, we will be clear, the purposes for which we may use your personal information in order to fulfil our contract with you.

This depends on why we have stored your information, or the amount of time set out in the contract you enter into with us. 

• Purchasing a property: If you enter into a contract with us to purchase a property, we will hold your information for a maximum of 11 years from the date of completion of that purchase.
• If you contact us: If you contact us regarding any of our properties/developments or types of property/developments or the services we provide – whether we receive such contact directly from you or via a third party – we will retain your personal information until whichever of the below happens first: 
• You request that we delete it: We will need to retain a record of your request to be deleted.
• A maximum period of 2 years: From the date that you last made contact with us - directly or via a third-party - in relation to any of our properties or developments.

We will use all reasonable efforts to all information in our possession which constitutes, in our reasonable opinion, personal data belonging to you.

Deletion of personal data “Right to be forgotten”

It is your right to request the deletion of your personal data from our records, except (as explained above) if it is necessary for us to perform our legal obligations or contractual obligations to you or another third party.

Keeping your details accurate 

You have the right to ask us to rectify any personal data we hold about you which is inaccurate or incomplete.

Sending a request

A request for the deletion or correction of personal data should addressed to: datacontroller@stewartmilne.com

What do we do?

Within reason, we will aim to make anonymous and/or delete any of the personal data which we hold in relation to you.  It is in the nature of digital or computer records that we cannot guarantee that every trace or record of your personal data will be removed, but we will delete it as far as it is reasonably possible for us to do so.

Third Party 

If you wish to be deleted from or want to ensure your details are accurate with any third-party owned platform, such as a property portal, you will need to contact them directly. These third party websites have their own privacy policies, and are also likely to use cookies, and we therefore advise you to review them.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the right to request a copy of any personal information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. 

To process your request we will require you to prove your identify. Where the request is reasonable we will provide the information to you within 40 days of whichever of the following comes last:

• The date of submission of your request.
• Establishment of your identity using passport, driving licence card or other photo id.

Please note, if we have previously established your identity and it matches the information you provide, this may be sufficient for the purposes of actioning your request.  If you have not previously provided us with identification, then we may require you to provide copy documentation of the examples listed above in order to process your request. 

The amount we charge and the period of time in which we are able to action your request may alter by law. If so, this policy will be amended. 

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your computer (or other electronic device) when you access our website. 

Why do we use cookies?

• To recognise you whenever you visit our website (this speeds up your access to the website as you do not have to log in each time);
• To obtain information about your preferences, online movements and use of the internet;
• To carry out research and statistical analysis to help improve our content; and
• To make your online experience more efficient and enjoyable.

In most cases we will need your consent in order to use cookies on this website. The exception is where the cookie is essential in order for us to provide you with a service you have requested.

If you visit our website when your browser is set to accept cookies, we will interpret this as an indication that you consent to our use of cookies and other similar technologies as described in this website cookie policy. If you change your mind in the future about letting us use cookies, you can modify the settings of your browser to reject cookies or disable cookies completely.

Information about other websites

We cannot control any information concerning websites other than those operated by us. You must refer to those websites for their terms and conditions and privacy policies.

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behavior and their devices (in particular device's IP address (captured and stored only in anonymized form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), preferred language used to display our website). Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymized user profile. 
Neither Hotjar nor we will ever use this information to identify individual users or to match it with further data on an individual user. For further details, please see Hotjar’s privacy policy by clicking on this link. You can opt-out to the creation of a user profile, Hotjar’s storing of data about your usage of our site and Hotjar’s use of tracking cookies on other websites by following this opt-out link.

We may make changes and update our privacy and cookies policy from time to time and in accordance with updated legislation. Any such changes will be shown here as part of our privacy and cookies policy and will apply from the date that they are published.  We are unable to contact you directly to inform you of these changes.

Any contact you wish to make with us concerning this policy or how it works in practice should be directed to datacontroller@stewartmilne.com. Please either write using the email address provided, or via post to our registered office:

Stewart Milne Group
Peregrine House, Mosscroft Avenue
Westhill Business Park, Westhill
Aberdeen, AB32 6JQ