PRIVACY POLICY & DATA PROTECTION STATEMENT
Updated 1 January 2011
1. General
This document, along with our overall Statement of Terms and Conditions, sets out our privacy policy and explains how we use and protect any information that you give us when using our website and/or after registering for our service. We may update these terms and conditions from time to time as we develop and improve our service. For the purposes of this document “Carbon Census” and the terms “We”, “Us”, “Our”, etc refers to The UK Carbon Census Ltd, a registered company in England & Wales No 6800963. “You”, “your”, etc refers to any person using or viewing the website and/or signing up for services offered on these website/s. “Website/s” refers to the company website and blog referenced above.
2. Information that we collect
Our service requires us to collect and store (i) your contact details, appointment preferences, eligibility for subsidies and other responses provided at the time registration; (ii) information about your property, appliances, expected energy usage and related data collected during your home survey; (iii) a copy of your EPC and the data contained in it, as sent out to you shortly after your home survey; (iv) other management information required to provide a service to you (such as a record of payments made, correspondence sent, and so on) and to develop new services.
Although we accept payments online we do not store your credit card details for future use. This may cause inconvenience for you if you need to pay us again in the future. However we do store contact details submitted to us by customers who begin the registration process, accept our terms but do not go on to complete a full registration and payment, e.g. because of abandonment or because we do not have assessors working in their area. This enables us to notify those customers in the future if/when circumstances change and we are able to provide a service to them.
3. Website cookies
A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. If you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.
4. What we do with the information we gather
Providing a service to you. We collect your data in order to provide you with advice on how to reduce your energy usage. In most circumstances this will require us to: (i) schedule and book your home energy survey; (ii) create, lodge and store on our systems a copy of your Energy Performance Certificate and associated electronic data, along with other related data collected during your home survey; (iii) prepare a home energy report including recommended actions and other information; (iv) provide you with follow up services, where you request these, or to inform you of other services that are relevant to you; (v) send you occasional updates on our progress with the Carbon Census.
Lodgement of EPCs. In accordance with UK regulation, if we prepare an EPC for your property we will lodge a copy on the national database for EPCs managed by the Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government. The Energy Saving Trust (a government funded body) has access to this database and may contact you with further free advice.
Research & Analysis. Your data is retained for anonymous statistical analysis, used to understand and encourage energy saving in general and to advertise and promote the Carbon Census project. We may publish aggregate data for individual areas and streets but we do not disclose data relating to individual properties without your permission to do so. We may from time to time collaborate with trusted partner organisations to complete analysis of the data we collect, and these organisations may therefore have access to some of our statistics.
Internal management. We will retain a record of our transactions and correspondence with you for the confidential internal management of our own business, and we may also use this information to develop the products and services we offer. We will periodically send you updates on our progress, and information about any products, services, special offers, changes in regulation or other information that we believe would be relevant to you.
External audit. A small number of customers may be contacted directly by The Energy Saving Trust and /or by other independent parties with whom we may contract to provide independent evaluation of our service. This is part of an audit and quality control process to ensure that we continue to achieve or exceed the high standards we have set for ourselves. If contacted for such feedback you may of course decline to participate.
5. Third parties
We do not share your information with other parties, except in the following defined circumstances: (i) where we use independent software, data processing and other service providers to support the delivery of our internal business processes and systems (for example payment processing, audit and accounting, data entry, address validation, hosting, appointment management, statistical analysis, data cleansing and other tasks); (ii) where you authorise us to do so in order to provide a service, for example to provide you with a quote for works to be carried out by a third party (e.g. insulation, microgeneration, renewable heating systems, etc); (iii) in anonymous and aggregated form, i.e. if we publish research or analysis of the statistics we have compiled through carrying out the carbon census project; (iv) where we may be required to disclose information to Ofgem (the energy industry regulator) or to individual energy companies or to their managing agents, as evidence of where and when certain subsidised energy saving services have been provided; (v) where required to disclose information by law.
In addition, (vi) where a third party (such as a landlord or other sponsor) has paid for or agreed to reimburse you for the costs of participating in the Carbon Census, we may share with that party a copy of the EPC which has been completed and/or elements of summary information contained in your Carbon Census report. This will be in order to allow comparison across properties owned or sponsored by the party which is paying for the service, and to encourage the sponsoring party to take action in improving the carbon footprint of the property.
6. Controlling your personal information
It is a condition of our service that you authorise us to create and store a complete record of the data generated during your home survey, and it is central to the nature of our project that we continue to hold this data on record as we grow the Carbon Census. In accepting our terms and conditions and this privacy policy, you agree to this condition.
This allows us to compile a cumulative database across a range of property types and areas, which we may analyse in future to extract new insight into energy saving and to exert a positive influence on public policy in this sector. Notwithstanding, if in the future you would prefer not to receive further correspondence from us you may notify us at any time by writing to us at the address below, at which point your personal involvement with the Carbon Census will end.
Data Protection Act 1998. If you wish you may request details of personal information which we hold about you. An administration fee will be chargeable to cover the costs of such a request. If you would like a copy of the information we have retained, or if you believe that any of our information relating to you is incorrect, please write to us at the address below explaining the nature of your request or query.
© The UK Carbon Census Ltd, 72 Grove Park, LONDON SE5 8LF Registered Company in England & Wales No 6800963
