About us
Waterlevel Limited and its wholly owned subsidiary Albion Eco Limited are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
Our company registered office is at 13th Floor, One Croydon, 12-16 Addiscombe Road, Croydon, CR0 0XT and our registered number is 4753001.
Waterlevel Limited as the company responsible for your personal information is the Data Controller. Since we only process personal data for core business purposes we do not have to register with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
This Notice applies to customers, contractors, employees of contractors, prospective employees, referees and other third parties.
Why we need you to give us information about yourself
This Privacy Notice lets you know how and why we collect and use your personal information. This includes what you tell us about yourself and what we might learn about you from others. This Privacy Notice explains how we do this and tells you about your rights.
We are a company that is able to procure licensed water and/or sewerage services for your eligible sites and we need your information to provide these services and charge for usage and/or advice.
We explain how we use your information in more detail in the rest of this Notice which we hope you’ll read carefully.
Legal bases for our using your information
We will be processing your information for a variety of different reasons but mainly to:
- to provide water supply and/or sewerage services and send bills to you fulfilling our commitments and public tasks of a water company;
- provide additional help and discount schemes where you have given your consent for us to do so;
- carry out market research or customer satisfaction surveys pursuing our legitimate interests;
- comply with a legal obligation such as maintaining the infrastructure of the water and sewerage networks.
What personal data do we collect about you?
We may collect and use your personal data in the following ways:
INFORMATION YOU GIVE US.
You can give us personal information by filling in forms on our website www.waterlevel.uk (our site) or by contacting us by phone, email or otherwise. This might be information you give us when you register to use our site, sign up as a customer, pay us (through our site or otherwise), sign-up to or use a service, get involved in discussion boards and other social media areas of our site or enter a competition, promotion or survey. The information you give us may include your name, address, email address and phone number, date of birth, financial and payment card information. We will also collect information about your water usage and your
connections to the mains water, sewers and drains. Sometimes, we’ll need to ask if it’s okay for us to collect and use information about your health or that of people living with you (including people who might be called ‘vulnerable’) if it makes a difference to the amount of water you use or so we can be better prepared to help you if there’s a problem when we’re supplying services. We can only do this by asking you to say that you’re happy for us do this. If you’re not happy then you can tell us and we’ll stop using the information to do that but we’ll tell you more about this when we ask you to give us the information. If you are applying for a job with us then we’ll ask you to fill in your personal details for us to use in the recruitment process.
INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU.
As well as you giving us information, we may gather it when we are providing a service to you. This might be meter readings we collect or you give us so we know how much water you use.
Information we collect about you when you use our website. Whenever you visit our site we may automatically collect the following information: technical information, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; information about your visit, including the full uniform resource locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); products you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call our customer service number.
Information we receive from other sources. We work closely with a number of people or organisations we trust (including business partners, companies we use to provide technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies, debt recovery agencies) and may receive information about you from them.
Cookies
Our website may use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also lets us improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our cookie notice.
HOW DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?
We may use your personal data in the following ways:
- to process and respond to requests, enquiries and complaints we receive from you
- to provide products and services when you ask us to
- to manage and administer your account
- to carry out credit checks where appropriate (for more information please see the Credit Check section below)
- to communicate with you about services provided to you
- to process payments
- to make sure our records are correct and up-to-date
- to analyse trends and profiles
- to carry out market analysis (on a non-personal basis)
- for audit purposes
- to carry out customer satisfaction research
- to improve our products and services
- to stop someone committing fraud or to help authorities investigate fraud
- to comply with something the law says we must do
- where you have said that we may do so, to recommend products and services that we believe will be of interest to you or contact you about offers or other marketing promotions
- to contact you (including by SMS texts) about service related issues including interruptions to water supply, emergency events, water quality issues, planned maintenance, or major roadworks that could require road closures
- to help us establish or defend legal claims;
- to help third parties to carry out any of the purposes above on our behalf.
HOW DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?
We will not share your personal data unless we have a legitimate interest or lawful reason to so. If we do have to share your information then we’ll keep it to a minimum to let the person or organisation do what we’ve asked or as the law requires. We may need to share your information with other organisations as follows.
- We sometimes use agents and service providers to process personal information on our behalf. We also use other companies to send out letters, to process credit card payments and maintain our IT systems. Where we use other organisations to process your personal information, we will ensure that they have adequate security measures in place to safeguard it.
- We may need to share your information with engineering contractors and consultants who carry out emergency or essential construction or repair work on our behalf that could affect you.
- We will release your personal information when we’re required to do so for legal or regulatory purposes or as part of legal proceedings. This may include sharing your information with regulators such as the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. We may need to share it with Ofwat, our regulator, or the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Consumer Council for Water and WATRS (the water industry ombudsman service).
- We may share your personal information with organisations outside of the Waterlevel Limited group of companies including Local Authorities, Police, Fire and Ambulance services in the event of an emergency (this may include information about your health if we think it could be in danger).
- We may give information we hold about you to a third-party as part of the process of selling one or more of our businesses, in which case we may provide your information to a prospective buyer.
- When we carry out credit checks, we pass your information to credit reference agencies. This information may also be accessed by third parties who carry out credit checks on you. Please see the section below on credit checks for more information.
- We may pass your information to a third-party for the collection of unpaid charges on our behalf and to benefit agencies where we seek a deduction from state benefits.
- We will disclose your personal data if we’re under a duty to share your personal data in order to comply with any legal duty, or in order to enforce our rights and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
- We may share information with advertisers and advertising networks or other carefully selected partners that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others. We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we may provide them with aggregate information about our users. We may also use such aggregate information to help advertisers reach the kind of audience they want to target.
- We may make use of the personal data we have collected from you to enable us to comply with our advertisers’ wishes by displaying their advertisement to that target audience.
- We share information with analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the making our site better and easier to find on the internet.
- We may share information with third-parties providing information about residential and commercial water and drainage searches to professional service providers such as solicitors and licensed conveyancers. We share information about the location of sewers, water pipes, etc. in relation to properties to assist with property sales, purchases and legal enquiries.
- We may transfer or share your information with other companies in the Waterlevel group for the purposes we’ve explained but if we’re going to use it for something other than supplying products and/or services or for a reason you wouldn’t normally expect then we will explain why by letting you know about the changes and, if we need your agreement, then we’ll check you are happy with this before we share it.
- If we need to investigate or defend a claim you make against us or we need to bring a potential claim against you we may share your personal data with your representative(s), our legal advisors, our insurance company or other professional advisors.
- We may carry out customer satisfaction surveys through a specialist company who we ask to check what our customers think of the service we provide so we can act on the feedback to make our service better.
Credit Checks
We share your personal information with credit reference agencies so we can keep your records up-to-date, check if debt risks apply to you and manage our debt collection process.
Information that we give to credit reference agencies includes information held in our records, such as your name, date of birth, address or other relevant information.
WHERE WE STORE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
All the information you give us is stored on our secure servers and if you chose to pay us by card then the transactions occur on our bank’s own servers and information flow is encrypted. If we have given you a password (or you have chosen one) then you need to keep this password confidential. Please don’t share your password with anyone.
To get the best value for money when we improve our computer systems and websites, we may use a third-party based outside of the European Economic Area. Some development projects may involve them working with your information. If this happens, we will take proper steps to keep your information safe through European Union approved contracts and by making sure your information stays protected within our own UK security arrangements using high standards of encryption in any transfer.
Unfortunately, sending information via the public internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data sent to us by email; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent someone who doesn’t have our authority to access it.
HOW LONG WE NEED TO KEEP YOUR INFORMATION
We will need to keep details about your use of our services for as long as you stay a customer of ours and then for 6 years after that as we may need to refer to it to sort out any differences or problems that arise after our relationship ends.
IF YOU ARE APPLYING FOR A JOB WITH US
We will normally ask you to supply us with a CV which you can send to us in hard-copy or email to us. The information you give us may include your name, age, contact details, details of your education, your employment history, emergency contact details, immigration status, financial information (if need to carry out financial background checks), documentary evidence of your identity and national insurance number. You may decide to share other information with us if you think it is relevant to your application. Where appropriate and in accordance with UK laws, we may also collect information related to your health, diversity information or details of any criminal convictions.
If we ask to collect information which we need your consent to gather and use then we’ll tell you why we need this and ask for your agreement to use it and tell you about how you can withdraw your agreement but we’ll let you know more about this if we need to ask you to give us this information.
If we have been given your details to provide a reference or as an emergency contact we will hold basic information such as your name, address and telephone number so we can contact you for this purpose.
INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU.
As well as you giving us information, we may gather it from other organisations connected with your previous employment which hold it.
INFORMATION WE RECEIVE FROM OTHER SOURCES ABOUT YOU AND WHICH WE MAY SHARE WITH THEM.
We may ask for a reference from a person you have given as a referee. We may obtain details about you from other third party sources such as LinkedIn and other job related websites. We also have accounts on sites like Facebook and Twitter that you could use to give us personal information and through other on-line channels that become available to us. We may also receive information about you from past employers, educational establishments, examining bodies and employment and recruitment consultants who contact us or we contact.
HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION.
As well as you giving us information, we may gather it from other organisations connected with your previous employment which hold it.
INFORMATION WE RECEIVE FROM OTHER SOURCES ABOUT YOU AND WHICH WE MAY SHARE WITH THEM.
We may ask for a reference from a person you have given as a referee. We may obtain details about you from other third party sources such as LinkedIn and other job related websites. We also have accounts on sites like Facebook and Twitter that you could use to give us personal information and through other on-line channels that become available to us. We may also receive information about you from past employers, educational establishments, examining bodies and employment and recruitment consultants who contact us or we contact.
HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION.
We will use your personal data:
- to store your details to contact you to process applications for roles and positions we advertise as current vacancies;
- to contact referees for references about you;
- to process, with your agreement, information about your health or details about criminal convictions if they are required for the role you have applied for.
HOW LONG WE WILL KEEP YOUR INFORMATION AS A CANDIDATE
If you accept an offer of employment with us, we will keep your information for as long as you are employed by us and for six years after that. If your application is unsuccessful or you do not accept an offer of employment then we will keep your information for up to 12 months.
IF YOU ARE A REFEREE OR CONTACT
How we use your information if you are a referee or contact. We will use personal data:
- to contact you if a candidate has given us your name as a referee so we can take up a reference; or
- to contact you if we have been provided with your details by a candidate as a contact in the event of an accident or emergency affecting them.
YOUR RIGHTS
You have a series of rights to do with the information we hold about you. These are:
YOUR RIGHT TO BE INFORMED
this Notice is an example of this. We may need to update this Notice if we need to do something different with your information and so we may change it on our site. We will also provide you with details about how we use your information when we collect it from you.
YOUR RIGHT OF ACCESS
you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you. Please email requests to customerservices@wlevel.co.uk or contact the Data Protection Officer whose details appear at the end of this Notice.
We have a calendar month to respond to your request for information. If we need more information to process your request, we will contact you to let you know.
YOUR RIGHT TO ERASURE
customers who are individuals have the right to request that their personal information be deleted where there is no longer a legitimate purpose for it being processed.
YOUR RIGHT TO RESTRICT PROCESSING
you have the right to ask us to restrict or suppress our use of your personal data. If we agree that we should stop processing it, we will still hold it but will not use it.
YOUR RIGHT TO RECTIFICATION
it is important that the information we are holding is accurate and up to date so if you think any of your information is incorrect or needs updating then let us know and we will correct it as soon as we can.
YOUR RIGHT TO OBJECT
if you don’t want us to use your personal information any more then you can ask us to stop what we’re doing with it. Please bear in mind though that we need it to provide services to you and we may need to keep your data for a certain amount of time as we’ve explained above. You can also ask us not to use your personal data for marketing purposes. You can exercise this right at any time by contacting us at customerservices@wlevel.co.uk or by contacting our Data Protection Officer whose details are at the end of this Notice. If you ask to stop using your personal information then we will contact you to confirm the position as there may be some circumstances where we will have to continue using it.
YOUR RIGHT TO INFORMATION ABOUT AUTOMATED DECISION MAKING
if a human being isn’t involved in making a decision using your information and it’s done automatically, then you can ask us about how the decision is made.
Your right to data portability
you have the right to ask us to give you a copy of the personal information you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable form.
With respect to certain rights, we may ask for a copy of your passport or driving licence and for a copy of a document that shows your address before we can respond to a request.
Links to other websites
Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy notices or policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these notices. Please check these notices before you submit any personal data to these websites.
Changes to our privacy notice
We will update this privacy notice from time to time to keep you informed of any changes to the ways in which we use your personal data. Any changes we may make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted on our site and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy notice.
Complaints
If you’re not happy and have issues with the way we’ve dealt with your information or your rights then you can ask the Information Commissioner’s Office to look into what we’ve done. They can be reached at ico.org.uk or by phone on 0303 123 1113.
Call recording
Waterlevel Limited may monitor and record calls in their contact centres for quality, security and training purposes and keep recordings for up to 5 years in case they are needed to resolve a dispute or difference between us.
Contact
Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy notice are welcomed and should be emailed dpo@wlevel.co.uk or please write to:
The Data Protection Officer Waterlevel Limited Harpenden Hall Southdown Road Harpenden Herts. AL5 1TE