Privacy Statement

INTRODUCTION

Avant Homes is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

1. IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE

PURPOSE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how we collect and process your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you; register an interest in one of our properties, organise a site visit, register a complaint or sign up to our take part in a competition

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

AVANT HOMES GROUP

The Avant Homes Group is made up of different legal entities. This privacy statement is issued on behalf of the Avant Homes Group so when we mention Avant Homes, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy statement, we are referring to the relevant company in the Avant Homes Group responsible for processing your data. We will let you know which entity will be the controller for your data if you purchase a new home or other product from us. Avant Homes Limited is the data controller and responsible for this website.

We have appointed a data protection manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy statement. If you have any questions about this privacy statement, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the data protection manager using the details set out in the “Contact us” section at the end of this statement.

2. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect and process your personal data for a number of reasons. These reasons include:

  • So that we comply with any legal obligation we have;
  • In order to comply with our duties and exercising our rights under a contract with you;
  • The pursuit of our legitimate interests (as set out below); or
  • Where you have consented to the processing

This includes, but is not limited to, information you (or a joint purchaser and/or owner):

  • fill in a form either face to face when you visit one of our developments, or over the telephone
  • fill in a form on our website or a third party’s website (for example a property portal such as Rightmove or Zoopla) send us an email or letter
  • enter into a reservation form or other transaction with us
  • subscribe to one of our services or publications
  • enter into a competition or promotion
  • request marketing to be sent to you
  • give us some feedback
  • interact with our website, which may automatically collect some technical data
  • use our social media pages, which are monitored by a third-party company on our behalf
  • Visit or call one of our developments.

The information collected may include the following:

  • your first name, middle name, maiden name, last name, marital status, title, date of birth and gender
  • your contact details, including your address, a business address, email address and telephone numbers (fixed line and mobile)
  • technical information such as your internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website
  • information about how you use our website, products and services
  • information including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences
  • information you have provided to third parties, such as via a property portal or website or when you comment on one of our social media pages
  • CCTV or telephone call recording, which we use on some of our developments to provide a safe and secure environment for our employees or for training and monitoring purposes for our customer services team.

We may also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

We do not provide services to those under the age of 18 as the nature of our business means that only those over the age of 18 can enter into a contract to buy a new home. We may collect and process data for individuals under the age of 18 in relation to specific marketing promotions, competitions and social media output. The collection and processing of data of individuals under the age of 18 is subject to us gaining consent from the individual’s parent or guardian and that is the lawful basis for such processing. If you are using our website and are under the age of 18, you should obtain your parents’ or guardians’ permission before you contact us.

3. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

The normal basis for processing customer data, it that it is necessary for the legitimate interests of Avant Homes, including;

  • Selling and supplying our homes and services;
  • Protecting customer, employees and other individuals and maintaining their health, safety and welfare;
  • Promoting, marketing and advertising our products and services;
  • Sending promotional communications which are relevant and tailored to individual customers;
  • Understanding our customers’ behaviour, activities, preferences and needs;
  • Improving existing products and service and developing new products and services;
  • Complying with our legal and regulatory obligations;
  • Preventing, investigating and detecting crime, fraud or anti-social behaviour;
  • Handling customer contacts, queries or disputes
  • Protecting Avant Homes, its employees and customers, by taking appropriate legal action against third-parties who have committed criminal acts or are in breach of legal obligations to Avant Homes;
    and
  • Fulfilling our duties to our customers, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders.

PURPOSES FOR WHICH WE WILL USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/Activity

Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest

To register you as interested in receiving marketing communications for one or more of our development sites

Consent

Asking you to leave a review or take a survey

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services)

To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey

(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business)

To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)

(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy)

To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)

To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business)

Social media and website promotion and advertising

Consent

Pre-emptive safety features, such as CCTV to ensure the safety of the business’s employees and assets

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business)

MARKETING

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the use of our personal data for marketing and advertising. For example, when we collect your contact details, we ask you to specify your preferences for how we contact you, whether by telephone, post, email or SMS. We do not share or sell personal data to third parties outside the Avant Homes Group for their marketing purposes. Some of our advertising campaigns are managed and issued by a third party marketing or PR agency on our behalf, but those third parties will only contact you on our behalf with information about Avant Homes’ products and services.

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us or if you provided us with your details when you entered a competition or registered for a promotion and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting the Group’s data protection manager at any time (see the “Contact us” section below).

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us for other reasons.

THIRD-PARTY MARKETING

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.

CHANGE OF PURPOSE

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

4. HOW WE SHARE YOUR DATA

We do not share or disclose any of your personal information without your consent, other than for the purposes specified in this notice or where there is a legal requirement.

We use trusted third-parties to provide the below services and business functions, however all the processors acting on our behalf only process your data in accordance with our instructions and comply fully with this privacy notice, the data protection laws and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

We may disclose your information to third parties if:

  • We are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation; or
  • In order to apply or enforce our contract with you; or
  • To protect our rights, property, or our safety and/or the safety of our customers, or others.

We may also disclose your information to our suppliers and contractors to provide information to you on our behalf and/or in order to fulfil our contracts with you.

We will share your personal information with suppliers in respect of;

  • Any property you reserve from us
  • The sale of the property and/or the purchase of your existing property in part exchange.
  • Any optional extras you decide to purchase

These third parties include:

  • Estate and managing agents
  • Financial and legal advisors, and
  • Any relevant mortgage provider
  • The Nation House Building Council and similar organisations
  • Utility and Service Providers, and
  • Local authorities

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

We may share your information with relevant government agencies to assist you to participate in any government schemes in which you wish to take part.

THIRD-PARTY LINKS

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA). We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA) as currently defined. Anyone contacting the company through a social media account may have their Personal Data processed in the USA. In most cases we do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA). However, some of the categories of parties specified above in “WHO WE MAY SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA WITH” may be located in countries outside of Europe and/or European Economic Area ("EEA") specifically the USA, however this will only apply to individuals who contact us via a social media platform.

Whenever we make transfers of your personal data, we implement appropriate safeguards in accordance with applicable data protection laws, for example, by sending to countries that have an adequacy decision by the European Commission and/or the UK Information Commissioner's Office (under Articles 45 of the UK GDPR/GDPR) or when within the Avant Homes Group, an intra-group agreement gives specific contractual protections and regulates cross border intra group transfers of personal data.

5. DATA SECURITY

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

6. DATA RETENTION

HOW LONG WILL YOU USE MY PERSONAL DATA FOR?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our customers including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data for six years after they cease being customers.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see your legal rights below for further information.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

7. CONTACT DETAILS

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact our Group Data Protection Manager by email [email protected] or by post to the following address:

Group Data Protect Manager
Avant House
6-9 Tallys End
Barlborough
Chesterfield
S43 4WP

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

8. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to 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 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.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

  • If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
  • Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
  • Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
  • You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

NO FEE USUALLY REQUIRED

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

WHAT WE MAY NEED FROM YOU

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

TIME LIMIT TO RESPOND

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

HELPFUL DEFINITIONS

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to.

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY AND YOUR DUTY TO INFORM US OF CHANGES

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 13 July 2023

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.