Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how Amethyst Homes uses and protects any personal information shared with us via any channel of communication, including but not limited to this website, or other channels such as: email, telephone, in person at our developments, direct mail, social media and SMS.

We are committed to protecting and respecting privacy and ask that you read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event of a complaint.

 Who we are

Amethyst Homes is the data controller in respect of your personal information and is responsible for ensuring that the personal information we collect is processed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you have any questions or are unsure about anything contained in this privacy policy, please let us know by contacting our head office at:

Steel House
Ponds Court
Consett
Co Durham
DH8 5XP

What information we collect about you

In the course of our interactions with you we may collect some (but not necessarily all) of the following information either directly or indirectly, this includes but is not limited to personal information you provide to us.

Personal information collected by us, whether obtained from you directly or indirectly, during initial enquiries:

Your name
Your address
Your telephone number(s)
Your e-mail address
Information regarding your ability to purchase a property

We may also collect third party information from the following sources:

Rightmove, Zoopla, New Homes for Sale
Social Media Platforms
Contractors Health & Safety Information (Contractors only)
Your solicitor, estate agent and Independent Financial Adviser where you have agreed that they can share personal information

Personal information we collect automatically:
Some Sites use CCTV for security purposes

Other information we may collect from you throughout your interactions with Amethyst Homes:
Contact preferences
Information about your circumstances, such as means of financing your new home
Property reservation details
Proof of identification
Details of your solicitor, estate agent and Independent Financial Adviser;
Details of your current home e.g. sales status and further information about the property;
Details of your mortgage (if you require one)
Details of extras you require and choices you have made in relation to your property
Bank and credit/debit card details
House purchase completion date
Information you share with our customer care teams such as details of your property
VAT Registration, proof of insurance (Contractors only)
Details of any site reported incidents
Insurance details

What we do with the personal information we collect

We will use the personal information we collect about you in the following ways:
Providing products and services to you, including but not limited to:
engagement as a potential / actual customer Homes;
for the fulfilment of our contractual obligations to you during the sales process; and
providing care and support to you both during and after the sales process
Responding to your enquiries
Improving the customer support we provide
Processing payments made by you to Amethyst Homes or vice versa
With your consent to contact you for marketing and promotional purposes
Complying with our legal obligations to you and third parties
Facilitating our internal record keeping and auditing
Conducting reports and analytics

Who we share your personal information with

We will not pass your personal information to anyone outside our company, except to carefully selected third parties, for example where we need to send the information to persons or organisations who work on our behalf to provide a product or service to you but such persons or organisations may only use this information in order to provide such product or service and not for any other purpose.  We will not disclose your personal information to any other third party without your consent unless we are satisfied that they are legally entitled to access your personal information.

How long we will keep your personal information for

We will keep your personal information for as long as we need it to provide the services and products you request from us. We may also keep it to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve complaints and to enforce our rights.  As a result, the length of time that we keep your information for will vary depending on the purposes for which we have it. In any event, we will review what information we need on an ongoing basis and will only retain it for the minimum amount of time that we need it for.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data breach where we are legally required to do so.

The legal basis we rely on to process your personal information

Data protection law sets out a number of conditions which organisations can rely on in order to lawfully handle personal information.

The reasons for processing that we rely on are as follows: –

  1. Legitimate interests

The law permits us to handle your personal information where necessary in our legitimate interests provided that this isn’t outweighed by your interests. We will ensure that when relying on legitimate interest as the legal basis for processing there will be a minimal impact on your privacy rights. Many of the purposes for handling your personal information, described above, fall into this category as they are essential activities which enable us to run our business efficiently and effectively for example, enabling us to use third party service providers, to monitor, review and improve the services we provide to you and your experience when you visit our Website and to help us ensure that we communicate with you about the things that are most likely to be of interest to you. We may, if necessary, also use your information to defend our legal rights or to obtain legal advice and to manage any complaint that you might have. We ensure that your rights and interests are protected when we do this.

  1. Performance of a contract

Where you transact with us to buy a new home, we will use your personal information so that we can fulfil our part of the contract e.g. to deliver the product to you, to take payment and to manage this process and perform our obligations under your home buyer warranty.

iii. Performance of legal obligations

We will, if required by law, disclose your personal information for example in response to a court order. We will disclose your personal information if requested by a law enforcement agency or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, non-compliance with of our terms and conditions, or as otherwise permitted or required by law and consistent with legal requirements. 

Where in the world we will hold your personal information

We will not transfer your personal data outside the EEA unless such transfer is compliant with data protection legislation, however, your personal information may occasionally be processed and held by third parties outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

Whereas in the EU, we implement a high standard of data protection law, some parts of the world do not implement such stringent laws. As a result, if we do send personal information outside of the EEA we will endeavour to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place so that it is protected in accordance with the GDPR European data protection law. Such safeguards may include: –

Sending personal information only to countries that European Authorities have indicated have adequate data protection laws in place; and
Putting in place contracts with the recipient containing terms which the European Authorities have approved as providing adequate protection; organisations which are members of a scheme which has been approved by European Authorities as achieving adequate protection e.g. Privacy Shield.

Cookies on our Website

Cookies are small text files stored on your computer (or mobile device) by web pages as you visit them. Cookies are not programs and cannot harm your computer.

The Amethyst Homes website uses Cookies to enhance your experience and to help us analyse data about how visitors are using our website.

Email Tracking

We use email tracking as part of our marketing activity to determine whether or not the email has been opened and if it was responded to.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information that you provide whilst viewing such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your use personal information
access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this privacy policy is already designed to address
require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
you require us to anonymise your personal information so that you can no longer be identified from that personal information
receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing
object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you
object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information
otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances

We will keep the personal data we store about you accurate and up to date so far as our technologies and processes permit.

If you would like to exercise any of our rights listed above you can do so at any time using the following methods:

Writing to us at any time, at: Amethyst Homes Limited, Steel House, Ponds Court, Consett, Co. Durham DH85XP
Phoning the telephone number included on any postal correspondence.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

Complaints

If you have any questions or concerns about how Amethyst Homes Limited handles your personal information, you can write to us at:

Amethyst Homes
Ponds Court
Consett
Co Durham
DH8 5YN

You also have the right to raise any complaint you may have with the ICO. You can do this by contacting them: –

By post: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow Cheshire, SK9 5AF
By phone: 0303 123 1113
By email: casework@ico.org.uk

Your statutory rights are not affected by anything in this policy. 

Amethyst Homes reserves the right to change this policy from time to time.