Privacy & Cookies Policy

A guide to the use of your personal data

This policy describes and governs the collection, storage and use of personal information collected by us – in particular about our customers and potential customers. It provides you with details about the personal information that we may collect from you, as well as how we use that information.

1.      Who we are
Bedford Self Storage Ltd is a company registered in England (registration number 7038801), whose registered office is at Unit 2 Arkwright Road Industrial Estate, Bedford, MK42 0LQ. Our trading address is Unit 2 Arkwright Road Industrial Estate.

For the purpose of data protection laws, we are the “controller”.  That means that we’re responsible for looking after the personal information that we hold about you.  We’ll use your personal data fairly, lawfully and in a transparent manner, and in accordance with data protection laws. You may contact our Data Protection Officer at: info@bedfordselfstorage.co.uk

2.      The information we collect about you

a. Information you give to us

You may give us information about you by filling in forms on our website or by contacting us by phone, e-mail, SMS, chat or other means. This includes information you provide when you sign up to any of our services, register to use our services, or search for a service

We may ask you to provide the following information:

• your name;

• your age and date of birth;

• your postal address;

• your phone number (landline and/or mobile);

• e-mail details;

• photograph;

• financial and credit card (or other billing information);

• ID number e.g passport or driving license

b.      Information we collect when you visit our website or when you call us

Each time you visit one of our websites, we may collect the following information: 

• technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; and

• information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call us.

We may also record calls that we hold with you for quality, training and audit purposes (and to ensure that such calls meet legal and regulatory requirements.

3.      How we will store your information
We may collect, store and use your personal information listed in section 2 above (including energy consumption data) for the following purposes:

• to communicate with you in relation to your account with us, including by post, email, your online account, SMS and live chat;

• to allow you to participate in interactive features (e.g. on our website) and as part of our efforts to keep our website safe and secure and to administer our website for internal operations;

• to create personalised messages and content for you;

• to contact you (including by SMS and e-mail) with products and services that we offer which are similar to those that you have already, or information about services or products you’ve opted in to receive from us.

• to undertake or assist fraud prevention, identity or money laundering verification and legal enforcement where necessary;

• to pursue any money owed to us and manage our debt collection and recovery activities;

• to create profiles and marketing opportunities where you have explicitly consented for your data to be used for such purposes; and

• in connection with market research activities.

We will not keep personal information longer than is necessary for the purpose or purposes for which they were collected.  Please see section 12 of this policy for further details.

4.      Who we share your information with
We may disclose your personal information in respect of the purposes listed above with the following organisations:

The police and other crime prevention agencies;

• third parties where there is a legal duty to disclose information;

• government and/or regulatory bodies

• our online email providers and contractors who send out post and other communications for us in order to send you information about your account and related products and services;

• fraud prevention agencies and other organisations involved in fraud and crime prevention for the purpose of identifying instances of fraud and informing them of suspected instances of fraud;

• debt collection agencies to recover outstanding late payments and manage our debt collection activities including issuing default notices;

• market research organisations in order to collect information on customer experience; and

• where a third party acquires all or most of our business, that third party.

5.      Using your data for marketing purposes

If you have a contract with us or where you’ve opted in to receive marketing information from us, then we may contact you (including by SMS, telephone, e-mail or by social media (for example through Facebook)) with information about products and services that we offer which are similar to those that you already receive from us, or information about services or products you’ve opted in to receive from us.

If you’d prefer not to receive this information please let us know by emailing info@bedfordselfstorage.co.uk If you’re writing to us, please include your name, address and postcode and whether you’d like to opt out of email, text messages, or both.

You can also tell us at any time that you want us to stop sharing your personal information with other organisations for marketing purposes.

6. How will we comply with data protection laws?

Data protection laws require that we meet certain conditions before we’re allowed to use your personal information in the ways described in this privacy policy.  We take our responsibilities under data protection laws very seriously, including meeting these conditions.  To use your personal information, we’ll rely on the following conditions:

Performance of a contract: we use your data primarily in order to provide you with the products and services that you’ve requested.

Consent: we may provide you with marketing information about our services or products where you’ve provided your consent for us to do so. 

Vital interests: in very limited circumstances we may use or share information about you to protect you.

Legitimate interests: to use your personal data for any other purpose described in this privacy policy, we’ll rely on a condition known as “legitimate interests”.  It’s in our legitimate interests to collect your personal data as it provides us with the information that we need to provide our services to you more effectively. This means that we need to carry out a balancing test of our interests in using your personal data (for example, in order to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us), against the interests you have as a citizen and the rights you have under data protection laws (for example, to not have your data sold to third party marketing companies without your knowledge, or store your personal data in insecure or unstable countries or regions).  The outcome of this balancing test will determine whether we can use your personal data in the ways described in this privacy policy (except in relation to marketing, where we’ll always rely on your explicit consent).  We’ll always act reasonably and give full and proper consideration to your interests in carrying out this balancing test.

7. Special categories of personal data

Data Protection Laws define certain personal data as falling into ‘special categories of personal data’ such as personal data regarding your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data for the purposes of uniquely identifying a person, data concerning your health (including mental and physical health), or data concerning your sex life or sexual orientation. If you provide this information, this will be an indication that you explicitly consent to us processing it.

8. What automated decisions do we make about you? 

If you’ve not paid for your storage 40 days after payment is due, details of your account may automatically be passed to our collections partners and you’ll receive debt recovery communications from us.

9. How we may contact you

We may contact you by email, phone, text or multimedia message or other forms of electronic communication or by visiting you

12. How long your data is kept by us

We will not keep personal information longer than is necessary for the purpose or purposes for which they were collected.

We’ll typically keep your personal data for one year from the closure of your account with us in order to enable us to deal with any issues or concerns you may have about how we handled your account, and also to allow us to bring or defend legal proceedings.  In some cases, where you’ve made a complaint or owe us money, we’ll need to keep your data for up to six years.

13. Third Party Websites

Our website(s) contain links to other websites operated by third parties. Please note, this privacy policy applies only to the personal information that we collect through our website(s) and we aren’t responsible for personal information that third parties may collect, store and use through their websites. You should always read the privacy policy of each website you visit carefully.

14. Security

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Whilst we take appropriate technical and organisational measures and have in place physical and electronic procedures necessary to safeguard the personal information that you provide to us, no transmission to or from us by post, email, phone, SMS or over the Internet can ever be guaranteed as entirely secure. Communications over the web are not secure and as such, we cannot accept any liability or responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We’ll notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we’re legally required to do so.

15. Your rights

You have a number of rights under data protection law in relation to the way we process your personal information. These are set out below.  You may contact us using the details below to exercise any of these rights and we’ll respond to any request received from you within thirty days.

16. How to find out more

If you have any questions about how we collect, store and use personal information then please contact us:

Email us: info@bedfordselfstorage.co.uk

Phone us: 01234 340444

Write to us: Unit 2, Arkwright Road Industrial Estate, Bedford, MK42 0LQ.   

17.  Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail or post.  Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

This policy was last reviewed and updated in My 2018.

18.  Complaints

If you have any concerns regarding our processing of your personal information or are not satisfied with our handling of any request by you in relation to your rights, please contact us at info@bedfordselfstorage.co.uk or phone us on 01234 340444.