Privacy Policy
Utility Hive Limited (our registered office address is Suite 1a, 3rd Floor, 4 Universal Square, Devonshire Street North, Manchester, England, M12 6JH (Company number: 08622674)) (“we”, “us”, “our”) and we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (“ICO”) with registration number A8198676.
This privacy policy (together with our Terms and Conditions of Service) sets out how we use and protect any information or personal data that we collect from you as the data controller, or that you provide to us, and how it will be used or processed by us.
We have provided the following information for you to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. Upon provision of your personal data to us you have declared full knowledge of this privacy policy and understand that you are deemed to have read this privacy policy and have accepted the terms of this privacy policy.
What this privacy policy covers:
Important information and who we are
How we collect your personal information
Why we use your personal data
What personal data we are collecting
How long we may keep your information
Your data and third parties
Disclosure of your personal information
The security of your personal information
Changes to our privacy policy
Your rights under the data protection legislation
How you can exercise your rights
1. Important information and who we are
We trade under the name of Utility Hive and we are the controller that is responsible for your personal data. You can contact us by: Post: Utility Hive Limited. Suite 1a, 3rd Floor, 4 Universal Square, Devonshire Street, Manchester M12 6JH
Phone: 0800 029 4519
Or email: data.protection@utilityhive.com
For any further information or guidance regarding this privacy policy, you can use one of the above methods to contact us.
We would also like to state that you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). However, we would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please contact us in the first instance.
2. How we collect personal information
Personal information, otherwise known as personal data means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
Our Methods for collecting your personal data include:
Anyone who contacts us by phone, this includes if we have contacted you by phone.
Visitors to our website: www.utilityhive.com.
Anyone who engages or interacts with us through any social media platforms.
Third party marketing partners.
Anyone who uses the services we provide.
If you are transferred to us by any third parties that we are linked to, or if one of our third parties provides us with your personal information.
Please note that this privacy policy tells you what to expect when we use the above methods to collect your personal information.
We ensure that personal information is safe and secure. We have put in place suitable, physical, electronic and managerial procedures to secure, safeguard and protect the information we collect and store via the methods stated above. For more information about the security of your personal data, please refer to this section of the privacy policy.
We rely on a lawful basis under the data protection legislation, this is to use your personal data if we have a lawful basis for doing so, which is set out in the data protection legislation. Our legitimate interests do not override your interests and fundamental rights. We rely on our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) as the lawful basis for processing, again this does not override your interests and fundamental rights.
2.1 Our third party marketing partners
Our website also contains links to our third party partner networks, suppliers and any other affiliates we may have. Once you have clicked one of these links, and you have been re-directed to any third party website, please be aware that these websites may collect your personal data for reasons of their own and that you should refer to their privacy policy for any further information about this. We are not liable for these third parties and we do not accept any responsibility for their data activities. Please be sure to check their privacy policy before submitting any personal information to these websites.
Sometimes we obtain personal data from Market Location, a member of the 118 group. This information may include: your name, email address, telephone number and business address. When this happens, we assure you that reasonable steps will be taken to ensure that the third party has collected your personal information lawfully and fairly. If applicable we will make sure that the third party has obtained all appropriate consents and permissions required from you to allow us to market our products and services to you. As one of the most experienced business database providers in the UK, Market Location take the protection of your personal data and compliance with the data protection legislation seriously. For more information about how Market Location use your personal data, please read their privacy policy which can be found here.
In addition to this, we obtain personal data from The New Business Data Company, part of Data8 Ltd. This includes your name, email address, telephone number and business address. In these circumstances, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that such third party has collected your personal data fairly and lawfully and, if applicable, has obtained all appropriate consents required from you to allow us to market to you. The New Business Data Company is the premier data enrichment specialist, ensuring customers completely trust their data. If you would like to find out more about The New Business Data Company use of personal data, their own privacy notice can be found here.
If we have obtained any of your personal data from the 118 group, Data 8 Ltd or any other third party source, we will inform you of where we collected your personal data within a reasonable period of time of having obtained your personal data and provide you with a copy of this privacy policy.
We rely on our legitimate interests as a lawful basis of processing your personal data, to offer and promote our products and services to you.
2.2 Examples of information provided to employees:
Employees who require your personal information to carry out required services will have access to your personal information but have signed a data protection policy in order to safeguard and protect your personal information.
Inbound and Outbound sales teams will have access to your personal information in order to make initial contact with you about the products and services that we provide.
This information will then be processed by our Pre-Live team. When your contract is within the renewal window, a member of the sales team will then have access to your personal information in order for you to proceed with our services.
Certain information that will help inform the marketing strategy we have in place, will be managed by the data team, this includes the details of individuals that have objected or opted out of our marketing campaigns.
If you apply for a job with us via our website or any third party websites we use to advertise on, your personal data will then be accessed by the Human Resource and Recruitment teams and anyone who is involved in the recruitment and selection process.
2.3 Social media
We highly recommend that you read all of the privacy notices for the social media platforms that we use. Any of the information that you provide to us via the social media accounts below is controlled by the social media network itself.
We hold no responsibility for the transmission of personal data through these websites. If your personal data has been interfered with prior to us receiving it through one of these social media networks then it is their responsibility, please see the links bellow to read their privacy policies.
3. Why we use your personal data
We collect your personal information so we can use it to provide you with any of our products and services.
We use your personal data for the following purposes:
To gain an understanding of your business needs so we can better our services.
We may use your personal data to respond to an enquiry you have made, this includes enquiries made through our website (www.utilityhive.com), enquires you have made over the phone, through the post or by email.
To provide you with any utility quotes you have requested.
To carry out any ongoing obligations we owe to you or for any ongoing administration for any service that we provide to you.
For any internal recording kept by us to assess and maintain compliance and to meet the legal requirements we adhere to.
To develop, change, enhance or customise the website (www.utilityhive.com) according to your interests and based on the personal information we have gathered from you.
To offer you new products and services which are relevant to our services, only to the extent that would be reasonably expected (in accordance with the marketing preferences you have indicated) you can change your marketing preferences and opt out at any time by contacting us via this information.
To progress your application for a job vacancy.
To analyse, measure or understand the effectiveness of the marketing we serve to you and to deliver relevant marketing to you (while asking for consent where relevant).
To ensure that our records are relevant and up to date.
To administer our legitimate internal data analysis and business planning.
To establish, defend or exercise our legal rights.
To comply with our legal obligations.
To prevent or detect crime, for quality, training and security purposes.
Market research purposes, this includes the analysis of your information for developing statistics.
* Please note that you have the right to object to the use of your personal data for marketing purposes at any time.
3.1 Subscribing to our marketing
If you are one of our customers and have made an enquiry, we will have given you the option to object or opt-out of receiving marketing communications and promotional emails at the time of collecting your personal information. This means that if you have not decided to opt-out of receiving promotional emails for our products and services, we will likely contact you by email or phone to provide you with the promotion of our products if they’re relevant to your purchase, subscription or enquiry.
If you would like to object, please inform the member of the team who contacts you, alternatively you can click here to email your objection to us. Please include your name, business name, contact details and the fact that you object to your personal information being used for marketing purposes. We will keep a record of your request to ensure that we no longer market our products and services to you. If it is just email marketing you wish to opt-out of, you also have the option to click the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any marketing emails we may have previously sent to you.
If you are not a customer and you are interested in our products and services, we will provide you with a clear choice to consent to receiving marketing promotional material, updates, reminders and communications by offering you an opt-in option.
4. What personal data we are collecting
We collect data directly from you. Methods of our data collection include:
If you contact us, if you submit a website form, if you’re applying for a job, subscribing to our marketing services, downloading or uploading material.
All inbound and outbound calls to and from Utility Hive Limited will be recorded if we contact you or you contact us by phone.
This privacy policy also explains the different types of personal data that we collect from you.
The personal data we collect and process from you consists of:
Title
First name, last name
Job title
Email address
Business address
Telephone number
Mobile number
Home address
Demographic information such as: Your postcode, your preferences, your interests.
Information relevant to customer surveys and offers.
Any additional information you provide us with.
If you are interested in joining the Utility Hive team, we ask you to provide us with your email address and CV via the website or any third party websites that we advertise on. We will then retain this information for up to 6 months if you are unsuccessful in securing a position, this is to assess suitability for upcoming and recently available vacancies, and so we can record if you are suitable to apply for the role. If you are a successful applicant and gain employment with us, the information you provided us with in terms of your initial application and your on-going employment will form part of your Employee Record and we will retain this information for the duration of your employment and for up to 6 years after your employment ceases.
If you choose not to provide us with the information that we request from you, please note that we might not be able to carry out an action you have requested, for more information about this please see this section.
5. How long we may keep your information
We store personal data for up to 6 years upon receiving it. This is to ensure that we can manage the requested service and business relationship that you require from us, to comply with legal, compliance and audit obligations, to resolve disputes and enforce agreements and then securely delete the information.
We keep our personal data for marketing purposes for as long as you want to receive marketing from us. If you decide to opt-out of marketing then we will no longer use your personal data for this reason and you will be excluded from any personal-data-oriented marketing campaigns without undue delay. This means that we will delete the majority of your personal information in relation to marketing, however certain details are retained in order for us to adhere to your request.
6. Your data and third parties
We only share your personal data with third parties that provide services to us. This is because it is in the legitimate interest of our business administrative needs. Below you will find the types of third parties we share your personal data with and how they process your personal information. Please note that these third parties are located within the European Economic Area.
6.1 Utility suppliers (Electricity, Gas & Water)
We share the following with this third party:
Title, first name, surname, email address, home number, mobile number and address.
We share this personal information to:
Enable you to switch utility suppliers;
Determine if you are eligible to subscribe to our services and/or the supplier’s services - disclosure is necessary to whomever we have to go through for us to check your eligibility;and
Whomever disclosure is necessary to enable us to provide you with any service you have signed up to and/or subscribed to (This includes: contract fulfilment, payment processing, credit referencing and the design, maintenance and administration of the site).
This data is kept by this type of third party for as long as it states in their privacy policy as they will be acting as a controller of your personal data. You will always be notified of which utility supplier your personal information has been provided to at that relevant time. For further information about how a utility supplier uses your personal data, please refer to their own privacy policy.
6.2 Data intermediaries
We share the following personal data with:
Love Energy Savings.com Limited –Privacy Policy
Evolve Online Tech –Privacy Policy
Title, first name, surname, email address, home number, mobile number and address.
We will collect the following information from relevant data providers:
Meter point details (including meter point reference number, meter serial number, address and meter readings)
We share this personal information to:
Enable you to switch utility suppliers;
We share this data to enable these third parties to confirm your meter number and the business address associated with that meter number. This enables us to provide a more realistic indication of the prices available to you and ensure that it matches your business address.
Determine if you are eligible to subscribe to our services and/or the supplier’s services - disclosure is necessary to whomever we have to go through for us to check your eligibility; and
Whomever disclosure is necessary to enable us to provide you with any service you have signed up to and/or subscribed to (This includes: contract fulfilment, payment processing, credit referencing and the design, maintenance and administration of the site).
This data is kept by this type of third party for as long as it states in their privacy policy as they will be acting as a controller of your personal data. For further information about how data intermediaries use your personal data, please refer to their individual privacy policies above.
6.3 Telecommunications Service
We share the following with this third party:
Title, first name, surname, email address, home number, mobile number, business postcode, home address and postcode and any additional data you provide us with.
This information is shared with:
Our main call system, this is an automated system which uses the above information and records calls.
This data is kept for 6 years for call recordings.
6.4 Data processing and hosting
We share the following with this third party:
Title, first name, surname, email address, home number, mobile number, business postcode, home address.
The information is shared to:
Provide marketing services and gain analytical insight.
This data is kept for as long as possible unless you choose to opt-out of our marketing related practices. For further information about this, please see this section.
7.Disclosure of your personal information
From time to time there may be instances where we need to share personal information under specific circumstances, however other than this we do not usually disclose your personal data.
Circumstances where we may need to share your personal data include:
If we are legally required to share your personal information with tax authorities and law enforcement agencies for the purposes of the prevention and detection of crime.
If the personal data required needs to be disclosed for the purpose of or in connection to any legal proceedings, for the purpose of obtaining legal advice or if the purpose is to disclose your personal data due to the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending legal rights.
For protection of your vital interests, an example of this would be if you were unwell at our premises or needed medical attention.
If the personal information is needed by a third party for the purposes of providing administrative or processing services on our behalf. If such disclosure is required we will take the necessary steps to ensure that the third party protects your personal information in the same way that we do and we will also notify you of any changes to this privacy policy;and
To any prospective purchaser of our business assets or organisation.
8. The security of your personal information
We take the security of our personal data very seriously. In order to ensure that our systems meet the security requirements when it comes to storing your personal data, we have implemented the following:
Restricting access to your personal data which is stored on our systems by ensuring strict access controls, this means that anybody who is able to access this data has been granted the permissions to do so;
Locating all personal data that we obtain on servers located in the United Kingdom; and
Encrypted storage facilities for your personal data that are secured by firewalls and the most up-to-date security technology.
* Please note that the transmission of information via the internet is not 100% secure. We will do our best to protect your personal data, however we cannot guarantee the security of your personal data prior to us receiving it. Any voluntary transmission of your personal data is your responsibility and at your own risk. The above methods will only be implemented once we have received your personal data, meaning that we’re not responsible for any transmission failures or unauthorised access beforehand. Once obtained and in our care, the strict procedures above will be implemented so that your personal data is protected. We will use strict security features to try and prevent unauthorised access the best we can.
9. Changes to our privacy policy
We keep our privacy notice under regular review to ensure that it properly reflects our use of your personal data. We will notify you of any changes we may make to our privacy notice in the future.
This privacy notice was last reviewed and updated on [15 January 2020].
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please let us know if any personal information which we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated at any time by contacting us via one of these methods so we can update it.
10. Your rights under the data protection legislation
This section explains your rights in respect of your personal data and the circumstances in which you are able to exercise these rights. For more information on how to contact us about exercising these rights please refer to this information.
Your rights under the data protection legislation include:
The right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you
To have inaccuracies corrected
To have your personal data erased and removed from our system – please be aware that we can only comply with this request if:
Your personal data is no longer required for the purposes or intended use it was collected for (for example, if your personal information was needed to follow up an enquiry, respond to a communication or query you submitted to us via the website, phone, email or post.);
If the collection, storage or use of the personal data by us is prevented by the law;
Your personal data is not needed for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending a legal claim such as the conduct of legal proceedings.
To place restriction on the way we process your personal data
To object to the processing of your data, including the right to object to and/or opt out of our marketing campaigns
To request data portability, which is the method of providing you with your own personal data in a structured, machine readable format which is suitable for the transfer to another data controller.
* Please note that not all of these rights are absolute, meaning that they are only applicable under certain circumstances. In accordance with the law there will be occasions where a refusal notice is issued or exemption applied.
If you would like to know more about rights and when they apply please see the ICO website.
11. How you can exercise your rights
To exercise your rights, please be aware that you can contact us regarding any issues related to the processing of your personal information. We are also viable for contact if you would like to make a complaint in regards to the processing of your personal information.
We would also like to state that it is encouraged that people bring to our attention any instances where they think our collection, use of or processing of personal information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.
To object to any methods of marketing we use, please click here to email this objection to us. Please include your name, business name, preferred method of contact and contact details for this method – as well as the objection to your information being used for marketing purposes.
If you wish to exercise your individual rights in relation to your energy provider then please contact them directly.
Alternatively you can contact us and we will provide you with their contact information.