1. About this Privacy Policy

RentLocally.co.uk Limited (a company incorporated in Scotland under the Companies Acts (company number SC351909)) and having its registered office at Dundas House, Westfield Park, Eskbank, Edinburgh, EH22 3FB), and each of its subsidiaries, holding companies and associated companies from time to time (hereinafter referred to collectively as “RentLocally.co.uk”), is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected when personal information about you is provided to it. Throughout the remainder of this Privacy Policy references to:-

• “we” or ”us” shall mean RentLocally.co.uk and/or any other member of RentLocally.co.uk from time to time;
• “you” shall mean the user of this website (which may include Customers, Tenants, Landlords, Agents, and Contractors);
• “Customers” shall mean the persons who are registered users of this website and “Customer” shall mean any one of them;
• “Guarantors” shall mean those individuals who may be required to guarantee the rents payable by Tenants to Landlords and whose personal information is supplied to us (whether via the Website or otherwise) by a Customer or by a Tenant and “Guarantor” shall mean any one of them;
• “the Services” shall mean the services made available to Customers via the Website but in particular shall include the tenant vetting service (which involves, among other things, the obtaining of credit information in respect of Tenants and Guarantors (as the case may be)) and the service of arranging for policies of insurance for Customers and/or Tenants;
• “Tenants” shall mean those individuals who are existing Tenants or prospective Tenants of Customers whose personal information is supplied to us (whether via the Website or otherwise) either by Customers or by the Tenant or prospective Tenant themselves and “Tenant” shall mean any one of them; and
• “the Website” shall mean the website on which this Privacy Policy appears, accessible at www.RentLocally.co.uk

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. It explains:

• the types of personal information which we hold and process;
• the purposes for which we hold and process personal information;
• how we use the personal information which we hold;
• for how long we hold personal information; and
• the procedures we have in place to protect your privacy.
• By using the Website, you are accepting the terms of this Privacy Policy.

If we change our privacy policy, we will post the new Privacy Policy on the Website.

We welcome your views about any of our websites and our Privacy Policy. If you would like to contact us with your views, please email enquiries@RentLocally.co.uk.

2. What Personal Information Do We Hold and Process?

We hold the following types of personal information:

• information which you voluntarily provide to us (via the Website or otherwise) which may include the following types of information (without limitation):-
  • your name, gender, telephone number(s) and e-mail address(es));
  • details of your current address and previous addresses at which you have lived;
  • details about your finances and credit history;
  • your date of birth; and
  • your current occupation, details of your current employer and details of your employment history.
• information about your use of the Website (including your IP (internet protocol) address);
• if you are a Tenant or Guarantor, information about you provided to us by third parties (such as our Customers, credit reference agencies, fraud prevention agencies and insurance reference agencies), which may include (without limitation):-
  • all of the types of information listed above which you might otherwise have provided to us directly;
  • whether you have any adverse credit history;
  • whether you have had any County Court Judgments or similar legal judgments against you;
  • whether you have ever been declared bankrupt;
  • details of any previous addresses at which you have lived;
  • references given by your previous employers and/or landlords;
  • details of previous insurance claims; and
  • copies of documents provided by our Customers such as your birth certificate, passport, utility bills, bank statement and drivers licence.
• information which we obtain from public sources, such as the electoral roll.

3. For What Purposes Do We Hold and Process Personal Information?

We hold and process information that you provide to us:-

• for our own administrative, sales, marketing and product / service development purposes;
• to enable us to provide you with our Services;
• subject to section 8 below, for direct marketing purposes;
• for the prevention of fraud and money laundering;
• for debt recovery purposes; and
• if you are a Tenant or Guarantor:
  • to make credit decisions about you that may involve credit scoring;
  • to make judgments about your suitability to rent a property or act as Guarantor (as the case may be) and make recommendations about such matters to Customers.

Depending on the information that you have provided to us, we may contact you by letter, e-mail, fax, telephone or SMS. If you would rather not be contacted by us by any, or all, of these means, please inform us in writing at the address noted below.
Unless you object in writing to us at the time the relevant personal information is collected, you consent to our use of the information set out or referred to in this Privacy Policy.

Unless we have your prior consent, we shall not sell, rent, trade or share any personal information which we hold except that

• we may disclose information which is held by us where required to do so by law or in connection with legal proceedings;
• we may disclose aggregate statistics to third parties which are made up from statistics in respect of individual persons but these statistics will not include personally identifying information; and
• we may disclose personal information to our legal, accounting, marketing or other professional advisers, our website hosts and our courier, postal or transport providers, and insurers (names and addresses only in the latter case);

If you are a Tenant or Guarantor:-

• we may also disclose your personal information (including details about your financial history and credit worthiness) to Customers;
• we may also disclose your personal information to credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies;
• we may also disclose your personal information to other agencies who maintain/compile databases of insurance claims and information for the purposes of sharing that information with providers of credit and insurance (“Insurance Reference Agencies”);
• we may also disclose your personal information to insurers and/or insurance agents; and
• we may disclose your personal information to third parties (such as your existing employer, previous employers, existing landlord and previous landlords) for the purposes of obtaining a reference about you from such persons;

If you are a Customer:-

• we may also disclose your personal information to insurers and/or insurance agents;
• we may disclose your personal information to Tenants and Guarantors;
• we may disclose personal information to our agents and service providers; and
• we may disclose personal information to other members of RentLocally.co.uk.

Should we wish to use your personal information for a purpose not permitted under this Privacy Policy, we will contact you to seek your consent.

We will ensure to take all reasonable steps to keep accurate and up to date any information which we hold about you. If, at any time, you discover that information held about you is incorrect, you should contact us enquiries@RentLocally.co.uk to have the information corrected.

4. For How Long Do We Hold Personal Information?

We will not hold on to any personal information for any longer than is reasonably necessary for the purposes outlined above.

5. What Procedures Do We Use to Protect Your Privacy?

We undertake to process the personal information which we collect in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 and other applicable laws relating to data protection which may be in force from time to time.

We have strict security procedures covering the storage and disclosure of your information (although we do not warrant that this is the case) in order to prevent unauthorised access. This means that we may ask for proof of identity before disclosing personal information to you.

We hold computerised and electronic personal information on computers and/or CD-ROMs held at the address noted below and/or a server which is managed remotely by Rackspace Managed Hosting, 2 Longwalk Road, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB11 1BA. We also hold tangible (or ‘hard copy’) personal information at the address noted below. From time to time, certain CD-ROMs or tangible (or ‘hard copy’) personal information may be transported by us to or from the address noted below.

The Website contains links to other websites. Equally, other websites may provide links to the Website. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies, if any, of each and every website which you use.

Please note that the Internet is not a secure medium. When submitting personal information to us using the Internet, your details may not be secure from access by third parties. The submission of personal information to us using the Internet is therefore made at your own risk.

You are entitled in law to receive a copy of personal information or data about you which is held by us on payment of £10 (or such other sum as may be prescribed by law from time to time).

We will also, on written request from you, amend any personal information which we hold about you. Where we amend the personal information which we hold about you, we will generally retain a copy of the previous version for our records. However, as noted above, we will not hold on to any personal information for any longer than is necessary for the purposes noted above.

Our contact details are as follows:

RentLocally.co.uk Limited
109/1 Swanston Road
Edinburgh
EH10 7DS

Tel: 0845 643 6142
EMAIL: enquiries@RentLocally.co.uk

Please note that, if you are under 16 years old, you must provide us with the name and address of your parent or guardian. We will advise him or her that you are providing us with personal information and seek any necessary consents from him or her.

6. Important information for Tenants and Guarantors

Where you (or, if you are a Tenant or Guarantor, a Customer) voluntarily supply details of third parties to us (such as your existing or previous employers, and your existing or previous landlords), we may contact those third parties with a view to verifying any information with which we have been provided about yourself.

You hereby agree that we or our agents may search the databases of third party data providers, such as credit reference agencies and Insurance Reference Agencies, for the purposes described at section 3 above.
We may use your personal information to make credit decisions about you and/or to make judgments about your suitability to rent a property or act as Guarantor (as the case may be) and make recommendations about such matters to Customers. To make or assist in the making of such decisions and recommendations, we may use a process called credit scoring and/or other automated decision making processes. Your personal details will be passed to our Customers, who may use that information to make similar decisions and recommendations about you. They in turn may pass your personal information to the Landlord of the property which you propose (or, if you are the Guarantor, the Tenant whose obligations you are prospectively guaranteeing proposes) to rent.

As explained above, if you are a Tenant your personal details may be passed on to credit reference agencies and Insurance Reference Agencies. Such agencies may record the search and such information may be shared with credit grantors, insurers other persons making a search against you in future and be used for credit decisions and insurance decisions and fraud prevention.

In the event of you defaulting on rental payments in terms of any lease or tenancy agreement which you may have with a Customer, such information may be supplied to credit reference agencies and Insurance Reference Agencies.

7. Direct Marketing

We operate a policy of 100% opt-in marketing. This means that the contact details you provide (such as your telephone number, fax number, postal address and email address) may be used by us to contact you with information about products and services, unless you opt out. Your contact details may also be provided to third parties for the purposes of direct marketing, but will only be used in this way if you have previously indicated your consent to receiving such messages.

You may opt out from receiving such messages from us at any time by sending an email to enquiries@RentLocally.co.uk with the word ‘UNSUBSCRIBE’ in the subject or by writing to the address above. Where you have consented to receiving such messages from third parties you will need to contact those third parties to opt out of receiving such messages from them.

All marketing messages sent to you by us will contain a statement re-iterating your right to opt out and re-stating these instructions about how to opt out.

8. Fraud Prevention Agencies

If false, inaccurate or misleading information is provided and fraud is identified, details may be passed to fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information. We and other organisations may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering, for example, when:

• checking details on application for credit and credit related or other facilities;
• managing credit and credit related accounts or facilities;
• recovering debt;
• checking details on proposals and claims for all types of insurance; and/or
• checking details of job applicants and employees.

9. Cookies

Our websites, including the Website, make use of “cookies”. Cookies are data that a website transfers to an individual’s hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies, which are industry standard and are used by most websites, including those operated by us, can facilitate a user’s ongoing access to, and use of, a website. They allow us to customise our websites to your needs. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, most web browsers allow you to easily deny or accept the cookie feature. You should refer to the documentation for your particular web browser for instructions as to how to prevent websites using cookies on your computer. However, you should note that cookies may be necessary to provide you with some features of our on-line services.