Privacy Notice

This is the Privacy Notice for Sussex Marketing Strategies Ltd.

The purpose of this notice is to explain how and why we use personal data, so that we are as transparent as possible and so that you are aware of your rights under data protection legislation. This is not an agreement document; it is provided for your information.

Data Controller Details

We are Sussex Marketing Strategies Ltd, company number 12247966.

Our registered address is:

Sussex Marketing Strategies Ltd
Planet House
North Heath Lane Industrial Estate
Horsham
West Sussex
RH12 5QE

You can contact us using the details below:

Email: studio@sussexmarketing.com
Telephone: 01403 613007

We keep the minimum amount of information we need about you to provide our digital marketing, website, SEO, social media, content and related consultancy services, meet our legal obligations, manage our business and handle billing.

Your data is deleted when we no longer need it for the purposes we collected it for, unless we have a legal obligation or legitimate interest to keep it for longer.

We do not sell your personal data. We only share it with third parties where necessary to provide our services, manage our business, meet our legal obligations, recover money owed to us, or as otherwise explained in this notice.

We have policies, procedures and technical measures in place to help keep your data secure.

What data do we process?

As a client, prospective client, supplier or business contact, we may hold the following information about you:

  • your name and contact information;
  • information about your business activities;
  • communications with you;
  • invoicing and payment information; and
  • any other information you choose to provide to us in the course of our relationship.

Explaining the lawful basis

References in this notice to the basis of processing, for example “Article 6.1.f”, are references to the article of the UK General Data Protection Regulation which provides us with the lawful basis to process the personal data in question.

This will be an Article 6 lawful basis, as we do not intentionally collect or process special category personal data as part of our normal services.

Engaging you in and continuing our commercial relationship

We use the information we hold about you to engage in a commercial relationship with you and maintain that relationship over time.

We may add your personal data to our email address book and contact list. We also use your information to invoice you, keep track of payments, respond to your enquiries and keep in contact with you throughout our relationship.

The lawful basis for this is Article 6.1.b – performance of a contract. This processing is necessary to deliver our services to you.

Where there is a contractual requirement to provide us with your personal data, the consequence of failing to provide the required data may be that we are unable to provide our services to you.

Data Retention

We will retain your personal data for the period during which you actively engage with us.

We will subsequently retain all or some of your personal data where we have a legal obligation or legitimate business reason to do so. For example, we may retain records for 7 years for HMRC reporting purposes.

Email correspondence will usually be retained for 5 years before deletion, unless we have a specific reason to keep it for longer or delete it sooner.

Third parties

We will not share your personal data with any third party without a valid reason. However, we may share your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • If you do not pay your invoices, we may choose to engage a third party to recover any money you owe us. The lawful basis for this is Article 6.1.f – we have a legitimate interest in pursuing money owed to us.
  • It is possible, though unlikely, that we may be required to disclose your information in response to a court order or other legally binding requirement. The lawful basis for this is Article 6.1.c – legal obligation.
  • We use an external accountancy service, which may have limited access to your personal data for the administration of company financial affairs. The lawful basis for this is Article 6.1.f – we have a legitimate interest in allowing our accountant to have limited access to client personal data in order to manage and file our accounts.
  • We use service providers such as Microsoft for email and business systems, and Xero for accounting. These service providers may process personal data on our behalf.

We only use data processors where we are satisfied that they can provide appropriate reassurance about their ability to keep your data safe and secure. We take steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organisational measures are in place and that our agreements are covered by appropriate contractual arrangements, as required by Article 28 UK GDPR.

Data Transfers

Your data will generally be held in UK data centres.

Some of our service providers may process or store personal data outside the UK. For example, Xero may store data in the United States of America.

Where personal data is transferred internationally, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as Standard Contractual Clauses or other lawful transfer mechanisms, where required.

Security

The UK GDPR requires us to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data.

We use Transport Layer Security, also known as TLS or SSL, to encrypt data you supply to us through our website. Additional technical measures include appropriate access controls for the systems we use and security measures applied to our website.

Your rights

The UK GDPR gives you a number of rights in relation to your personal data. The rights most relevant to you are likely to include:

  • the right to access your personal data and information about our processing of it;
  • the right to ask us to rectify any inaccurate information we may hold about you;
  • in certain circumstances, the right to restrict our processing of your data;
  • in certain circumstances, the right to ask us to erase personal data we no longer need to keep; and
  • the right to object to certain types of processing.

If you want to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at studio@sussexmarketing.com.

You also have the right to complain to us about how we handle your personal information. Please see the “Data protection complaints” section below for details of how to do this.

Data protection complaints

If you have a concern or complaint about how Sussex Marketing Strategies Ltd has handled your personal information, please contact us so that we can look into it.

You can make a data protection complaint by contacting us using the details below:

Email: studio@sussexmarketing.com
Telephone: 01403 613007
Post: Sussex Marketing Strategies Ltd, Planet House, North Heath Lane Industrial Estate, Horsham, West Sussex, RH12 5QE

To help us investigate your complaint, please include:

  • your name and contact details;
  • a clear description of your complaint;
  • details of what personal information your complaint relates to;
  • copies of any relevant correspondence or evidence; and
  • what you would like us to do to resolve the issue.

If you are making a complaint on behalf of someone else, we may ask you to provide evidence that you have authority to act for them.

If we need to confirm your identity before investigating or responding to your complaint, we may ask you to provide suitable proof of identity. We will only ask for information that is necessary and proportionate.

We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 30 days of receiving it.

We will then investigate your complaint fairly and without undue delay. As part of our investigation, we may review relevant records, correspondence, systems and internal processes. We may also contact you if we need more information.

We will keep you informed about the progress of your complaint where appropriate, particularly if the matter is complex or if our investigation is likely to take longer than expected.

Once we have completed our investigation, we will tell you the outcome without undue delay. Where appropriate, we will explain any steps we have taken or intend to take as a result of your complaint.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator for data protection matters.

You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office using the details below:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: www.ico.org.uk

You can also find information about making a data protection complaint to the ICO at: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/data-protection-complaints/