RCKa Privacy Policy – external and third parties

RCKa is committed to protecting the personal information of our clients – current and future, visitors to our studios and website, suppliers and contractors.

This privacy notice provides information about the personal information that RCKa collects about all external and third parties such as visitors to our studio and website, clients –current and future, suppliers and contractors, and the ways in which our practice uses that personal information.

Any questions regarding this privacy notice and RCKa’s data protection practices should be sent by email to Wendy Charlton contact@rcka.co.uk or by writing to RCKa architects, First Floor, 16-24 Underwood Street, London, N1 7JQ.

How does RCKa collect information from you data?
Our website

You can visit our website without providing any personal information, however we may automatically collect IP addresses, information about your visit and how you use our website.
You may provide us with information by corresponding with us by phone, email, or otherwise as indicated on the website.

Events
If you are visiting for an event which is being held in our studios or hosted by us in an external location, you will be asked for your name and the company you work for. You may also be provided with a name badge, if appropriate for the event.
There is a high chance that there will be photographers at the event and if that is the case, we will presume your consent and may use these images on our social media sites and publications. If you do not wish to be photographed, you must inform RCKa prior to the event.

Information from third parties
While we collect most of the information we hold directly from you we will sometimes obtain information from third parties such as references (with your consent) or publicly available information such as information contained on Companies House or websites such as LinkedIn. We may obtain credit reference checks if relevant.

What type of information is collected from you?
The personal information you provide may include your name, job title, company address, e-mail address, phone numbers, professional social media profile links (e.g. LinkedIn), company website and other information about yourself to enable us to provide you with our services.

How is your information used?
When we collect personal information from our clients and other members of the public, it will be used for the following purposes:
to maintain responsible commercial relations with you;
to understand your service and/or project needs;
to manage and develop our business and operations;
to meet legal and regulatory requirements;
to notify you of changes to our services;
to process a job application if appropriate;
to recommend your product or service to relevant contacts within the industry.
We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity.

When you voluntarily give us your personal information we will only use it for the above purposes. If we intend to use your personal information for a purpose other than those above, we will seek your express consent.

Promotional communications
We may use your personal information to send you updates (by email, text message, telephone or post) about our services.
We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for promotional purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your personal information’). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.
We will always treat your personal information with the utmost respect and never share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further products and/or services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

Who will your data be shared with
We may share personal information with:
third parties we use to help deliver our services to you, e.g. consultants, solicitors, payment service providers, warehouses and delivery companies;
other third parties we use to help us run our business, e.g. marketing agencies or website hosts;
third parties approved by you, e.g. social media sites you choose to link your account to or third party payment providers;
our insurers and brokers;
our banks.
We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal information. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your personal information to provide services to us and to you.

We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

We may also need to share some personal information with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.

How long your personal information will be kept
We will keep your personal information while you have an account with us or we are providing services to you. Thereafter, we will keep your personal information for as long as is necessary:
to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf;
to show that we treated you fairly;
to keep records required by law.
We will not retain your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice. Different retention periods apply for different types of personal information. Further details on this are available from our Data Protection Lead.

When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal information, we will delete or anonymise it.

Your rights
You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:
Access –  The right to be provided with a copy of your personal information (the right of access).
Rectification –  The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal information.
To be forgotten –  The right to require us to delete your personal information—in certain situations.
Restriction of processing –  The right to require us to restrict processing of your personal information—in certain circumstances, e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data.
Data portability –  The right to receive the personal information you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations.
To object – The right to object: —at any time to your personal information being processed for direct marketing (including profiling); —in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information, e.g. processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests.
Not to be subject to automated individual decision-making –  The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.
 
 
For further information on each of the above rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us or see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

You can exercise any of your rights by contacting our Data Protection Lead via email at: contact@rcka.co.uk
Our website may at times contain links to other websites that may offer useful information to our clients and visitors. Please note, that if you follow the link to any of these websites this privacy statement does not apply and we do not accept responsibility or liability for their policies.

You also have the right to see and correct data that we hold about you. If your details change or any other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please let your direct contact at RCKa know or email our Data Protection Lead via email at: contact@rcka.co.uk


Security

RCKa will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to ensure that your personal information is treated securely.  We will store all personal information you provide on our secure servers.
We restrict access to only those who need access to your data so they can discharge their duties.
In addition, we have deployed a number of systems to ensure your data remains safe, these include:
An incident detection, response and user behaviour analytic system running looking for unusual data access or user behaviour.
Carry out vulnerability testing on all desktops to ensure that no known issues exist that would allow applications to be hijacked.
A program of regular patch management, this ensures desktops and servers stay up to date with latest security patches.
Carrying out regular phishing testing, to ensure users are aware of the dangers of phishing emails, part of this testing includes training.
We use firewalls to protect our networks, to stop our data being breached.
All desktops run antivirus and anti-ransomware software.
We conduct regular backups.

Wifi

We provide access to the internet while you are in the studio, it is securely configured to separate our corporate data from internet browsing. As a guest you will be asked to logon to a secure portal that will grant you access to browse the internet only. We do not store any information about your connection or the sites you visit.

Data breaches and reporting
If it becomes apparent that a potential data breach has occurred, the Company will endeavour to report this to the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of the data breach. This will be the case if the data breach is likely to result in damage to a person’s reputation, financial loss, loss of confidentiality, or major financial or social disadvantage. If the breach is likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of the data subject the Company will also contact the data subject without undue delay.

Data breaches will be reported to the Information Commissioner Office (ICO) by calling the dedicated personal data breach helpline on 0303 123 1113.