Privacy Statement
At SPAR we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
The legal stuff:
SPAR (UK) Limited of Mezzanine Floor Hygeia Building, 66-68 College Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 1BE (we, our, or us) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us when, as a Consumer you contact us or visit our website (Consumers) or when, in a business capacity, you are engaged (or engaging) in a commercial relationship with us whether as a supplier, retailer, person engaged by one of the SPAR group companies (also known as Regional Distribution Centres or RDCs) or otherwise or when you contact us for any other purpose acting as a business or in a commercial capacity (Commercial Contacts).Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.
This policy is intended to be compliant with the retained version of the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (the Data Laws).
For the purpose of the Data Laws, we are the data controller. This means that we are responsible for determining when, why and how we process your personal data.
We have appointed a Data Manager who has overall responsibility within SPAR (UK) Ltd for data protection. The Data Manager may be contacted by emailing dpm@spar.co.uk or by writing to: Data Manager, SPAR (UK) Ltd of Mezzanine Floor Hygeia Building, 66-68 College Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 1BE.
1. Personal Data we may collect about you
Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
• Identity Data includes For Consumers first name, last name, title and any social media identifiers or tags, and For Commercial Contacts first name, maiden name, last name, marital status, title, date of birth, gender, job title, employer and passport number (where we are setting an account up for you).
• Contact Data includes (as appropriate) your address (home, postal, trading or other physical address), email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data includes (as appropriate) bank account and payment card details.
• Transaction Data includes (as appropriate) details about payments to and from you and other details of goods or services you have purchased from us or provided to us.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes (as appropriate) your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
• Technical Data includes (as appropriate) internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access our website.
• Usage Data includes (as appropriate) information about how you use our website.
Personal data does not include data where your identity has been removed or which not associated with or linked to your personal data (anonymous data).
We may also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.
Please note that where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to pay you for any services which you provide to us or to investigate any complaint which you make to us). In this case, we may have to cancel our agreement with you or we may not be able to investigate any issue you have raised but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
2. How we collect information about you.
We use different methods to collect information from and about you including through:
• Direct interactions. As a Consumer you may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms, corresponding with us by post, phone, email, via our website or via our social media accounts. As a Commercial Contact you may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filing in forms, making an application for an account, corresponding with us by post, phone, email, via our website, quality assurance system, Central Invoicing website or otherwise, or when you enter into a contract with us for the provision of goods or services. You may also provide us with information during the course of our day to day business with you.
• Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We may collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies.
• Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources such as:
Where you are a Consumer:
- Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services based in the UK; - Identity and Contact Data from the providers or social media platforms.
Where you are a Commercial Contact:
- Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services based in the UK;
- Where you are seeking to operate a store, your Identity, Contact and Financial Data from the representatives of our local RDC’s or the company for whom you will operate your store(s).
- Identity and Contact Data from publically available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register within the UK.
We do not normally collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences. Where you voluntarily provide us with any Special Categories of Personal Data whether as a consumer making a complaint, a supplier seeking reasonable adjustments or otherwise we will handle this information in accordance with the Data Laws and will retain and process it only where we are legally entitled (or obliged) to do so.
2. Uses made of the information
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data:
• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
• Where you have specifically signed up to receive our newsletters or similar materials and have therefore consented to the use of your information for this limited purpose.
Examples of the way in which we may use your information is set out below:
As a Consumer
• Your Identity, Contact and Transaction Data, to track the progress of your query, or to inform you of progress, in accordance with our legitimate interests of providing the best customer service to you.
• Your Identity and Contact Data to send you newsletters and other information where you have specifically requested we send these to you or where you have opted in to receive information about our news and offers.
• Your Identity, contact and Transaction data to deal with any complaint you may raise with us in accordance with our legitimate interest of resolving that complaint.
As a Commercial Contact
• Your Identity, Contact and Transaction Data to communicate about the fulfilment of contracts between us, if you are a supplier of goods or services including the management of payments, fees and charges.
• Your Identity and Contact Data to maintain our database of store locations, if you are a retailer in accordance with our legitimate interests of efficiently running our business.
• Your Identity, Contact and Financial Data in order to set up and administer our supply relationship with you where you operate or intend to operate a SPAR branded store including for credit checking, validation of orders, preparation of invoices, establishment of direct debits and the monitoring of credit terms.
• Your Identity and Contact Data to communicate about matters of mutual importance, if you are part of the SPAR group of businesses in accordance with our legitimate interests of doing so.
• Your identity and Contact Data where it is necessary to correspond with you in relation to matters relating to quality assurance or product development including for the establishment and maintenance of any account on our Quality Assurance website in accordance with our legitimate interests of ensuring the quality and variety of our products.
• Your Identity and Contact Data to respond to any other communications which you send to us where it is in our legitimate interests to so respond.
• Your Identity, Contact and Technical Data for the purpose of protecting our business and our website, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data. This is necessary for our legitimate interest in running our business, the provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation, sale or group restructuring exercise, and for compliance with our legal obligations.
• Your Technical and Usage Data may be collected automatically. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the website, and to help us to improve the content of the website and to customise the content or layout of the website for you, in accordance with our legitimate interests. This is necessary for our legitimate interest in defining types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy.
• Your Identity and Contact Data if you contact us to report a fault with our website or make a complaint in relation to the website or any of our products, services or any RDC for the purposes of rectifying that fault or dealing with that complaint (as appropriate) in accordance with our legitimate interests. We may also use personal data which you provide to us, where the law allows us to do so, as follows:
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, including the prevention of crime.
• Where it is otherwise necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending newsletters and similar communications to you via email. You have the right to withdraw consent to these communications at any time by contacting us or unsubscribing.
Where we process personal data on the basis of a legitimate interest, as set out in this privacy notice, legitimate interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to efficiently and effectively operate our business, to work effectively with our suppliers and members of the SPAR group of companies, to provide excellent customer service and to give you the best service and the best and most secure experience on our website. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us. If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
3. Disclosure of your information
Your personal data will only be disclosed to those of our employees or workers that have a need for such access for the purpose for which it was collected. Your personal data will not be disclosed to any other individuals or other entities except as further detailed below.
We may share your personal information with any member of the SPAR group of companies, in order to fulfil contracts between us, if you are a Commercial Contact, or to respond to your queries or complaints if you are a Consumer. This may include sharing your personal data with the following companies who operate as part of the SPAR group of companies:
• CJ Lang & Son Ltd – Scotland region;
• James Hall & Co Ltd – North of England region;
• AF Blakemore & Son Ltd – Central and South East England and Wales region.
• Appleby Westward Group Ltd – South West England region.
• Henderson Wholesale Ltd – Northern Ireland region.
Each of the above companies will have their own privacy policies that explain how they use your personal data. It is important that you read these privacy policies which can be accessed by clicking the names above.
We may also share your information with suppliers, if you are part of our product development process.
On occasion, we need to hire other companies to help us to serve you better and in some of these cases we may need to share personal data that is necessary to perform tasks for us, such as marketing agencies, or delivery partners.
We may also share your personal data with third parties:
• Where it is necessary for the performance of our contract with you, including where you have asked us to do so or where we need to take steps to enforce any contract which may be entered into between us.
• Where we are under a legal duty to do so in order to comply with any legal obligation.
• In order to protect the rights, property or safety of our business, our employees and workers, customers, suppliers and others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud prevention and credit risk reduction.
• If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data that we hold about our customers will be one of the transferred assets.
We require all third parties that process personal data with our permission and on our behalf to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
4. Where we store your personal data
Some personal data that we collect from you may be transferred to 3rd party service suppliers, who maybe based outside the United Kingdom, to assist us with processes such as:
For Consumers: for the purposes of (but not limited to) sending newsletters via email, processing customer complaints, choosing competition winners & distributing prizes.
For Commercial Contacts: for the purposes of managing access to an informational website for our retailers.
Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
These entities only use the personal data we transfer to them on our instruction and for our stated purposes and we understand that appropriate technical and organisational measures are in place to keep your personal data secure.
5. How long we will keep your data
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
6. Your rights
Irrespective of whether you are a Consumer or a Commercial Contact under the UK GDPR, you have a number of individual rights in connection with your personal data. Those rights are as follows:
Right to be informed: You have the right to be informed of the personal data we collect about you and the reasons for this. This Policy seeks to provide this information.
Right to access: You have the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Right to rectification: You have the right to correct any inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold about you.
Right to erasure: You may ask us to delete your personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it or you have successfully objected to our processing (see below), where we are unlawfully processing or are required to delete your personal data by law. This is a limited right and we may not agree to your request if we consider that we have a compelling legal reason for continuing to process your personal data.
Right to object: You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest and you consider that your rights and freedoms override such interests. You have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some instances we may be able show that we have compelling legal reasons for continuing to process your personal data notwithstanding your objection.
Right to restrict: You can ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data: (1) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (2) where our use of such data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (3) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (4) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Right to Data Portability: You have the right to request the transfer of the personal data we hold for you to a third party in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Right to withdraw consent at any time: Where we rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent by emailing the Data Manager at SPAR (UK) Ltd and asking us. The email address is set out at the end of this policy.
You will not have to pay a fee to exercise any of these individual rights unless we consider that your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. We may also refuse to deal with your requests in these circumstances.
We may seek to verify your identity first before responding to any of your individual requests.
7. Changes to our privacy policy
We may revise this policy at any time by amending this page. Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on our website and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail or sent out to you in hard copy. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.
8. Contact
Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to the Data Manager, SPAR (UK) Limited, Mezzanine Floor Hygeia Building, 66-68 College Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 1BE OR dpm@spar.co.uk.
9. Complaints
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at www.ico.org.uk. We would however appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
