Privacy Policy

At Retrofit West CIC, we are committed to protecting the privacy of our clients’ personal information. This privacy policy outlines how we collect, use, and disclose personal information in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other applicable privacy laws.

Retrofit West Advice services are delivered by the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE). The Centre for Sustainable Energy collects your data when you contact Retrofit West for advice on improving the energy efficiency of your home.

We only ask for the information that we need to help you. We understand how important it is that your information is kept safe, and we want it to be easy for you to understand how we use it, so if there’s anything here you don’t understand please just get in touch with our team at [email protected].

References to ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to Retrofit West CIC, registered company number, 14571351. Our registered offices are at St James Court, St James Parade, Bristol BS1 3LH.

The Legal Basis for Collecting Your Personal Data

Where we are collecting personal data about you for the provision of one of the purposes outlined in this privacy notice, we rely upon:

GDPR: Article 6(1)(a) – consent

and

GDPR: Article 6(1)(f) – legitimate interest

Why We Process Data

There are many reasons why we process personal data, including but not limited to:

Giving advice on retrofit and energy efficiency improvements.
Organising and holding events, workshops, and consultations
Carrying out energy audits, technical assessments or measuring energy usage
Carrying out research such as surveys and interviews
Contacting those we work with collaboratively to influence policy
Updating people about the work we are doing through email
Evaluating and improving the services we offer and the work that we do
Supporting human resources and administrative functions – like processing payments and recruiting staff

Collection & Use of Personal Information

We collect personal information from our clients when they register for our services, participate in our events, or contact us through our website or other channels.

We only collect personal information that is necessary for the purposes of providing our services and improving our operations.

We use personal information to provide our services, communicate with our clients, and improve our operations. The below table shows the type of information we collect, how we collect this information and how it is used.

Information	Source	Use
Contact details: (e.g., name, address, email, telephone number, your availability).	You opt-in to receive marketing. We will never pass your contact details to other organisations for direct marketing. You can withdraw your consent for us to contact you in these ways at any time.	If you have given your consent, we can: • send you news • send you event invitations • send you offers and promotions.
Contact details: (e.g., name, address, email, telephone number, your availability).	Through the Retrofit West Accelerator Service.	As part of the agreement for us to subsidise your activity, we will use your details to help evaluate the service and better understand the supply chain issues homeowners face when trying to retrofit their homes. This data may also be shared with the West of England Combined Authority for the purpose of managing and monitoring the retrofit accelerator.
Contact details: (e.g., name, address, email, telephone number, your availability).	From you, with consent.	We hold this information so that we can get in touch with you and provide the service you request. We may also contact you following any services, to ask for feedback.
Contact details: (e.g., name, address, email, telephone number, your availability).	When you enter them in the plan builder tool.	To offer you a tailored plan on our Plan Builder tool. We provide the option to use the Plan Builder for free. You may use the free planning service and choose not to proceed to contact us for any other services. Or you may make an enquiry about services but not proceed. In this case, we may contact you for feedback on the online service used and where relevant, to understand why you chose not to use Retrofit West’s further services.
Information about a property	We get this when you update the Plan Builder or via our advice line.	When you update details about a property in the Plan Builder this is recorded within the account that you have set up so that it can generate better recommendations. Staff at Parity Projects can see this version of the property but the details you have added cannot be seen by someone else who looks up your address.
Information about homes in the UK. Where this includes an address it is classed as personal data.	We get this information from: • Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Data • Ordinance Survey Data • Retrofit West Accelerator Service Survey Report We also try to improve this information by using data from nearby houses and visual surveys.	This lets us make recommendations to you about how to make your home more energy efficient.
Information about your Property (e.g., number of bedrooms, age of the property your current energy use and budget for building work)	Collected when you have a home survey, or when you have work carried out.	We hold information about your property. We update this information when we collect data during a survey and when you have work done. We use this data to help us and others build a better picture of the energy efficiency of houses in the UK, as well as evaluate the effectiveness of your retrofit. We may share this with your local council, and the West of England Combined Authority for the purposes of reporting and monitoring. It also helps councils and others to plan and promote energy efficiency and carbon emissions reduction from homes. Your name and contact details are stored with this data but are only available to Retrofit West.
Information about your project If you have work done: Your address; Type and capacity of energy efficiency measures installed into your property; Date of when the measures were installed into your property.	From you, with consent.	These details about your project will be passed on to the West of England Combined Authority (your name will not be included) for the purposes of energy efficiency and energy use evaluation and research.
Personal details about your health. When you book a survey appointment or have work done, you may choose to share information about your health (e.g. if you have specific communication needs)	From you, with consent.	With your explicit consent and only when necessary, this information will be passed to Contractors who need to take it into consideration when doing work in your home. So that we can provide a better service to you and accommodate any specific needs you may have.
Project details and communications. When you have a home survey or work done we collect information about your property and project, and may note other details that you give us (e.g., your availability).	Communications between you, the Retrofit West team and Contractors about your project.	So that we can make better recommendations for works to your home and provide you with a better service. Some of this data is collected and processed by Contractors who are not directly employed but are partnered with Retrofit West in delivering our service. If you request quotes or book works, the necessary details are passed to contractors who are members with your permission. This is to enable them to provide quotes and get in touch with you if needed.
Your IP address and how you find and use our site.	We get this information through Google Analytics, cookies/tags placed on our site and online advertising.	So that we can improve our website and Plan Builder and learn what information is important as well as what marketing efforts are effective.
Your account details, preferences and selections	Made when using the Plan Builder.	We use this information to provide and maintain your account and save preferences and plans so that you can return later. If you contact us, we will use your preferences and selections to understand what works might interest you. We may contact you in order to know whether the account is still needed or to update or verify details.
Your opinions about the service we have provided.	You tell us or fill out a feedback form.	We use this to provide you with good service and to make our services better in the future.

Sensitive Personal Data

Information that could reveal your racial or ethnic origin, physical or mental health, religious beliefs or alleged commission or conviction of criminal offences is considered “sensitive personal data” under the UK Data Protection Act 1998 and other data protection laws. We do not collect this data unless absolutely necessary as outlined in the table above.

Disclosure of Personal Information

We do not disclose personal information to third parties, except as required by law or with the consent of the individual. We may disclose personal information to our service providers who assist us in providing our services, such as:

CSE - https://www.cse.org.uk/how-we-use-your-information/
West of England Combined Authority - https://www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/privacy-notice/
Mailchimp - https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/

We ensure that our service providers are contractually bound to protect personal information and only use it for the purposes for which it was disclosed.

CSE is the Data Controller for Retrofit West CIC. When you submit a form and consent to be contacted on the Retrofit West or Retrofit West Advice website, you are confirming that CSE has your permission to contact you about the Retrofit West service.

We may also share your contact details with trusted third parties or funders for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the Retrofit West service. They will only contact you to evaluate or improve the service, and you are under no obligation to take part in the evaluation when contacted.

When you contact Retrofit West through our advice line, we will collect certain personal information so that we are able to give accurate information and relevant support.

Security of Personal Information

We take data security very seriously and are certified in the Cyber Essentials scheme, the Government-backed and industry-supported scheme to guide businesses in protecting themselves against cyber threats. We store and process most of the personal data we hold on our secure, internal system hosted on servers in the UK. When we keep paper records, they are stored in locked cupboards accessible only to limited members of staff.

When we use third parties to process your data (e.g., for e-mail news distribution) we only do so if they are based in the EU, registered in the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework, or in a country described as having adequate data protection by the European Commission.

When you fill in a web form through our website, your personal data is stored securely in WordPress for 12 months before being automatically deleted. WordPress has certified its compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework.

Sometimes we will need to contact you with general service updates or to ask for your feedback, we use Mailchimp for this and you can unsubscribe from these updates at any time through the link in the emails.

When we destroy or delete your data we will do so securely.

Access and Correction of Personal Information

You have the following rights under data protection law:

Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. You can withdraw consent at any time for any of the processing that relies on Consent.
Your right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances. You always have the right to object to processing for the purposes of direct marketing.
Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.
Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify or complete information you think is inaccurate, and we must consider whether this request is founded and not excessive.
Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You do not have to pay to exercise your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. You can request any of the above using our details under the Contact Us section of this policy.

Embedded Content from Other Websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

For more information, view our Cookies Policy.

If you have any questions or concerns about our privacy policy or our handling of personal information, please contact us at:

Retrofit West CIC
St. James Court, St James Parade, Bristol BS1 3LH
[email protected]

We won’t charge you for this service. If you aren’t happy about how we have used your data, you can make a complaint via these contact details. You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office if you aren’t satisfied with our response.

We may update this privacy policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or applicable laws. The updated privacy policy will be posted on our website, and we encourage you to review it periodically. This privacy notice was last updated on 3/07/2023.