Varis Developments Ltd operates the Group's email and IT network. Its registered office is at Spitalfields House, 1st floor, Sterling Way, Hertfordshire WD6 2FX. It is registered in England and Wales (Company Number 09722424). Each company or group of companies deal with different developments and related services which may vary from time to time as our land portfolio and properties grow and change. For ease, when you express interest in a specific development, the company which markets the development will be responsible for the use of your personal information.
Personal information that you provide voluntarily:
There are generally no adverse effects for you if you choose not to provide your personal information. You will still be able to use our website to view properties, download brochures or request copies of them in person when you are in one of our marketing suites. However, without some of this information, we may not be able to communicate with you and/or take certain actions that you request, for example because this personal information is required to respond to your enquiries.
For further information about cookies and how to disable them please go to the Information Commissioner's webpage on cookies.
Personal Information provided by you:
The main way that we collect your personal information from you when you provide it to us. This could be through our website or when speaking to one of our sales staff, either in person, via email or on the telephone.
Occasionally we may receive information about you from other sources (such as Estate Agents), which we may add to the information we already hold about you in order to help us provide our products and services to you. We may receive your initial name and contact details from and introducer or other person(s) acting as agent on your behalf. Additionally property sales portals (such as Rightmove and Zoopla) and social networks (such as Facebook and Instagram) may pass your information onto to us where you have where you have given them permission to do this and registered your interest through an advertisement on one of their websites.
The most common purposes for which we will use your information are:
General communication: We will use your information to communicate with you and provide you with the details of properties that you have requested and to respond to any enquiries you may have.
We will use the information that you provide to us to try to find the right property for you. We will use the details of when you are looking to buy to assess how interested we believe you are in making a purchase from Varis Developments. We will use the details you provide to us about your current property status and your funding arrangements to assess your ability to proceed with any purchase you may wish to make. We will use the details of the type of property that you are interested in purchasing; the above information and your direct marketing preferences to inform you about properties that we believe may be suitable to you.
Where you have expressly given us consent, we may send you information about new property developments and or services which may be of interest to you. We will only do this where you have agreed to it and using your preferred methods of communication. We will do our best only to send you information about news, offers and the latest properties that could be suitable for you. To help with this we will ask for information about you - the more we know about the type of property you are interested in, the easier it will be for us to find the right property for you. Mountbatten Homes and the companies for simplicity's sake, as all or most of our companies build properties and there is often an overlap in the areas of the country in which they build. This gives you the best opportunity to find the home that is right for you. You can unsubscribe/withdraw your consent and ask us to stop sending you marketing materials at any time by using the 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom of marketing emails, by informing one of our sales consultants (with whom you have previously been dealing) or by emailing [email protected]
We keep a record of when we receive consent from individuals and regularly review consent to check updates to preferences. We act on withdrawals of consent as soon as we can. Please note, if you ask us to stop marketing to you, then you will cease receiving marketing from all of Varis Group of companies.
Depending on which of the above purposes for which your information is used, it will be processed on one or more of the following legal grounds:
We may disclose your information to our third party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other organisations for the purposes of providing services to us or directly to you on our behalf. Such third parties may include cloud services providers (such as hosting and email management), or other third parties who provide services to us. These include but are not limited to IT service providers, solicitors, auditors and any agents acting on your behalf.
When we use third party service providers, we will retain control over and we will remain fully responsible for your personal data and we will use appropriate safeguards as required by applicable law to ensure the integrity and security of your personal data when engaging such service providers.
Your personal data may be shared with and used by other Varis Developments affiliate companies, within the companies that may have properties that are suitable for you.
We may also share your personal information with law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
If you give us information on behalf of someone else, you confirm that the other person has appointed you to act on his/her behalf and that: They have given their consent for their details to be passed to the relevant Varis Developments company; You will pass on a copy of this Privacy Policy to them. Keeping your personal information safe We will use technical and organisational measures to safeguard your personal information, for example: our IT systems are protected by regular software updates; anti-virus and protections; and we store your personal information on secure servers. While we will use all reasonable efforts to safeguard your personal information, you acknowledge that the use of the internet is not entirely secure and for this reason we cannot guarantee the security or integrity of any personal information that is transferred from you or to you via the internet. If you have any particular concerns about your information, please contact us. Transferring your personal information abroad We do not intend to transfer your personal information outside the EEA. If we believe a transfer of your personal information outside of the EEA will arise, we will implement contractual or other measures to comply with legal requirements on the transfer of personal information, ensuring that there is an adequate level of protection in place. Where you are located outside the EEA then we will transfer your personal information to the UK and Europe where our systems and servers are located. This will naturally entail your personal information being exported back out to the jurisdiction that it originated from or from where you are located (for example when we reply to your emails or we write to you). How long will we keep your personal information for? Your personal information will be deleted when it is no longer reasonably required for the relevant purposes and we are not legally required or otherwise permitted to continue storing such information. Varis Developments will, in particular, retain your personal information where required for us to assert or defend legal claims until the end of the relevant retention period or until the claims in question have been settled. The criteria that we use to assess how long to hold your personal information for in our sales and marketing database is a combination of whether or not you have previously purchased from the Group and when you last interacted with us. Where you have not purchased a property from us, if we have not had any interaction with you in ten years then we will remove your information from our sales and marketing database. The reason for the ten year period is that property purchases are made infrequently and because Varis Developments hopes that there will be repeat purchasers who buy from us on multiple occasions. This does not affect your rights in relation to your information. Where you have purchased a property from us, your information will be retained as necessary for the performance of ongoing contractual and legal obligations will have been entered into.
Subject to certain legal conditions, you have the following rights in relation to the personal information that we hold about you. These are:
Should you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact us directly and we will be happy to assist. Please note that we may ask for proof of your identity and address (such as a copy of your driving licence or passport - please do not send any original documents). Additionally, you should be aware that not all of these rights are absolute and there may be circumstances in which we will not fully comply with your request because of a specified legal ground or exemption. For example, you will not be able to request that we delete all of your information if you have purchased a property from us because it will be necessary for the contract you have entered into. We will always let you know the legal basis for this. We reserve the right to charge you a reasonable administrative fee for any manifestly unfounded or excessive requests concerning your access to your information, and for any additional copies of the personal information you request from us.
If you want to contact us to know more about the use of your information, ask us to correct it, or to exercise any of your rights, please contact us by email.
If you wish to email us, please use [email protected] We will endeavour to send you a response as soon as possible. Your patience is much appreciated during busy periods.
You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe we have not handled your request in an appropriate manner. However, we encourage you to contact us before making any complaint and we will seek to resolve any issues or concerns you may have.
For information on contacting the ICO please see their website at www.ico.org.uk.