Privacy

We take the privacy of your personal information very seriously and know that you will wish to understand how we will use your personal information. This Privacy Notice applies to individuals who visit our website or with whom we correspond, tenants, owners or occupiers of properties which we either own or which we have sold, and/or individuals who purchase a property from a Berkeley Group company.  It also extends to those individuals connected to such a purchase, including but not limited to spouses, cohabitees, agents, introducers, company directors and trustees.

This Privacy Policy:

• will inform you about what personal information we collect and why, how we use it, who we share it with, as well as giving you other important information;
• covers personal information collected via our website as well as information that you may provide when communicating directly with us and/or where your personal information may be provided by, or obtained from a third party. It also covers personal information processed during reservation, exchange and completion of property purchases and thereafter, as well as personal information we may process relating to tenants in connection with property management, maintenance and/or repairs.
  

Personal information that you provide voluntarily may include:

• Contact information, such as your name, postal address, telephone number, mobile phone number, and email address; 
• Copies of identification documents (such as a passport or driving licence) and copies of documents that provide a proof of address (such as a utility bill);
• Date of birth, nationality, gender; 
• Details of the type of property that you are interested in purchasing or which you have reserved, such as number of bedrooms, location, price range, transport link requirements, as well as details of any interior design or other associated extras for the property;
• Details of how interested you are in making a purchase and when you are looking to buy;
• Details of your current property status, including whether it has been sold or if it is up for sale and whether or not you are in a chain (including dates of exchange and completion);
• Details of your financial circumstances, such as whether you are purchasing by way of a mortgage (and if so, the amount of mortgage required) or other means and if you are planning to live in the property or purchasing it as an investment;
• Other relevant financial information where you are buying a property, including the method of paying the reservation fee, date reserved, price agreed, deposit payments, source of funds, employment and career details, details of any criminal convictions and offences or related security measures and/or possible illegal behaviour, whether you appear on any list of financial sanctions or are a politically exposed person. Depending on the method you are using to purchase a property, we may record details of your shareholdings in a company (if you are using a corporate vehicle for the purchase) or interests in a trust, together with any other information that is relevant for our checks or needed to comply with our policies and processes;
• Details of third parties used to purchase a property (where applicable): your appointed solicitor, mortgage lender/broker, estate agent, agent, and/or introducer;
• Any other information that may assist with the sale process and your satisfaction (e.g. languages spoken) and any additional information generated in relation to your purchase (e.g. your new address);
• Where you have provided your feedback we will record your opinions and the text that you have written;  
• Your password and other login credentials for your MyHome account;
• Details of your marketing preferences and whether you are happy to receive marketing communications via Email, Telephone, Post or Text Message.

Personal Information provided by you:

The main way that we collect your personal information from you is when you provide it to us. This could be through our website or when communicating to one of our sales staff, either in person, via email or on the telephone.

Personal information provided by, or obtained from, third parties:

Occasionally we may receive information about you from other sources (such as estate agents), which we may add to the information we hold already about you in order to help us provide our products and services to you.

We may receive personal information from an introducer or other person(s) acting as agent on your behalf, including your solicitors and other property or financial professionals. We may also receive information about you from someone acting on our behalf (such as our solicitors) as well as information from the managing agents for the development.

Additionally, property sales portals (such as Rightmove and Zoopla) and social networks (such as Facebook and Instagram) may pass your information to us where you have given them permission to do so and registered your interest in one of our developments through an advertisement on one of their websites, or alternatively they may advertise our developments to you without sharing your information with us.

Uses of your information:

The most common purposes for which we will use your information are:

• General communication:
  

  We will use your information to communicate with you and provide you with the details of properties that you have requested and to respond to any enquiries you may have. 

• Understanding your property search requirements:|
  

  We will use the information that you provide to us to try to find the right property for you.

  We will use the details you provide to us (including, when you are looking to buy, your current property status and your funding arrangements) to better understand your interest in making a purchase from Berkeley and when this is likely to be.

  We will use the details of the type of property that you are interested in purchasing; the above information and your direct marketing preferences to inform you about properties that we believe may be suitable to you. 

• Direct Marketing:
  

  Where you have expressly given us consent or where we are otherwise legally permitted to do so, we may send you information about new property developments and or services which may be of interest to you. 

  We will endeavour only to send you information about news, offers and the latest properties that could be suitable for you. To help with this we will ask for information about you – the more we know about the type of property you are interested in, the easier it will be for us to find the right property for you from the relevant Berkeley company.

  We ask for your consent to receive marketing materials on behalf of The Berkeley Group plc and the companies within its Brands for simplicity’s sake, as all of our Brands build properties and there is often an overlap in the areas of the country in which they build. This gives you the best opportunity to find the home that is right for you.

  You can unsubscribe/withdraw your consent and ask us to stop sending you marketing materials at any time by using the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of marketing emails, by informing one of our sales consultants (with whom you have previously been dealing) or through our website. 

  We keep a record of when we receive consent from individuals and regularly review consent to check updates to preferences. We act on withdrawals of consent as soon as we can.

• To enable the sale process and beyond:
  

  We process certain personal information at reservation and prior to exchange of contracts to enable us to record correctly and detail the contractual details in the reservation form and contract, to enable the transaction to proceed, and to assist with the sale process and your satisfaction. We will also process certain personal information prior to any payments being received from you and prior to completion of your purchase to enable us to understand matters relevant to payment of monies by you and the completion of your purchase, to make informal assessments of whether or not, or when you will be able to complete your purchase and to facilitate timings and for compliance purposes.
  

  We may also process certain personal information post completion in relation to your continued property ownership in relation to any sums due from you (eg. Service charge and ground rent) and/or your occupation of the property (eg. As a tenant of the owner) as well as for your better enjoyment of your property.

• Other purposes:
  

  Additionally and as required, we may use your information:

  • To analyse and improve Berkeley’s products and services.
  • For general business administration.
  • To enable us, our service providers, contractors or any applicable property owner to undertake property management, maintenance and/or repairs.
  • To comply with our legal, contractual and regulatory obligations.
  • For anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and financial sanctions checks in order to verify your identity and home address, and to carry out a risk assessment to comply with our policies and processes for anti-money laundering and terrorist financing checks.
  • To comply with court or regulatory orders and to exercise or defend legal rights.

Depending on which of the above purposes for which your information is used, it will be processed on one or more of the following legal grounds:

• The processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract; 
• Where we have your consent (for example, where you have provided your consent to receive certain marketing from us).
• The processing is necessary to comply with a legal obligation to which Berkeley is subject;
• The processing is necessary for the purposes of Berkeley’s legitimate interests or those of any third party that receives your personal information, except where these are overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms.

As a result of our anti-money laundering and terrorist financing checks, we may obtain and store information about any criminal convictions that you have. This information would typically be obtained through our online due diligence searches that we conduct. The grounds for lawfully processing information on criminal convictions and offences or related security measures is S10 and/or 15 of Schedule 1, Part 2, of the Data Protection Act 2018, that is to detect and prevent unlawful behaviour and/or for the suspicion of terrorist financing or money laundering.

We may disclose your information to our third party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other organisations for the purposes of providing services to us or directly to you on our behalf. Such third parties may include IT service providers (such as hosting and email management), the estate management company responsible for your development; contractors that we use to remedy any snagging issues or carry out or coordinate repairs to your property; third parties who carry out market research/feedback on our behalf; the council for the area in which your property is located; the utility service providers for your property; your new build warranty provider; other service providers for your property or property development (e.g. estate gym operators); and your solicitors (or other designated agents, introducers, or other property or financial professionals).

Where you are a tenant, we may also share personal information with the applicable property owner or agent and with our managing agents in connection with your occupation of the property and/or its maintenance and/or repairs. 

When we use data processors to process your data on our behalf, we will retain control over and we will remain fully responsible for your personal data and we will use appropriate safeguards as required by applicable law to ensure the integrity and security of your personal data when engaging such service providers.

Your personal data may be shared with and used by other Berkeley companies that may have properties that are suitable for you, or where another Berkeley company becomes responsible for a particular development which you may be interested in, or where another Berkeley company operates Berkeley’s IT systems, or is responsible for the collection and administration of ground rent. 

We may also share your personal information with law enforcement, regulatory and government agencies; companies that are party to joint ventures with a Berkeley Group company; or other third parties outside the Berkeley Group that acquire an interest in the freehold or superior lease of your property and/or in all or part of a Berkeley Group company or joint venture. 

If you give us information on behalf of someone else, you confirm that the other person has appointed you to act on his/her behalf and that:

• They have given their consent for their details to be passed to the relevant Berkeley Group company;
• You will pass on a copy of this Privacy Policy to them.

We will use technical and organisational measures to safeguard your personal information, for example:

• Access to your MyHome account is controlled by a password of your choice and your email address; 
• Our IT systems are protected by firewalls; regular software updates; anti-virus protections and intrusion detection systems; and
• We store your personal information on secure servers located in the UK and EEA.

We do not intend to transfer your personal information outside the UK or the EEA. If we believe a transfer of your personal information outside of the UK or the EEA will arise, we will implement contractual or other measures to comply with legal requirements on the transfer of personal information, ensuring that there is an adequate level of protection in place. 

Where you are located outside the UK or the EEA then we will transfer your personal information to the UK and Europe where our systems and servers are located. This will naturally entail your personal information being exported back out to the jurisdiction that it originated from or from where you are located (for example when we reply to your emails or we write to you). 

Your personal information will be deleted when it is no longer reasonably required for the relevant purposes and we are not legally required or otherwise permitted to continue storing such information. Berkeley will, in particular, retain your personal information where required for us to assert or defend legal claims until the end of the relevant retention period or until the claims in question have been settled.

The criteria that we use to assess how long to hold your personal information for in our sales and marketing database is a combination of whether or not you have previously purchased from the Group and when you last interacted with us. 

Where you have purchased a property from us, your information will be retained as necessary for the performance of ongoing contractual and legal obligations which will have been entered into and to exercise and defend legal claims.

Subject to certain legal conditions, you have the following rights in relation to the personal information that we hold about you.  These are:

• The right to request a copy of the information we hold about you;
• The right to correct any mistakes in your information;
• The right to erase certain information;
• The right to request a restriction of the processing of your information;
• The right to object to certain information and automated decisions being processed;
• The right to withdraw your consent to direct marketing;
• The right to transferring your personal information in a structured file (data portability).

Should you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact us directly (see ‘How to contact us' below) and we will be happy to assist. 

Please note that we may ask for proof of your identity and address (such as a copy of your driving licence or passport – please do not send any original documents).

Additionally, you should be aware that not all of these rights are absolute and there may be circumstances in which we will not fully comply with your request because of a specified legal ground or exemption. For example, you will not be able to request that we delete all of your information if you have purchased a property from us because it will be necessary for the contract you have entered into. We will always let you know the legal basis for this.

We reserve the right to charge you a reasonable administrative fee for any manifestly unfounded or excessive requests concerning your access to your information, and for any additional copies of the personal information you request from us.

We reserve the right to update and change this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect any changes to the way in which we process your personal information or changing legal requirements. In case of any such changes, we will post the changed Privacy Policy on our website or publish it otherwise. The changes will take effect as soon as they are posted on this website. 

This policy was last updated on 28th March 2023.

If you want to contact us to know more about the use of your information, ask us to correct it, or to exercise any of your rights, please contact us by post. Postal Address: Legal Department, Berkeley House, 19 Portsmouth Road, Cobham, Surrey, KT11 1JG.

If you wish to email us, please use dataprotection@berkeleygroup.co.uk. We will endeavour to send you a response as soon as possible. Your patience is much appreciated during busy periods.

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe we have not handled your request in an appropriate manner. However, we encourage you to contact us before making any complaint and we will seek to resolve any issues or concerns you may have.