How we handle your information.

1. Who we are

Apricot Surveyors Limited is a residential surveying business registered in England and Wales, company number 17430360, with its registered office at Sidings House, Sidings Court, Lakeside, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, DN4 5NU.

For the purposes of UK GDPR, Apricot Surveyors Limited is the data controller for the information described in this notice. That means we decide what is collected and why, and we are responsible for looking after it.

2. What we collect

The information we hold depends on what you have asked us to do. In most cases it covers some or all of the following.

• Contact details — your name, address, email address and telephone number.
• Property and survey information — the address of the property, its tenure and history, access arrangements, and the findings recorded during the inspection.
• Photographs and drone imagery — images taken at the property to support the inspection and the report.
• Payment and invoicing information — the fee agreed, invoices raised and records of payment.
• Communications — emails, letters, and notes of telephone calls with you or with others acting for you.
• Website usage data — information collected when you visit this site, described in our cookie notice.

3. Where it comes from

Most of what we hold comes directly from you, when you request a quote, instruct us, or speak to us about a property. We may also receive information from:

• estate agents, when arranging access or confirming details of the property;
• solicitors and conveyancers acting in the transaction;
• mortgage lenders and brokers, where a survey or valuation is being instructed through them;
• HM Land Registry and other public records of property ownership and sales.

4. Our lawful bases

We only use personal information where the law allows it. The bases we rely on are:

• Contract — to carry out the survey or valuation you have instructed, and to take steps you have asked for before entering into that contract.
• Legal obligation — to meet duties placed on us, including tax and accounting records and the requirements of our regulator.
• Legitimate interests — to run and administer the business, to keep records that allow us to answer questions about past work, and to defend a claim if one is made.
• Consent — where consent is required, for example for certain website cookies. Where we rely on consent you can withdraw it at any time.

5. Photography and drone imagery

We may take photographs, video recordings and drone imagery at a property to support the inspection and the report. These images record the condition of the building. They are held with the survey file and used for the purposes set out in this notice.

6. Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information and we do not pass it to anyone for marketing. Information may be shared with:

• professional advisers acting for you, such as your solicitor or conveyancer, where you have asked us to deal with them;
• lenders, where the survey or valuation has been instructed in connection with a mortgage;
• our regulator and our professional indemnity insurers;
• software providers who process information on our behalf, including GoReport, which we use to produce reports;
• authorities and other third parties where we are legally required to disclose it.

7. Transfers outside the UK

Where personal information is transferred outside the United Kingdom, we use appropriate safeguards. These include transfers to countries covered by UK adequacy regulations, and the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum where adequacy does not apply.

8. How long we keep it

We keep information for as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected for, and for as long as we are required to keep it.

Record type	Retention period
Enquiries that do not lead to an instruction	Up to 12 months
Survey and valuation reports, and the file behind them	Up to 15 years
Financial and accounting records	As required by law

Survey files are held for an extended period because a claim relating to a report can be brought long after the report was issued, and the file is what allows us to answer it.

9. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask us to:

• give you a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete information, where there is no continuing reason for us to hold it;
• restrict how we use it, while a question about it is resolved;
• stop using it, where we are relying on legitimate interests;
• transfer it to you or to someone else in a portable format;
• withdraw your consent, where consent is what we are relying on.

Not every right applies in every situation, and some are limited where we are required to keep a record. To make a request, contact us using the details below. We normally respond within one month.

10. Automated decision making

We do not currently make decisions about you using solely automated means where those decisions would have a legal effect or a similarly significant effect on you.

11. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first so that we have the chance to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator for data protection.

If your complaint is about our service rather than about your information, our complaints procedure sets out how to raise it.