Privacy Policy

Confidentiality and Data Protection

This privacy policy sets out how AAH Planning Consultants Ltd will process your personal data that you may provide us with, or that we may collect from you when you visit our website and/or engage our consultancy services. Please read the following policy carefully to understand how we will manage your personal data.

AAH Planning Consultants is defined as a data controller under the GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 and is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). AAH Planning Consultants only collects or uses persoanal information for those purposes indicated in our notification with the Information Commissioner's Office. 

The information we collect

We process personal data including but not limited to:

• Name, address and contact details

• Correspondence with you, such as any information that you have provided

• Information regarding living individuals (e.g. customers / suppliers, staff)

• Financial Details

Legal grounds for processing your information

We will rely on the following legal bases under the General Data Protection Regulation to process your personal data:

1. Consent

2. Performance of a contract

3. Legal obligation

4. Vital interest

5. Public interest or exercise of official authority

6. Legitimate interests pursued by the controller or third party

Our contact details

If you have any questions our contact details are:

Address: AAH Planning Consultants, 1 Bar Lane, York, YO1 6JU

Telephone: 01904 629258
Email: compliance@aahplanning.com

How we use information

We may gain information about you from your use of this website. It may be ‘voluntary information’ information that you provide to us such as personal data, (e.g. contact details or information contained in an employment application form) or ‘involuntary information’ information that we gather through our monitoring of visits to this website.

Involuntary information will not generally identify individual visitors to our website and is mainly statistical. It will be used mainly to improve the website and its navigability, and to identify areas that are of most interest to visitors.

Where visitors are identified they can be either individuals in their own right and/or organisations that already have relationships with us, and the information we gain will be used in developing those relationships and improving the services we provide.

The information obtained will be retained and utilised in accordance with all applicable laws in particular, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation, in accordance with which we will maintain and protect the confidentiality of your information.

Navigating and using our website will not normally require you to provide personal data although, you may need to provide personal data if you would like to use other services available on the website. We are the sole owner of the data collected and will not transfer, trade or sell the data. If the sharing of data is required for the performance of the contract, your consent will be sought for this purpose.

We will only use the personal data supplied for the purposes set out in this privacy policy: the personal data will be used for our technical and client administration, as well as to deliver a contractual service. We may use the data if required to do so by law and for legitimate grounds as a data controller.

We will use the information to improve our services and for marketing purposes only where a person/organisation has supplied explicit consent. Further, we will use your data to respond to your enquiries, provide you with legal and non-legal services and manage your relationship with us.

Marketing

We may collect your name and contact details (such as your email address, phone number or address) in order to send you information about our services which might be of interest to you. We may collect this directly from you, or through a third party. If a third party collected your name and contact details, we will process your professional data based on legitimate interests to send you a fair processing notice and then respect any communication preferences given to us.

You have the right to opt-out of receiving our marketing information. You may exercise the right at any time by contacting us at: compliance@aahplanning.com. If we send you any marketing emails we will always provide an unsubscribe option to allow you to opt-out of any further marketing emails. If you opt-out you will be added to our suppression list to ensure we do not accidentally send you further marketing information. When unsubscribing from any postal marketing, you may initially still receive some content which has already been printed or sent, but we will remove you from any future campaigns. We may still need to contact you for administrative or operational reasons but we will make sure that those communications do not include direct marketing.

If you are an existing client or acting as a business we use your contact details as necessary for our legitimate interests in marketing to you and maintaining a list of potential clients.

We never share your name or contact details with third parties for marketing purposes. We may use third party service providers to send out our marketing material but we only allow them to use that information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to comply with the data protection legislation.

We will retain your details on our marketing list until you opt-out at which point we add you to the suppression list. We keep the suppression list indefinitely to comply with our legal obligations to ensure we do not accidentally send you any more marketing material.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics features for Display Advertising. You can opt-out of Google Analytics and disable tracking using the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on. We use the data provided by Google Analytics Demographics to develop our website and content in line with our users’ interests.

Cookies Notice – if you continue to use our site we may assume that you agree to our use of cookies

Prospective clients

We will assume, unless notified of the contrary before the information is provided to us and we approve the position, that data provided by a prospective client or an existing client concerning a prospective matter:

• does not carry confidential obligations that are owed to a third party or

• is not given in breach of any confidential obligation owed to a third party or

• is not confidential and so that we would not be barred from acting for other individuals.

Applying to work at AAH Planning Consultants Ltd

We have a separate privacy policy relating to applications for work.

Information received from third parties

We may receive information about you from various sources.

Our service providers, for example business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers and credit reference agencies who may provide us with information about you to be used as set out above.

If we have acquired another business, or substantially all of its assets, which originally held your personal data, we will hold and use the personal data you provided to them or which they otherwise held about you in accordance with the Privacy Notice.

We may obtain your data from publicly available sources, for example Land Registry or a Council’s Planning Portal.

Why we might share your data with third parties

We may share your personal data with third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our contract with you, to protect the rights, property or safety of us, our clients or others, or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

Which third party service providers will process your personal information?

We may share your personal data with employees within AAH Planning Consultants Ltd.

We may also share your personal data with:

• Other organisation and service providers that we work with or partner with from time to time including, for example third party websites, analytics providers, advertising and media companies to enable them to show you adverts, including online and mailing houses so that we can send you information in the post.

• Our professional advisers.

• Any third party that purchases, or which we transfer, all or substantially all our assets and business. Should such a sale or transfer occur, we will use reasonable efforts to try and ensure that the entity to which we transfer your information uses it in a manner that is consistent with this policy.

Data security

As well as the measures set out above in relation to sharing your personal data, we have put in place appropriate internal security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to the duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach as required by law.

How long will we keep your information for?

As well as the periods set out above we generally keep your information for a period of seven years from the date in which your file is closed. In certain circumstances it may be necessary to keep your personal data for longer than that in order to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.

In determining the appropriate retention period for the retention of personal data we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve these purposes through other means and the applicable legal requirements.

In certain circumstances we may anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, in such cases we may use such information without further notice to you.

Your rights

The GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 provide you with a number of rights. Your key rights are set out below. Further information may be obtained from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

• To be informed in a clear, transparent and easily understandable way about how we use your personal data and about your rights

• Request to access your personal data. This provides you with the right to obtain a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This allows you have any incomplete or inaccurate data corrected.

• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no valid reason for us continuing to process it.

• Object to processing your personal data. In cases where we are relying on a legitimate interest or those of a third party and there are particular facts which make you want to object to us using your data on this basis and we do not have a compelling legitimate basis for doing so which overrides your rights, interests and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

• Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This allows you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you.

• Request the transfer of your personal data to a third party where you provide it to us and we are using it based on your consent, or to carry out a contract with you, and we process it using automated means.

• Withdraw consent. In limited circumstances we will be relying on your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal data for a specific purpose. You have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal data for the purpose or process you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

• Lodge a complaint. If you consider we are using your information in a way which breaches the GDPR or the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the ICO.

If you wish to review, verify, correct or request the erasure of your personal data, object to the processing of your personal data, withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal data or request that we transfer a copy of your personal data to a third party please contact compliance@aahplanning.com

We will respond to your request as soon as we can. Generally this will be within one calendar month from when we receive your request but on occasions it may take longer to deal with your request and in such circumstances we will let you know.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

Any changes we make to our Privacy Notice in the future will be posted on our website and where appropriate notified to you by email or otherwise.