Household Accessibility tools My account Your bill Your water Love Yorkshire Get in touch Privacy policy We take the security and use of your personal data very seriously and are committed to complying with data protection legislation. Home About us Our policies Privacy policy This notice outlines your rights and our responsibilities regarding your personal information. It covers how and why we collect, use and share your information, the legal bases for doing so and how you can exercise your rights as a data subject. Who we are Yorkshire Water provides households in Yorkshire with water and waste water services. It is part of the Kelda Group. For the purposes of Privacy Law, the data controller is Yorkshire Water Services Ltd] (company number 2366682) registered at Western House, Halifax Road, Bradford BD6 2SZ. Privacy Law means the Data Protection Act 1998 (as amended), the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice)(Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000 (SI 2000/2699), the Electronic Communications Data Protection Directive 2002/58/EC, the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011, the General Data Protection Regulation (from 25 May 2018) and all other applicable laws and regulations relating to processing of personal data and privacy in any applicable jurisdiction as amended and replaced, including where applicable the guidance and codes of practice issued by the UK Information Commissioner or such other relevant data protection authority; Changes to Our Privacy Notice We review this notice regularly as part of our internal processes or as our services, activities, or regulatory requirements change. It’s subject to change at any time, but the most up to date version is published here on this page of our website. This notice is dated 27 January 2020. Contacting Us If you’d like to request further information about our privacy policy or exercise any of your rights you can contact us: By email to Dataprotectionofficer@yorkshirewater.co.uk By post to Data Protection Officer, Kelda Group, Western House, Halifax Road, Bradford BD6 2SZ We take any concerns we receive very seriously. If you think our collection or use of your personal information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate, please bring it to our attention. We’ll investigate and respond to your concerns including any additional information or explanations needed. We also welcome suggestions for improving our procedures. If you are unhappy with our response you can request our Data Protection Officer to review the case. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates adherence to Privacy Law. For information, advice or to make a complaint you can: - go to the ICO website - write to The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF; or - call them on 0303 123 1113 Your Privacy Rights You have rights relating to your personal information. You can find more information about your privacy rights on the Information Commissioner’s Office website. To raise a personal data request please visit the Data Privacy Requests Page. The details 1. The right to be informed 2. The right of access 3. The right to rectification 4. The right to erasure 5. The right to restrict processing 6. The right to data portability 7. The right to object 8. Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling 1. The right to be informed You have the right to be informed about how and why we process your personal information Any time you give us personal information you have the right to be informed about why we need it and how we’ll use it. You can find most of the information you need in this Privacy Notice. If you have any questions please contact us. Lawful basis for processing Privacy Law states we must have a lawful basis for processing your information. We have identified the legal bases on which we process your information, and this varies depending on how and why we have your information. The legal bases we use are: Public Task: if the processing is necessary for the performance of our public tasks as a water company (e.g. arranging and maintaining your water supply and waste water services, billing and account management, collecting debt, maintaining our infrastructure); Consent: if you’ve given consent for us to process your personal information (e.g. in relation to certain support schemes or in relation to certain marketing activities); Legitimate interest: if the activities are for our business purposes and do not impede your rights as data subjects (e.g. carrying out market research or customer satisfaction surveys to improve our service to you, complaints that have been made to CCWater, communications around your water usage, certain marketing activity such as WaterAid or other promotional material in your billing envelopes, data sharing with credit reference agencies, fraud prevention and detection, ensuring network information and public security etc.) Contracts: where our processing is necessary for the performance of a contract where you are a party to the contract. Legal obligations: if the processing is necessary for compliance with one of our legal obligations (e.g. we’re required to provide certain contact information and other details about our services to Ofwat, the Consumer Council for Water and the Water Redress Scheme (WATRS)); and Vital interests: we may need to process your personal information to protect your vital interests (e.g. because there is a risk to you and your household due to water quality issues or where the water supply has been disrupted). If we process any special category information i.e. information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, health data, or data concerning your sex life or sexual orientation, we must have a further lawful basis for the processing. These further legal bases include where: you give us your explicit consent to process your special category information (e.g. in relation to a support scheme); the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests or someone else's vital interests; you make the information public; the processing is necessary for a legal claim (e.g. because you’ve failed to pay your bill); the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest (e.g. where we suspect fraud on the part of a customer); or the processing is necessary for reasons of public interests in the area of public health (e.g. to manage a water quality incident or contamination). Information we collect from you and what we do with it Yorkshire Water supply and wastewater services Yorkshire Water priority services customers Customers requesting financial support with their bill Falling into arrears or failure to pay your water bill Yorkshire Water e-billing customers Former household customers - moving out of our supply area Yorkshire Water as a Landlord Information we collect or obtain from others about you We prefer to collect information directly from you so we can ensure it’s as up to date and as accurate as possible. However, we also collect information about you from other sources outside of the Kelda Group. These include: credit data and publicly available information about you from Credit Reference Agencies; information collected by our business partners or sub-contractors relating to services they are delivering to you on our behalf, or to respond to a concern you have; information about you from members of the public (e.g. if someone reports a leak) or other third parties with an association with your property (e.g. landlords, tenants, letting agencies, shared occupiers, previous or future occupiers, family); information about you or your property from public bodies (e.g. the Environment Agency); opinion data about your preferences, the level of service we provide or on key industry topics, provided to us by market research agencies. All agencies commissioned to undertake this work are done so following the Market Research Society code of practice; demographic data from third party sources with access to publicly available information (e.g. parliamentary constituency information). If you apply for one of our support schemes we may collect additional information from third parties to verify your application. We’ll explain if and how we’ll do this in the application form or when you contact us. For non-household customers we may receive information from your retailer or MOSL (Market Operator of England’s non-household water retail market) in order for us to deliver water and sewerage services to you. We also work closely with affiliated partners (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, local authorities, Department for Works and Pensions, debt relief charities and agencies, Citizens’ Advice Bureaus, Credit Reference Agencies and debt collection agencies) and may receive information about you from them. In future, we may also receive information about you from public authorities and other utility companies to improve public service delivery and ensure that priority customers can access available support and discount schemes. Profiling and automated decision making We use your personal information on its own, in an aggregated anonymous form, or mixed with publicly available demographic information to profile you. We do this to: ensure we deliver the best possible service to you use the right method and right message to communicate with you understand how you use water to help our business planning and to keep you informed about your water usage identify service disruption that may affect you If your account is in arrears, we will use the information we collect from CRAs to profile you. This includes the use of statistical analysis, credit scorecards, payment trends, behaviour analysis, and demographic information. We do this so we can manage your account and find the best possible solution that fits your needs or situation. What to expect when you contact us If you contact us by phone or in writing (including e-mail, live chat, social media or via our website) we’ll record, monitor or keep copies of the correspondence. We keep this information for a number of reasons (including fraud prevention and crime recording/investigation) but the main reasons are to: assist our response to any account/supply queries you may have; ensure we continue to offer you the best possible service; maintain standards and help train our customer relationship managers; demonstrate our compliance with regulatory obligations; and keep our records up to date so that we don’t offer you services that you don’t need. Contacting us by telephone Contacting us by post Emailing us Contacting us by Webchat Contacting us via social media Making a complaint Visiting our website or using our mobile application Each time you visit to our website or mobile application we’ll automatically collect the following information: Technical information – This includes the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; Location information - When using one of our location-enabled services on our website or mobile applications, we may collect and process information about your actual location. If you wish to use the feature, you’ll be asked to consent to your data being used for this purpose. You can withdraw your consent at any time either by modifying the geo-location settings of your web browser or the location awareness permissions of your mobile device. Session information - 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 our customer service number. We use website analytical tools on our site for anonymous reporting of site usage and may use this information for advertising on social media sites. All data collected using analytical tools are deleted after 14 months. Information about cookies we use Third-party links Information about using our online billing platform Capturing images (including CCTV) We comply with the Home Office Surveillance Camera Code of Practice for all our CCTV usage. If you have any privacy related concerns about our use of CCTV please contact us by email at Dataprotectionofficer@yorkshirewater.co.uk or by post to Western House, Western Way, Bradford BD6 2SZ. Visiting our offices CCTV on commercial vehicles Our use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (‘UAV’s or Drones) Information we share with others There may be some circumstances where we need to share some of your information as part of our day to day management of your account and services, to meet our compliance obligations or where we are permitted to under Privacy Law. Group companies The obligations that we have to our Regulators Agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information Coronavirus Affiliated Partners we use who may have access to your Data We use affiliated partners to help us process your personal information and provide services to you including to: manage mains replacement and pipe repairs or fit new meters. They, their employees and subcontractors have access to some customer information relevant to their work; provide software services, like our meter reading system, social media management, case management and workflow systems etc. to support us with processing the large amounts of data that we need to manage. Occasionally these providers store or back-up information on servers outside the European Economic Area (EEA) process information and provide statistical analysis, management information and IT support. This requires them to process your personal information, and this may happen outside the EEA help us process card payments, payment card transactions and to process refunds; print bills and customer communications; and provide additional support to our customer services teams in busy times. They have access to relevant customer information in our billing system and may use your data to contact you on our behalf. Where we store your information and how we keep it safe All customer personal information stored on our corporate systems is kept securely. We operate a suite of Information Security Policies to minimise the risk of security breaches, including appropriate access and auditing controls. We use industry standard protection methods to minimise the risk of cyber-attack. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet may not always be secure. Although we’ll do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of information you send to us that is outside of our security arrangements; any transmission is at your own risk. We also operate strict physical security at all our sites and employees all receive security and data protection awareness training. We may store your personal information on your local device, such as your computer or mobile phone to assist you in your repeated use of our services. We have no control over inappropriate access to this information. You can delete this information at any time using the facilities of your Internet browser or by removing our application from your mobile device. Where we transfer information to third parties to enable them to process it on our behalf (see the information about affiliated partners above), we seek confirmation of their compliance with security industry standards, legal and regulatory requirements. Storing or transferring your information outside the European Economic Area ("EEA") We may transfer or store your personal information outside the EEA. It may be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff may be engaged in, among other things, the provision of support services and management information reporting. Where information is transferred to a country or international organisation outside of the UK / EEA, we’ll comply with the relevant legal rules governing such transfers. How long we keep your information for We only keep your information for as long as we need it. We’ll retain certain information (e.g. contact information and bank details) for as long as you have a relationship with us. Our data retention policy outlines these time frames but the length of time depends on the purpose of the processing. Generally, we’ll keep your account information for up to seven years from account closure (e.g. if you move out of the Yorkshire Water supply area), after which time your personal information will be either deleted or anonymised from closed and finalised accounts. Retention periods may be extended in certain limited cases as prescribed or permitted by law – e.g. because of an accident or to bring or defend a legal claim. Yorkshire Water online bill/statement guide In order to access the Yorkshire Water online bill/statement guide you will need to provide us with your customer reference number and your postcode. By logging in, and continuing to login to the online bill/statement guide you are authorising us to process your data in order to provide you with a personal explanation in accordance with Yorkshire Water’s privacy policy. Yorkshire Water cannot guarantee uninterrupted and/or reliable access to the online bill/statement guide and makes no guarantees whatsoever as to its operation, availability, functionality, that it will be free of error or disruption or otherwise. Yorkshire Water reserves the right to refuse the use of the online bill/statement guide to anyone for any reason whatsoever in its absolute discretion. Further, we reserve the right to modify or discontinue (permanently or temporarily) offering the bill/statement guide to you or all recipients at our discretion and at any time. Download a copy of our full privacy policy. 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