Complaints Policy

Internal Complaints Procedure

We are committed to providing a professional service to all our clients and customers. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.

If you have a complaint, please put it in writing, including as much detail as possible. We will then respond in line with the timeframes set out below (if you feel we have not sought to address your complaints within eight weeks, you may be able to refer your complaint to the Property Ombudsman to consider without our final viewpoint on the matter).

In the first instance, your complaint should be sent by email/post to:

Name: Mark Sharrock

Position: Director

Email: mark@townbridge.co.uk

Address: Townbridge Residential Surveys, 1 St Michaels Way, Middlewich, Cheshire, CW10 9DX

What will happen next?

We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within three working days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally be dealt with by the person named above who will review your file and speak to the member of staff who dealt with you. A formal written outcome of our investigation will be sent to you within 15 working days of sending the acknowledgement letter.
If, at this stage, you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for a separate review to take place by a senior member of staff.
We will write to you within 15 working days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final viewpoint on the matter.
If you are still not satisfied after the last stage of the in-house complaint procedure (or more than 8 weeks has elapsed since the complaint was first made) you can request an independent review from The Property Ombudsman without charge.

The Property Ombudsman. Milford House, 43-55 Milford Street

Salisbury, Wiltshire. SP1 2BP

01722 333 306

www.tpos.co.uk

Please note the following:

You will need to submit your complaint to The Property Ombudsman within 12 months of receiving our final viewpoint letter, including any evidence to support your case.

The Property Ombudsman requires that all complaints are addressed through this in-house complaints procedure, before being submitted for an independent review.

On what basis can we process your information?

The legal grounds under data protection legislation for processing your personal data are as follows:

It is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party, or to take steps before entering into a contract with you, for us to provide you with our products and services
You have given us explicit consent to the processing of your personal data for one or more specific purposes, namely 1) where you have given us consent to receive electronic marketing by us and/or 2) to process your Special Category Personal Data described above. You do not need to provide us with marketing consent in order to receive our services
It is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests, except where our interests are overridden by the interests, rights or freedoms of affected individuals (such as you). To determine this, we shall consider a number of factors, such as what you were told at the time you provided your data, what your expectations are about the processing of the data, the nature of the data, and the impact of the processing on you. Our legitimate interests include processing necessary to improve and to promote our services and products, and to better understand our customers’ interests and knowledge of the property market and to administer the technical aspects of our service and products.
Where we need to comply with a legal obligation, or in rare circumstances
Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests), and/or

Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes

What are we going to do with your information?

We will hold and use personal information about you in the following ways:

To fulfil our obligations to you when providing you with our property services

To share your information with others where necessary to fulfil our property services for you, or where acting as an agent for a third party on your behalf
To comply with our statutory and regulatory obligations, including verifying your identity, preventing fraud and money laundering and assessing your creditworthiness
Communicate with you during the course of providing our services, for example, with your enquiries and requests
Statistical purposes, so we can analyse figures to help us manage our business and plan strategically for the future
To provide you, or to enable third parties to provide you, with information about goods or services we feel may interest you, where you have provided permission for us to do so or, if you are an existing customer only, where we choose to contact you by electronic means (including e-mail or SMS) with information about our own goods and services similar to those which you have already obtained from us or negotiated to obtain from us. For those marketing messages, you can unsubscribe at any time

Track your use of our service, including your use of our App, to improve these
To notify you about changes to our service
To ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer

How long we keep your data for

We will retain your personal data for different periods depending on the service you have chosen to use us for, which may be a longer period than that for which we need to hold your data to provide those services, i.e. where we are under regulatory or statutory duties to hold your data for a longer period or need to retain it in the event of a legal claim or complaint.

Who your information will be shared with

We will pass your details to the following organisations (our “data processors”) who carry out certain activities on our behalf as part of us providing our services: cloud computing host providers, technical support service providers and EPC providers.

We will also pass your details, where necessary, to your property solicitors and those of the other party to your transaction. We will also disclose your personal information to third parties:

If we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
If our company or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets.
If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal or regulatory obligation, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our company, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes without first obtaining your prior consent.

Security of your data

Your data will be held on secure servers within the European Economic Area (“EEA”) with all reasonable technological and operation measures put in place to safeguard it from unauthorised access.  Where possible any identifiable information will be encrypted or minimised.

If we have given you a username and password which enables you to access certain parts of your matter on our systems, you are responsible for keeping it confidential. Please do not share it with anyone.

Your Rights

How you can access and update your information

You have a right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, known as a data subject access request. You also have the right to request that information we hold about you which may be incorrect, or which has been changed since you first told us, is updated or removed. These requests are free of charge and can be sent to Mark Sharrock, Townbridge Residential Surveys, 1 St Michaels Way, Middlewich, Cheshire, CW10 9DX.

How you can request erasure of your data

You can ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where you have withdrawn consent for us to process it (as explained below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

How you can withdraw your consent

You have the right at any time to withdraw any consent you have given us to process your personal data. Please note if you withdraw your consent it will not affect the lawfulness of any processing of your personal data we have carried out before you withdrew your consent. Should you wish to do so you can change your consent preferences at any time by contacting us at surveys@townbridge.co.uk

How you can restrict or object to us using your data

You can ask us to suspend the way in which we are using your information in certain scenarios, or object to our processing your data where we are relying on a legitimate interest ground (or those of a third party) and you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms, or where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases where you object, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Please note that if you want us to restrict or stop processing your data this may impact on our ability to provide our services. Depending on the extent of your request we may be unable to continue providing you with our service.

Any queries or concerns about the way in which your data is being used can be sent to Mark Sharrock mark@townbridge.co.uk

Moving your information to another organisation

In the event that we process your data by automated means where you have either provided us with consent for us to use your information or where we used the information to perform a contract with you, you have the right to request that we send to you or to another organisation, a copy of the personal data we hold about you, for example when you are dealing with a different service provider. If you would like us to move, copy, or transfer your information please let us know by email to surveys@townbridge.co.uk. We will respond to you within one month after assessing whether this is possible, taking into account the technical compatibility with the other organisation in question.

Complaints about the use of your personal data

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact us to have the matter investigated by writing to Mark Sharrock, Townbridge Residential Surveys, 1 St Michaels Way, Middlewich, Cheshire, CW10 9DX.

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the UK data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office.  Further details can be found at www.ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113.