Cooke & Co Ownership, GPDR, Privacy, Referral Fee, Cookie and Complaint Policy
BACKGROUND:
Cooke & Co (Thanet) Limited), Pagedales Limited t/a Cooke & CO Estate and Letting Agents understands that your privacy is important to you and that you care about how your personal data is used. We respect and value the privacy of all of our Customer including Property Vendors and Purchasers, Landlords and Tenants and will only collect and use personal data in ways that are described here, and in a way that is consistent with my obligations and your rights under the law.
Information About Us
Cooke & Co(Thanet) Limited and Pagedales Limited are Companies based in the United Kingdom with their registered office address being 147 Northdown Road Cliftonville Kent CT9 2QY Tel:-
Data Protection Officer: Damien Cooke MNAEA MARLA
Anti Money Laundering Officer: Damien Cooke MNAEA MARLA
Email address: damiencookeandco.com
Telephone number:
Postal Address: 147 Northdown Road Cliftonville Kent CT9 2QY
We are regulated and registered by the ICO, HMRC anti money laundering and The Property Ombudsman for sales and lettings. We also have full client money protection through ARLA certificate is pictured below this notice.
We are members of PropertyMark incorporating NAEA and ARLA for Sales and Lettings and they provide our client money Protection (Current certificates shown below). We are also members of thew the Property Ombudsman for both Sales and Lettings.
What Does This Notice Cover?
This Privacy Information explains how we use your personal data: how it is collected, how it is held, and how it is processed. It also explains your rights under the law relating to your personal data.
What is Personal Data?
Personal data is defined by the General Data Protection Regulation (EU Regulation 2016/679) (the “GDPR”) as ‘any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified in particular by reference to an identifier’.
Personal data is, in simpler terms, any information about you that enables you to be identified. Personal data covers obvious information such as your name and contact details, but it also covers less obvious information such as identification numbers, electronic location data, and other online identifiers.
The personal data that we use is set out in Part 5, below.
What Are My Rights?
Under the GDPR, you have the following rights, which we will always work to uphold:
- The right to be informed about our collection and use of your personal data. This Privacy Notice should tell you everything you need to know, but you can always contact us to find out more or to ask any questions using the details in Part 11.
- The right to access the personal data we hold about you. Part 10 will tell you how to do this.
- The right to have your personal data rectified if any of your personal data held by us is inaccurate or incomplete. Please contact us using the details in Part 11 to find out more.
- The right to be forgotten, i.e. the right to ask us to delete or otherwise dispose of any of your personal data that we have. Please contact us using the details in Part 11 to find out more.
- The right to restrict (i.e. prevent) the processing of your personal data.
- The right to object to us using your personal data for a particular purpose or purposes.
- The right to data portability. This means that, if you have provided personal data to us directly, we are using it with your consent or for the performance of a contract, and that data is processed using automated means, you can ask us for a copy of that personal data to re-use with another service or business in many cases.
- Rights relating to automated decision-making and profiling. Part 6 explains more about how we use your personal data, including automated decision-making AND/OR profiling.
For more information about our use of your personal data or exercising your rights as outlined above, please contact us using the details provided in Part 11.
Further information about your rights can also be obtained from the Information Commissioner’s Office or your local Citizens Advice Bureau.
If you have any cause for complaint about our use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
What Personal Data Do You Collect?
We may collect some or all of the following personal data (this may vary according to your relationship with us
- Name
- Date of birth
- Gender
- Address
- Email address
- Telephone number
- Business name
- Job title
- Profession
- Nationality
- Information about previous financial issues
- Previous address
- Information about your preferences and interests in relation to buying, selling or renting a property as a tenant or as a landlord
Your personal data is obtained from the following third parties:
Property feeds from Vebra, Property Internet Portals including but not exclusively Zoopla and its associates, Rightmove, On The Market. CreditSafe for anti money laundering checks. Other Estate Agents (When chain checking). Solicitors and Financial Advisers for sales progression, Iceberg Digital for promotion, Tidio for our AI robot and messenger contact on our website and social media sites. These include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter.
How Do You Use My Personal Data?
Under the GDPR, we must always have a lawful basis for using personal data. This may be because the data is necessary for our performance of a contract with you, because you have consented to our use of your personal data, or because it is in our legitimate business interests to use it. Your personal data [may be used for one of the following purposes:
- Providing and managing your account.
- Supplying our services to you. Your personal details are required in order for us to enter into a contract with you.
- Personalising and tailoring our services for you.
- Communicating with you. This may include responding to emails or calls from you.
- Supplying you with information by email OR post that you have opted-in to (you may unsubscribe or opt-out at any time by contacting us by email including the address unsubscribe@cookeandco.com or by contacting the negotiator or office that sent you the email
With your permission and where permitted by law, we may also use your personal data for marketing purposes, which may include contacting you by email OR telephone OR text message OR post with information, news, and offers on our services. You will not be sent any unlawful marketing or spam. We will always work to fully protect your rights and comply with our obligations under the GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, and you will always have the opportunity to opt-out.
We use the following automated systems including CreditSafe , Vebra Live Estate Agency Software , CFP Lettings Software, Acaboom for vendor nuturing and decision making , Brief your Market for Newsletters by email and with targeted advertising, Sprift for valuation reports and comparables in conjuntion with the main Property portals . Our own bespoke solutions to website tracking, cutomer automation and targeted advertising, Facebook and Goole adword targeting and tracking. If at any point you wish to query any action that we take on the basis of this or wish to request ‘human intervention’ (i.e. have someone review the action themselves, rather than relying only on the automated method), the GDPR gives you the right to do so. Please contact us to find out more using the details in Part 11.
- The following automated decision-making method(s) may be used:
- Matching Properties for sales and lettings to suit your requirements
- Matching and Sending out Marketing Letters for Sale & Lettings Departments
- Sending details of new services, we offer by email for sales and lettings
- Anti Money Laundering Checks for vendors and buyers
- Passing contact details to Cooke & Cos recommended Contractors for letting repairs
How Long Will You Keep My Personal Data?
We will not keep your personal data for any longer than is necessary in light of the reason(s) for which it was first collected. Your personal data will therefore be kept for the following periods (or, where there is no fixed period, the following factors will be used to determine how long it is kept):
Usually up to 5 years
How and Where Do You Store or Transfer My Personal Data?
We may store or transfer some or all of your personal data in countries that are not part of the European Economic Area (the “EEA” consists of all EU member states, plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein). These are known as “third countries” and may not have data protection laws that are as strong as those in the UK and/or the EEA. This means that we will take additional steps in order to ensure that your personal data is treated just as safely and securely as it would be within the UK and under the GDPR as follows.
We transfer your data to a third party based in the US, this may be protected if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield. This requires that third party to provide data protection to standards similar levels of data protection to those in Europe. More information is available from the European Commission.
Please contact us] using the details below in Part 11 for further information about the particular data protection mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data to a third country.
The security of your personal data is essential to us and to protect your data and take a number of important measures, including the following:
Secure Emails and password protected software.
Full Anti Virus and Anti Malware protection both locally and in the cloud
Secure Data Servers in the cloud which can only be accessed from one Ip address
Encrypted Onsite and Cloud based Images and Backups.
Do You Share My Personal Data?
We may be legally required to share certain personal data, which might include yours, if we are involved in legal proceedings or complying with legal obligations, a court order, or the instructions of a government authority.
OR
We share your personal data with other companies in our group for This includes a holding company and its subsidiaries.
We may sometimes contract with the following third parties to supply services to you on our behalf. These may include payment processing, delivery, and marketing. In some cases, those third parties may require access to some or all of your personal data that we
Financial Advisers for the purpose of insurance mortgages and financial advise this includes Marble Financial Planning.
Mr Russell Smith FRICS and Mr Elliot Austin for the purpose of Home buyers Reports, surveys and valuations.
Property Portals including Rightmove, Boomin, Zoopla, On THe Market, and all their connected partners, for the purpose of advertising property and helping clients find properties. This includes providing details of comparable properties sold in the area.
Referrals to the Guild of Professional Estate Agents for the purpose of marketing.
Rent 4 Sure for tenant referencing and Right to rent searches.
Abacus Insurance Margate for general household and commercial insurance.
Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, Tidio, Linked In, Google Business, Google Maps, Whats App, You Tube and other beneficial social media advertising platforms, for the purpose promoting property, the company and service that we provide and also providing online communication to the public, messaging and chat from Facebook and our own website.
Various solicitors including Boys and Maughan, Robinson & Allfree, Whitehead Monkton the purpose of selling or buying a home
Recommended independent contractors & professionals that carry out repairs on properties that we manage or where a landlord has asked for assistance.
Credit Safe to comply with Anti Money Laundering regulations for sellers and purchasers. Details may also be passed to government departments and the Police if we suspect a crime may have taken place
HMRC as requested for overseas landlord’s tax situation.
Telephone Call Recording
It is not Cooke & Co's usual practice is not to store telephone calls indefinitely.
Telephone calls cannot verbatim be used or released into the public domain, by us or any third party and we cannot rely on them as evidence. Cooke & Co purposely do not have the statutory warning at the beginning of the calls saying all calls are being recorded, this is a legal requirement if you wish to use the calls to form a contract with a client. We prefer to have contracts in writing for clarity.
Cooke & Co do use a digital VOIP system that allows calls to be listened to for up to one hour after the call has been completed, we may use this for reference purposes.
Calls cannot be accessed by team members. Mr Damien Cooke has secure access from the telecom supplier. Calls are not saved as a matter of course although we may ask for them in exceptional assistance. Examples of this are threats, abusive behavior, or any illegal fraudulent activity on the telephone made towards the company or team. Any recordings would be handed to the Police or relevant authorities for them to use as they see fit. We cannot make any guarantees thaT calls will be accessable even in these exceptional circumstances.
After one hour all calls are automatically deleted. We, therefore, protect clients’ privacy and we remain GDPR and data protection compliant.
If people involved in the call have given consent to be recorded then we can override this system for the following purposes.
A recording is necessary for the fulfillment of a contract where documents cannot be echanged in time.
A recording is necessary for fulfilling a legal requirement.
A recording is necessary to protect the interests of one or more participants.
A recording is in the public interest, or necessary for the exercise of official authority.
A recording is the legitimate interests of recorder unless those are overridden by the participant
CCTV
Cooke & Co / Pagedales Limited use CCTV to monitor and record images for our staff and the public safety, crime prevention, detection and prosecution of offends. This scheme is controlled by Mr Damien Cookeat all three offices and recordings are kept on hard drive storage for up to 30 days.
If any of your personal data is required by a third party, as described above, we will take steps to ensure that your personal data is handled safely, securely, and in accordance with your rights, our obligations, and the third party’s obligations under the law, as described above in Part 8.
If any personal data is transferred outside of the EEA, we will take suitable steps in order to ensure that your personal data is treated just as safely and securely as it would be within the UK and under the GDPR, as explained above in Part 8.
In some limited circumstances, we may be legally required to share certain personal data, which might include yours, if we are involved in legal proceedings or complying with legal obligations, a court order, or the instructions of a government authority.
How Can I Access My Personal Data?
If you want to know what personal data we have about you, you can ask us for details of that personal data and for a copy of it (where any such personal data is held). This is known as a “subject access request”.
All subject access requests should be made in writing and sent to the email or postal addresses shown in Part 11. To make this as easy as possible for you, a Subject Access Request Form is available for you to use. You do not have to use this form, but it is the easiest way to tell us so we can respond to your request as quickly as possible.
There is not normally any charge for a subject access request. If your request is ‘manifestly unfounded or excessive’ (for example, if you make repetitive requests) a fee may be charged to cover our administrative costs in responding.
We will respond to your subject access request within 28 days and, in any case, not more than one month of receiving it. Normally, we aim to provide a complete response, including a copy of your personal data within that time. In some cases, however, particularly if your request is more complex, more time may be required up to a maximum of three months from the date we receive your request. You will be kept fully informed of our progress.
How Do I Contact You?
To contact us about anything to do with your personal data and data protection, including to make a subject access request, please use the following details [(for the attention Damien Cooke
Email address: damiencookeandco.com
Telephone number: 07836764407 or
Postal Address: 147 Northdown Road Cliftonville Kent CT9 2QY
In House Complaint Procedure
We are committed to providing a professional service to all our clients and customers. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards. If you have a complaint, please put it in writing, including as much detail as possible. We will then respond in line with the timeframes set out below (if you feel we have not sought to address your complaints within eight weeks, you may be able to refer your complaint to the Property Ombudsman to consider without our final viewpoint on the matter).
What will happen next?
We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within three working days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally be dealt with by the office manager who will review your file and speak to the member of staff who dealt with you. A formal written outcome of our investigation will be sent to you within 15 working days of sending the acknowledgement letter.
If, at this stage, you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for a separate review to take place by a senior member of staff.
We will write to you within 15 working days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final viewpoint on the matter.
If you remain dissatisfied, you can then contact The Property Ombudsman to request an independent review:The Property Ombudsman Ltd
Milford House
43-45 Milford Street
Salisbury
Wiltshire
SP1 2BP
www.tpos.co.uk
Please note the following: You will need to submit your complaint to The Property Ombudsman within 12 months of receiving our final viewpoint letter, including any evidence to support your case. The Property Ombudsman requires that all complaints are addressed through this in-house complaints procedure, before being submitted for an independent review.
You can also go to the following web address which has handy complaints handling toolkit https://www.tpos.co.uk/mem-compliance/complaint-handling-toolkit
Referral Fees Disclosure
In compliance with regulations, Cooke & Co (Thanet) Limited and Pagedales Limited disclose the receipt of referral fees from ancillary service providers recommended to clients, applicable to both sellers and buyers.
Financial Services
We partner with Suitable Choices Ltd for financial services, authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority. Referral fees may be received based on the mortgage product chosen by the client.
Conveyancing
We recommend several solicitors for conveyancing services and receive a commission per legal completion. This fee is included in the solicitor's initial quote and is not an additional charge.
- Boys & Maughan solicitors: Expected referral fee of £125 including VAT per completion.
- Whitehead Monkton solicitors: Expected referral fee of £125 including VAT per completion.
Surveys
For survey services, we recommend Russell Smith and Elliot Austin. A referral fee of 10% of the survey fee or a minimum of £50.00 may be received for recommendations.
Energy Performance Certificates
Tom King is recommended for Energy Performance Certificates, with an expected referral fee of £5 for each EPC conducted upon our recommendation.
Note: Clients are not obligated to use the services of any recommended providers. Accepting a recommendation may result in a referral fee payable to us, separate from any client obligations to pay our fees or commission.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
We may change this Privacy Notice from time to time. This may be necessary, for example, if the law changes, or if we change our business in a way that affects personal data protection.
Any changes will be made available on our website at www.cookeandco.com.
