JW Wood Limited (and other JW Wood Group of Companies) – hereafter “JW Wood”, “We”, “Us” – aim to provide our customers and clients with the best possible safe and secure service. We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We use the personal information you share with us to tailor our Services to your requirements, and to provide the best possible user experience when dealing with our staff or when using our company website www.jww.co.uk (hereafter “Website”).

Our "Services" include property Sales and Lettings; Land and New Homes; Commercial Services; Conveyancing, Property Auctions, Surveys & Valuations; Mortgages and Insurance Products (Hereafter these are collectively known as our "Services").

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Data Controller is JW Wood Limited, 7 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HL and other JW Wood Limited Group of Companies, which includes but is not limited to: Homemove (Durham) Limited (trading as JW Wood Estate Agents), Homemove (Chester le Street) Limited (trading as JW Wood Estate Agents), JW Wood Darlington Limited (trading as JW Wood Estate Agents), Homemove (Property Management) Limited (trading as JW Wood Lettings & JW Wood Student), Homemove (Professional) Limited (trading as JW Wood Chartered Surveyors), JW Wood Commercial Limited & Homemove Services North East Limited.

By using our Website you are deemed to have accepted our Terms of Use; please ensure you have read this document.

The purpose of this privacy policy (hereafter “Policy”) is to give you a clear explanation about how JW Wood use, store, share and control the personal and behavioural information you provide (or that we collect from you) when you contact us or otherwise engage with us via our Website or other media. This can be done in a variety of different ways which can include but are not exclusively limited to:-

in person via our branch office network
by telephone
by post
by SMS
by email
live web chat
social media such as Facebook and Twitter
via our Website
via property portals such as www.rightmove.co.uk, www.onthemarket.com & www.relocation-agent-network.co.uk (hereafter “Portals”),

These are collectively known as our "Communication Channels".

By engaging the Services of JW Wood or by visiting our Website you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this Policy.

PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM YOU

“Personal information” is any information that relates to you and identifies you personally, either alone or in combination with other information available to us.

We may collect and process the following personal information about you:

Information that you provide by:-

Registering a password-protected account (hereafter “Account”) on our Website and performing functions using your Account e.g. saving properties, specifying property criteria,
filling in forms on our Websites, third party websites and Portals which send information to us, in person via our branch network, Via telephone calls, emails, live web chat, and social media.

This information can include, but is not limited to, personal information (name, address, email address and telephone number); financial or employment information that you disclose when agreeing to register as an applicant or enter into a transactional relationship with us.

Information required to help us ensure our staff are safe when attending external appointments such as viewings and market appraisals; for example, contact details for the client or customer, including a residential address in the UK.

Information required to comply with legislation such as Right to Rent checks required under Section 22 of the Immigration Act 2014 if you are renting a property and The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (more commonly referred to as the Money Laundering Regulations 2017) which is a legal requirement for a number of our Services.

Information to enable us to tailor our marketing and communications to you, based on your personal preferences, such as the types of service you are looking for, the location of your search area, the budget you are willing to spend etc. (hereafter “Criteria”).

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence and ask for information if you report an issue with our services, or with a property you are renting.
We may also ask you to complete surveys, either on our own Website or through a third party provider, which we use for research purposes; although you do not have to respond to them.

When you visit or otherwise access our Website, details including but not limited to:-

information about the device and browser (hereafter “Device”) you are using to access the Website e.g. type, version, operating system, etc.,
traffic data including the address (URL) of the website that referred you to our website if applicable
location data including geolocation (this can be explicitly controlled in your Device),
weblogs and other communication data,
the resources that you access including social media interaction.
your IP (Internet Protocol) address,
the date and time of the visit and how long you remained on our Website,
the pages visited on our Website and interactions performed,

You consent to any information concerning you that we collect and process being used, stored and processed in accordance with this Policy.

Where you provide a 3rd parties details (such as someone intending to act as a guarantor) you confirm that you have their permission to share their details with us and will direct them to this policy for how their details will be used and stored.

Where we have been supplied with details of third parties (such as your existing or previous employers, and you’re existing or previous landlords/letting agents), we may contact those third parties with a view to verifying any information which we have been provided about yourself. You hereby agree that we or our agents may search the databases of third party data providers such as credit reference agencies and Insurance Reference Agencies for the purposes set out below.

DOWNLOADS AND MEDIA

Any downloadable documents, files, images, video files etc. on our Website are provided to you at your own risk. We take all reasonable precautions to ensure that such files are free of viruses but we recommend that you use anti-virus software as a precaution. We accept no responsibility for downloads and media provided by external third party websites.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Wherever we collect or use your personal information, we will make sure we do this for a valid legal reason. This will be for at least one of the following purposes:

because it is necessary to fulfil the terms of our contract with you - if you have entered into a contract with us for example to facilitate viewing services, sell a property, rent a property or provide advisory services for a financial product;
because it is necessary to support the legitimate interests of our business in operating Our Site and providing estate agency services in relation to Our Estate Agents efficiently to meet your needs - in all such cases, we will look after your information at all times in a way that is proportionate and respects your privacy rights and you have a right to object to the processing as explained in the section on Your Rights below;
to meet responsibilities we have to our regulators, tax officials, law enforcement, dispute resolution services, insurers or otherwise meet our legal responsibilities
where we have obtained a clear consent from you - we will always make it clear when we need your consent and how you can change your permissions at any time thereafter.

If you would like to know more about the legal reasons or legitimate interests that apply to a particular way in which we use the personal information you can contact us at any time.

In addition we use and analyse this personal information where necessary for the following purposes detailed below:

Improving our products and services: we will use your personal information to build a profile on you in order to understand your requirements, to improve our Website, as well as to personalise the properties and Services we offer you. We process your personal information in this way as it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests in providing better products and services for you and our other customers.

Processing your transaction: we use the relevant personal information described above (including your name, address and financial details) to enable us to complete a transaction with you when you are using any of our Services. This information may require to be passed on to third parties, including but not limited to solicitors, surveyors, financial advisors etc.

Preventing fraud: we will also use your personal information to assess your creditworthiness (in the case of buying or renting a property), to prevent fraud and to enable debt recovery. For this purpose, we may need to share your personal information with our referencing providers, solicitors and/or debt recovery agencies (see “how we share your personal information” below). This is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests in ensuring we are not the victim of fraud and to protect our legal rights.

To provide customer support: if you contact our team (or vice versa), we will use personal information such as your email address, phone number and residential address as well as your contact history to process your request and provide you with the best service possible. We will process your personal information in this way if it is necessary for the performance of a contract or if it is required for us to comply with any legal obligations. If it is not necessary to process your personal data for either of these reasons we will process it as it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests in ensuring we can provide the best service possible.

Marketing: Where you contact us through the 'contact' page of Our Site, make an enquiry in branch, on the phone to us, one of branches, or an enquiry/request from a property portal, we will use the details you have supplied to us to provide you with our general marketing by email unless you choose to 'opt-out' of these communications. If you do 'opt-out' then we will not send you information relating to our general marketing by email. We may however contact you in future by phone where we reasonably believe (on the basis of services that we are providing to you) that there are additional, different services which you may be interested in. This may be, for example to offer you mortgage and protection services when we are assisting you with your search for a property, or to offer you property insurance services at the point at which you have exchanged contracts for the purchase of a house or agreed a tenancy, or to offer you conveyancing services. We rely on legitimate interests as a lawful basis for processing your information to conduct this above marketing and we ensure you always have the right to opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us. If you wish to never receive any form of marketing communication from us you can let us know by contacting us (using the details provided below).

Tenancy: To enable us to arrange policies of insurance for the Landlord, for debt recovery purposes, to make credit decisions about you, to make judgements about your suitability to rent the property, to make judgements about your suitability to act as a guarantor, to arrange the set up and termination of the council tax, water and energy accounts.

What kind of information

The way you interact with us across all the different channels described above (e.g. our website, social media and marketing messages we send you) and the information we collect in that regard from each of these channels provides us valuable information about your current circumstances and preferences. This insight gives us the opportunity to offer you the best customer service experience possible. To learn about you and your interests, we analyse your interactions with our company using various kinds of information, as set out above. If you have registered your details with us or engaged one of our services by entering into a transaction with us, or if we are permitted by law to send such communications without obtaining your consent, we use the information that you have provided to us when interacting with us for sending you personalised marketing messages about our products or services, events and promotions. This also includes, where you have expressed an interest in a property or otherwise provided details of your property requirements, details of other properties we have available. In some instances, we will also aggregate your personal information with that of other individuals, to create comprehensive reports about how clients and customers use our products and services. This is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests in analysing our brand and determining how to improve our services.

What kind of channels

We will send direct communications to you via the channel you choose, such as post, email, phone, or social media.

What kind of messages

The messages we will send you will be personalised and tailored to your individual preferences and requirements. We use analytics in order to generate such personalised messages. These analytics will process your personal information and place you in categories, which determine the content of the messages you will receive from us. These direct marketing messages may contain information about our products and services, events or promotions and other company news. We personalise these messages on the basis of that it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests in ensuring that we provide the most appropriate information. We will, in certain circumstances, also use the channels for opinion research (such as to ask if you would like to participate in a survey) and to learn about your experience and improve your experience with JW Wood, including sending you personalised messages.

Analysing our business

We will use your personal information (including by anonymising and aggregating it with other customers’ personal information) for sales and financial analysis purposes, to determine how JW Wood is performing and where improvements can be made and where necessary to report back to our parent or affiliated group of companies. This is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests in understanding how our business is performing, and considering how to improve our performance.

We will ask for your consent if we wish to use your personal information for purposes other than those listed in this privacy statement and as required to do so under applicable law. We will not use your personal information for other purposes before we have received such consent.

HOW WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We treat your personal information with care and confidentiality and do not share it with third parties other than as set out below:

For legitimate business interests, we may disclose your personal information to any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in Section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.

With Service Providers

Where required we may share limited personal information you provide when you register with us or enter into a transaction with us, as necessary and only for that purpose and on the lawful grounds described above with various third parties who process your personal information on our behalf (Data Processors), such as;

Lettings – Residential, Commercial, Surveying & Financial Services.

For the purpose of our legitimate business interests we may be required to share some of your personal information with, including but not limited to:

Tenant referencing agencies, credit referencing agencies, insurance reference agencies, banks or lending institutions, housing benefit departments, solicitors, surveyors, domestic energy assessors (EPCs), other estate agents or landlords, local authorities, contractors and property maintenance services, gas and electrical contractors, utility companies, insurance providers, contractors who specialise in utility management, dispute resolution services, insurers and Deposit Protection Schemes.

Viewings, offers and Tenancy; In order to provide a professional service to both prospective tenants and our client, it is necessary that certain pieces of relevant personal information will be passed on between both parties regarding viewings, negotiation of the agreement, and content of the agreement itself. Please note, that when we are conducting a viewing on your behalf, it is important that you check your property prior to the viewing to ensure that any personal information you would not wish a viewer to see is removed.

We may disclose your information to third parties to arrange the setting up and termination of the council tax, water and energy accounts.

Referencing and assessment of suitability as a tenant or guarantor; We may disclose your personal information including details about your employment, previous landlord details, financial and credit history and worthiness to our legal advisors and to the Landlord. We may disclose your information to credit reference agencies, fraud prevention agents and utility management service providers who in turn may maintain and compile their own databases of information. We may disclose your personal information to debt collection companies and tracing agents who in turn may maintain and compile their own databases of information. We may disclose your personal information to third parties such as your existing and previous employers and landlords for the purposes of such persons providing a reference about you.

You hereby agree that we or our agents may search the databases of third party data providers such as credit reference agencies and Insurance Reference Agencies for the purposes described above.

We may use your personal information to make credit decisions about you and/or to make judgments about your suitability to rent the Property (if you are the Tenant), or guarantee the obligations of the Tenant (if you are the Guarantor), and make recommendations about such matters to the Landlord. To make or assist in the making of such decisions and recommendations, we may use a process called credit scoring and/or other automated decision-making processes. Your personal details will be passed to the Landlord, who may use that information to make similar decisions about you.

As explained above, your personal details may be passed on to credit reference agencies, Insurance Reference Agencies and Utility Management Agencies. Such agencies may record the search and such information may be shared with credit grantors, insurers other persons making a search against you in future and be used for credit decisions and insurance decisions and fraud prevention.

Sales- Residential, Auctions, Commercial, Surveying and Financial Services.

For the purpose of our legitimate business interests we may be required to share some of your personal information with, including but not limited to:

Solicitors/conveyancers, surveyors, financial/mortgage advisors, property auctioneers, domestic energy assessors (EPCs), banks & lending institutions, listing partners, local authorities, other estate agents in a chain, contractors and property maintenance services, utility companies, dispute resolution services, insurers and removal businesses.

Viewings, offers and agreed sales; In order to provide a professional service to both prospective purchasers and our client, it is necessary that certain pieces of relevant personal information will be passed on between both parties regarding viewings, negotiations, and issued a memorandum of sale (also shared with all parties solicitors). Please note, where we are conducting a viewing on your behalf, it is important that you check your property prior to the viewing to ensure that any personal information you would not wish a viewer to see is removed.

Auction Properties, JW Wood market auction properties in partnership with Agents Property Auction. Any prospective purchaser expressing an interest in a property for sale by auction (for example, requesting property details or booking a viewing) will have their details shared with Agents Property Auction.

Software and system providers including but not limited to i90 Ltd, Webdoers Ltd, Integrated Interest, Reapit Software, Sage, Google, Aspire Technology Solutions Ltd, SignatureSense Ltd, ReachLocal, Acaboom, Sprift, Microsoft and Meta (Facebook/Whatsapp).

Website Hosts and analytics platform providers including but not limited to Digital River, Forge, Amazon AWS, Google Analytics, Google AdWords Remarketing & the Google Display Network.

We require that these service providers and other third parties adhere to strict rules when processing your personal information, including to only use your personal information in accordance with our specific instructions (such as for the purposes of completing referencing or contacting you to arrange access to carry out necessary repairs) and the applicable laws.

With Legal and Law Enforcement

JW Wood will disclose personal information where required by law or legal process, for the administration of justice, to protect your vital interest, for investigations by law enforcement or regulatory bodies/dispute resolution services, to protect and defend JW Wood property and legal rights, to protect the personal safety of our website users or by order of a valid injunction from a court or law enforcement agency.

In Relation to Business Interests

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.

If JW Wood is or all of its assets are acquired by a third party, personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets.

Personal information of others

Before you disclose to us the personal information of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that personal information in accordance with the terms of this privacy policy.

HOW LONG DO WE STORE YOUR INFORMATION FOR?

Personal Information

The length of time we hold your information for will vary dependent on lawful basis for collecting and processing the data.

JW Wood will hold personal information that you provide and it shall be retained by us in accordance with applicable laws and our internal Retention Policy. However, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information we hold if it is no longer needed for the purposes set out above. We will only hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant purpose for which it was collected. A copy of our Retention Policy is available on request.

Website Account Information

If you have an account on our website and it has been deemed dormant then we may delete the account and all information “tied to” or “held against” it. We consider an account to be dormant if one of the following conditions is met:

it has not been accessed by you for more than 1 year,
if you have not responded to any emails sent to the registered email address,
if we receive email delivery failure notifications in response to any email sent to the registered email address,
the account is in breach of our Terms of Use.

STORAGE

All information you provide to us is stored in the UK and Europe on our secure (password and firewall protected) servers and all paper based information is also securely stored in the UK. All electronic transactions and data transmissions between your Device and our Website will be encrypted using industry-standard SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology; and our website has a SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt Authority X3, a WebTrust-certified certificate authority. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure and so we cannot guarantee the security of any data sent over the internet between your device and our website. Any such data transmission is at your own risk.

Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access, as part of our secure backups and data disaster recovery procedures.

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers or contractors. Territories outside of the EEA may not have equivalent legal protections to those that apply within the EEA but we are under a duty to make sure that our suppliers and contractors located outside of the EEA continue to take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Policy.

By submitting your personal data to us, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes, to alter your preferences for the type of marketing content you receive (such as properties for sale, information about related services etc.) or to alter the methods via which you receive marketing correspondence from us (i.e. via email, text, post or phone call). We will inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes.

Subject to certain exemptions, and in some cases dependent upon the processing activity we are undertaking, you have certain rights in relation to your personal information.

To access personal information
To rectify / erase personal information
To restrict the processing of your personal information
To transfer your personal information
To object to the processing of personal information
To object to how we use your personal information for direct marketing purposes
To obtain a copy of personal information safeguards used for transfers outside your jurisdiction
To lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority

If you wish to access any of the above mentioned rights, we may ask you for additional information to confirm your identity and for security purposes, in particular before disclosing personal information to you. We reserve the right to charge a fee where permitted by law, for instance if your request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

You can also exercise the right to prevent such processing of your data at any time by contacting us at dpo@jww.co.uk or by following the links contained in our correspondence. Subject to legal and other permissible considerations, we will make every reasonable effort to honour your request promptly or inform you if we require further information in order to fulfil your request.

We may not always be able to fully address your request, for example if it would impact the duty of confidentiality we owe to others, or if we are legally entitled to deal with the request in a different way.

Right to access personal information

You have a right to request that we provide you with a copy of your personal information that we hold and you have the right to be informed of; (a) the source of your personal information; (b) the purposes, legal basis and methods of processing; (c) the data controller’s identity; and (d) the entities or categories of entities to whom your personal information may be transferred.

Right to rectify or erase personal information

You have a right to request that we rectify inaccurate personal information. We may seek to verify the accuracy of the personal information before rectifying it.

You can also request that we erase your personal information in the following limited circumstances:

where it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected; or
where you have withdrawn your consent (where the data processing was based on consent); or
following a successful right to object (see right to object); or
where it has been processed unlawfully; or
to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject.

We are not required to comply with your request to erase personal information if the processing of your personal information is necessary:

for compliance with a legal obligation; or
for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

Right to restrict the processing of your personal information

You can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information, but only where:

its accuracy is contested, to allow us to verify its accuracy; or
the processing is unlawful, but you do not want it erased; or
it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected, but you still need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
you have exercised the right to object, and verification of overriding grounds is pending.

We can continue to use your personal information following a request for restriction:

where we have your consent; or
to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
to protect the rights of another natural or legal person.

Right to transfer your personal information

You can ask us to provide your personal information to you in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, or you can ask to have it transferred directly to another data controller, but in each case only where:

the processing is based on your consent or on the performance of a contract with you; and
the processing is carried out by automated means.

Right to object to the processing of your personal information

You can object to any processing of your personal information which has our legitimate interests as its legal basis if you believe your fundamental rights and freedoms outweigh our legitimate interests.

If you raise an objection, we have an opportunity to demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate interests which override your rights and freedoms.

Right to object to how we use your personal information for direct marketing purposes

You can request that we change the manner in which we contact you for marketing purposes.

You can request that we do not transfer your personal information to unaffiliated third parties for the purposes of direct marketing or any other purposes.

Right to obtain a copy of personal information safeguards used for transfers outside your jurisdiction

You can ask to obtain a copy of, or reference to, the safeguards under which your personal information is transferred outside of the European Union.

We may redact data transfer agreements to protect commercial terms.

Right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority

You have a right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority (the contact details for which are set out in the Complaints section of this Privacy Notice) if you have concerns about how we are processing your personal information.

We ask that you please attempt to resolve any issues with us first, although you have a right to contact your supervisory authority at any time.

ACCESS TO, DELETION, AND CORRECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

You can update some of your personal information by signing in to your account on our Website using your email address and password. In addition, you may contact us and we will be able to update your records on our data management systems - please let us know if the personal information which we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

If you would like to know what personal information JW Wood holds about you, you may make a request to JW Wood for copies of this information. You should be aware that we will need to see proof of identity before processing any such request (known as a ‘subject access request'). If requested, JW Wood will use reasonable efforts to supply, correct or delete information about you on file.

All subject access requests should be made in writing and addressed For the attention of The Data Controller, JW Wood, 7 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HL

In addition, you may write to us at any time requesting amendments to certain personal information that you consider to be incorrect or irrelevant or to request that we block, erase or otherwise remove your personal information (The Right to Erasure/The Right to be Forgotten).

You may also write to us at any time to object to our use of your personal information or request that we provide your personal information in a usable electronic format and transmit to a third party (Right to Data Portability). We will comply with these requests in relation to your personal information in line with applicable law.

PERSONAL DATA BREACHES

In order to comply with applicable law, JW Wood has implemented procedures to detect, report and investigate personal data breaches.

A data breach is defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as;

“A breach of security leading to the destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure or, or access to, personal data.”

The ICO will be informed of all data breaches which present a high risk to our clients and customer’s rights and freedoms and in line with applicable law, a notifiable breach will be reported within 72 hours of us becoming aware of it. The individual(s) involved will also be informed.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

JW Wood has pledged to adhere to the fundamental principles of privacy and data protection. We therefore regularly review our privacy statement in order to ensure that it is free of errors and clearly visible on our Website, that it contains appropriate information about your rights and our processing activities, and that it is implemented and is compliant with applicable law. If we make significant changes to this privacy statement, we will inform you by posting a notification on our websites along with an updated version of the privacy statement.

Our Website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partners and third party service providers. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites may have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites. Use of third party websites is at your own risk.

THE RIGHT TO LODGE A COMPLAINT

If you have a complaint regarding how JW Wood have handled your personal data, subject access request or right to erasure, you have a right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in this case the ICO, using the contact details below.

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to the Data Protection Office at dpo@jww.co.uk.

Alternatively, you can write to:

Data Protection Officer
JW Wood
7 Old Elvet
Durham
DH1 3HL

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