Privacy Policy

We take your privacy very seriously and we 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 you have a complaint.

Who we are

Mid Wales Storage and Distribution Centre Ltd is the operator of the website www.midwalesstorage.co.uk. We collect, use and are responsible for certain information about you.

When we do so, we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.  We have a designated privacy officer who is responsible for how we handle personal information. Please find their contact information in our How to contact us section.

Collection and Usage of Personal Information

Personal information provided by you
In the course of operating our self storage business, we collect personal information when you provide it to us, such as your name, email address, phone number(s), date of birth, personal identification such as a driving license and utilities statement which includes your postal address.

Personal information provided by third parties
Occasionally we may receive information about you from other sources (such as credit reference agencies), which we will add to the information we already hold about you in order to help us provide services to you and to improve and personalise our service to you.

Personal information about other individuals
If you give us information on behalf of someone else as an alternate contact, referee or next of kin, you confirm that the other person has agreed that you can:

  • Give consent on his/her behalf to the processing of his/her personal data;
  • Receive on his/her behalf any data protection notices

Sensitive personal information
We will not usually ask you to provide sensitive personal information. We will only ask you to provide sensitive personal information if we need to for a specific reason, for example, if we believe you are having difficulty dealing with your account due to illness. If we request such information, we will explain why we are requesting it and how we intend to use it.
Sensitive personal information includes information relating to your ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, whether you belong to a trade union, your physical or mental health or condition, sexual life, and whether you have committed a criminal offence. We will only collect your sensitive personal information with your explicit consent and you can ask us to delete this at any time.

Children
We do not knowingly collect personal data relating to children under the age of 16. If you are a parent or guardian of a child under the age of 16 and think that we may have information relating to that child, please contact us. We will ask you to prove your relationship to the child but if you do so you may (subject to applicable law) request access to and deletion of that child’s personal data.

Cookies

Our website utilizes cookies for enhanced user experience. By leaving a comment, you have the option to save your name, email address, and website in cookies, ensuring that you don’t have to re-entre your details for future comments. These cookies have a duration of one year. Additionally, when visiting our login page, a temporary cookie is set to verify your browser’s acceptance of cookies, which is discarded upon browser closure. Upon logging in, we establish login cookies to retain your login information and preferences, lasting for two days and a year, respectively. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. Furthermore, when editing or publishing an article, a separate cookie is saved in your browser, containing the post ID of the edited article and expiring after one day. 

Embedded content from other websites

Kindly note that the articles published on this website have the potential to contain embedded content, such as videos, images, articles, and other media formats, sourced from external websites. It is essential to recognize that embedded content from these external sources functions identically to direct visits to the respective websites, thereby enabling them to collect user data, utilize cookies, incorporate additional third-party tracking mechanisms, and monitor user interactions with the embedded content. Notably, if you possess an account and are logged on to the respective website, your interactions with the embedded content may be tracked accordingly.

Understanding Our Legal Basis for Collecting and Using Your Personal Information

We rely on a different lawful basis for collecting and using personal data in different situations. Where you make enquiries about storing with us before you become a customer, we need to collect personal information about you so that we can take steps to enter into a contract with you.  Once you have become a customer, we need to collect and use personal information to provide services to you and to claim our right to be paid in return for our services under our standard terms of business/contract with you.  This includes collecting and using your personal information to:

  • enable us to follow up on enquiries made by you in relation to storing with us in accordance with industry guidelines and to give you our quote;
  • prepare a storage agreement with you and arrange insurance cover if required;
  • manage any accounts you hold with us;
  • contact you for reasons related to the service you have signed up for or to provide information you have requested;
  • deal with payment for our services;
  • notify you of any changes to our website or to our services that may affect you; and
  • resolve disputes or collect overdue payments.

We collect and use personal information from our customers and staff to comply with our legal obligations.  For example, we will take copies of documents that identify you so that we can comply with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing requirements.

If you apply for a job with us, we will collect and use personal information to process your application and check references.  If you take a job with us, we will collect and use your personal information to enter into an employment contract with you and to administer the employment relationship, including making payments to you, accounting for tax, ensuring safe working practices, monitoring and managing staff access to systems and facilities, monitoring absences and performance and conducting assessments.

Legitimate business interests

Our priority is to make sure we give a high quality and secure service to customers and to follow up effectively on enquiries even though we accept that not all enquiries will lead to a business relationship or contract.  We collect personal information to:

  • follow up on enquiries in accordance with industry guidelines and provide quotes for storage/details of offers;
  • conduct research and analyse website visitor behaviour patterns;
  • customise our website and its content to your particular preferences;
  • improve our services;
  • detect and prevent fraud;
  • prevent offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content being sent to or posted on our websites or to stop any other form of disruptive behaviour.

It is a key feature of our storage service that we operate CCTV within the storage facility.  We collect and process CCTV images

  • so we can fulfil our contractual obligation to deliver a secure self storage environment;
  • to establish whether you are doing something that breaches your contract with us; and
  • to assist in the establishment or defence of any crime or other investigation.

We will also from time to time communicate with you information about other services we can offer you and update you about our activities and promotions which may be of interest to you. If you would like to stop receiving these emails, you can also click on the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the email. It may take a few days for this to take place. If you ask us to stop contacting you in this way, you can also ask us to start again at any time.

Credit checking

We may conduct a credit check on you to facilitate credit decisions concerning you and individuals or businesses connected to you. These checks serve the purpose of preventing and detecting fraud and money laundering. The results of our search will be documented in the records of the credit reference agency. Additionally, we may share details regarding your account conduct with credit reference agencies, and your information may be linked to records pertaining to other individuals residing at the same address or financially associated with you. Other credit institutions may employ your information for credit assessment purposes regarding both yourself and your financially associated parties, as well for debtor tracing and fraud prevention and detection. In case you provide us with false or inaccurate information and we suspect fraudulent activity, we will make a record of it.

 

When will we contact any other person about you?

If you provide us with contact details of any other person, we may reach out to them to discuss matters related to your account as if they were you. You have the option to request the removal of this person from your account by notifying us via email or written communication. Similarly, if you provide us with the details of a person for a job reference, we may contact that individual to discuss and exchange information regarding your account in connection with your job application. This action will be taken if we are unable to reach you for any reason. However, you have the freedom to change your mind regarding this matter.

 

Who your information might be shared with

We may disclose your personal data to:

  • service providers under contract with us to support our business operations, such as fraud prevention, debt collection, payroll, technology services
  • credit reference agents—see ‘Credit checking’ above;
  • our insurers and insurance brokers if you take out insurance cover through us;
  • trade associations of which we are a member;
  • law enforcement or government agencies in connection with any investigation to help prevent or detect unlawful activity;
  • any person or agency if we need to share that information to comply with the law or to enforce any agreement we may have with you or to protect the health and safety of any person;
  • any person who you have named as a person we can contact to discuss your account;
  • any person who is your agent or representative, such as the holder of a power of attorney, a legal guardian or person administering a will;
  • any person who we are negotiating with as a potential buyer of our business or property or if we are proposing to merge our business with another business;
  • credit card associations if specifically required;
  • financial institutions for the purpose of processing payments.

If we pass data on to insurers, they may enter your data onto a register of claims which is shared with other insurers to prevent fraudulent claims. If we use an outside party to process your information, we will require them to comply with our instructions in connection with the services they provide for us and not for their own business purposes.

Keeping Your Personal Information Secure

We have implemented stringent security measures to safeguard your personal date, including restricted access to individuals with a genuine business need and obligations regarding its proper processing. Our measures involve storing your data on secure servers and encrypting payment details. While we make every effort to ensure data security, we cannot guarantee its integrity due to the internet risks associated with internet transmission. If you have specific concerns about the security of your information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Transfers Outside the EEA and Data Privacy

We will not transfer your personal data outside of the United Kingdom OR European Economic Area or to any organisation (or subordinate bodies) governed by public international law or which is set up under any agreement between two or more countries.

How Long Do We Safeguard Your Personal Information?

We will usually hold your personal information as a customer or employee on our system for the period we are required to retain this information by applicable UK law, currently 6 years from the end of our contract or 6 months after any unsuccessful job application, unless you have told us you want us to delete the information earlier

Understanding Your Entitlements

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights. These include the following rights:

  • request a copy of your information which we hold (subject access request);
  • require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold;
  • require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
  • require us to stop contacting you for direct marketing purposes;
  • object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information;
  • restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances;
  • object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or which affect you significantly and
  • 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.

Further information on each of these rights is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please:

  • email, call or write to us 
  • let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill), and
  • let us know the information to which your request relates, including any account or reference numbers, if you have them

We will not charge any fee for any of these services in most cases.

Changes to The Privacy Policy

This Privacy Notice was published on 1st December 2022, is subject to periodic changes, so we recommend checking this policy periodically to stay up to date with the latest version.