Consort are committed to protecting and respecting your personal information, privacy and complying with the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

The information that you share with us is very important and we want you to be confident that any data is kept safely and securely and to understand how we use it to benefit you and our communication with you.  

We have published this Privacy Policy to help you understand:

• How and why Consort collects information from you;
• Who we share your information with, why and on what basis; and
• What your rights are

Consort will be what is known as the ‘Data Controller’ of the data you provide to us, and we will sometimes refer to ourselves in this notice as “we” or “us”. By Data Controller, this means Consort determines the purposes and way in which any personal data is, or will be, processed. 

Should you need to contact Consort Head Office at any point regarding any data we hold about you, your company or what we have done with that data, or indeed if you would like us to delete or change that data then please email info@consort-hw.com/ info@consortme.com and write ‘GDRP’ in the subject line. Please provide your company name and the method in which you wish us to contact you regarding your request.

Any questions regarding this Privacy Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to info@consort-hw.com/ info@consortme.com with ‘GDRP’ in the subject line or by writing to Consort Architectural Hardware Limited 25/31 Lower Loveday Street, Birmingham, B19 3SB United Kingdom or alternatively call us on Tel:+44 (0) 121 359 8189

How we collect information from you

We obtain information about you when you use our website, when you provide it to us or anyone in our Consort team or, occasionally, from third parties. 

The information we collect and why

When we first engage with you it is to find out if you have a legitimate need or interest for the products and services that Consort offers. When you confirm that you have a legitimate interest or need for our products and services, we will seek your permission to engage with you at a further date either by telephone, email or face to face. An account will need to be set up with Consort so that you can trade with us. For us to do this, we will ask you to provide some information such as:

• Your full name
• Job title
• Company name
• Business sector
• Company address
• Your date of birth (day and month only)
• Contact telephone numbers 
• Email address(es)
• Website address
• Number of people on site

If you make a payment to us online, your payment details are not held by us but are collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of such transactions.

To enable us to undertake your order page personalisation, we will also gather information about the devices you use to access our website (desktop and mobile), and this may include the IP address. For further information on our use of cookies and tracking – please see our Cookie Notice below.

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive marketing information from us.  If you want to receive communications from us, then you should tick the relevant boxes on the form which we collect your personal information from when we first have an appointment with you.

Where your data is stored

Your data is stored on our own systems which only we have access to. Any proposal documents are scanned and saved against this system and are also then stored securely at our offices. Once we update your proposal we will delete or shred your old proposal and dispose of it correctly.

How we use your information

Data Protection says that we are allowed to use and share your personal data only where we have a proper reason to do so. The law says we must have one or more of these reasons and these are: 

• Contract: your personal information is processed in order to fulfil a contractual arrangement for example in order to send you invoices, up to date brochures and offers relating to your legitimate interests.
• Consent: where you agree to us using your information in the discussed manor.
• Legitimate interests: this means the interests of Consort in managing our business to allow us to provide you with the best products and service in the most secure and appropriate way 
• Legal obligation: where there is statutory or other legal requirement to share the information e.g., when we have to share your information for law enforcement purposes such as HMRC requests.
• Here is a list of the ways that we may use your personal information, and which of the reasons described above we rely on to do so. Where we list legitimate interests as a reason, we also describe below what we believe these legitimate interests are. 

Who we share your information with

Consort does not share your data with any third parties that are outside of our reasonable business commitments to you. We will not sell your information to third parties. We may provide your information to processors with whom we have entered into written contracts which require them to comply in all respects with the requirements of this Privacy Policy and all legal requirements relating to information privacy.

Some examples of the categories of third parties with whom we share your data are:

Supplier partners

We may for certain orders and delivery, share your business details with a supplier to ship items direct to you and your place of work. 

IT companies

Consort works with businesses who support our website and other business systems.

Marketing companies

We work with marketing companies who help us manage our electronic communications with you or carry out surveys and product reviews on our behalf.

Payment processing

Consort may work with regulated, trusted third party payment processing providers in order to securely take and manage payments.

Credit Reference Agencies 

When you open an account with Consort we may use third party credit reference agencies who will make searches about you. We do this to make sure customers who apply for credit accounts are able to manage the level of credit offered and do not commit fraud by providing false or inaccurate information. We do this to assess your creditworthiness and product suitability, check your identity, manage your account, trace, recover debts, and prevent criminal activity.

We may exchange company data with CRA’s if required. 

Debt recovery and fraud prevention services 

Before we provide services or products to you, we may undertake checks for the purposes of preventing fraud and money laundering, and to verify your identity. These checks would require us to process personal data about you.

The personal data you have provided, we have collected from you, or we have received from third parties will be used to prevent fraud and money laundering, and to verify your identity.

Details of the personal information that will be processed may include: name, address, date of birth, contact details, employment details, device identifiers including IP address.

We and fraud prevention agencies may also enable law enforcement agencies to access and use your personal data to detect, investigate and prevent crime.

We process your personal data on the basis that it is necessary in the public interest or in exercising official authority for us to prevent fraud and money laundering, and to verify identity, in order to protect ourselves and to comply with laws that apply to us.

Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time, and if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, your data can be held for up to six years.

Consequences of processing: 
If we, or a fraud prevention agency, determine that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk, we may refuse to provide the services  you have requested or we may stop providing existing services to you. 

A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by the fraud prevention agencies, and may result in others refusing to provide services, financing or employment to you. If you have any questions about this, please contact us on the details above. 

Data transfers:

Whenever fraud prevention agencies transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area, they impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your personal data to the standard required in the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to ‘international frameworks’ intended to enable secure data sharing. 

Your rights 

Your personal data is protected by legal rights, which include your rights to object to our processing of your personal data; request that your personal data is erased or corrected; request access to your personal data. 

For more information or to exercise your data protection rights, please contact us using the contact details above. You also have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which regulates the processing of personal data. 

Transfers to third countries

Your data is held in the UK on our systems which are hosted on secure and legitimate UK servers. At no point will Consort share or transfer your data to other countries without prior notification.
. 
Consort works with suppliers and partners who may make use of cloud and/or hosted technologies. We undertake data security due diligence on our partners and ensure that that these partners conform to appropriate accreditations. These partners will not use your data for any purposes other than ensuring that Consort systems work for you and our relationship with you.

Keeping in touch with you

Consort want to keep you up to date with information about new services, product and menu ranges, special offers, improvements to our website and systems. When we engage with you, we will ask you if you want to receive this type of marketing information. 

Consort will not share your information with companies outside of our own business and people for their marketing purposes. We will not resell or share your data with third parties for them to use without your permission.

If you decide you do not want to receive this marketing information from Consort then please email info@consort-hw.com/ info@consortme.com and include ‘Marketing removal’ in the subject line or call :+44 (0) 121 359 8189 and provide us with details on how you wish us to respond, to confirm we have undertaken your request.

You may continue to receive mailings for a short period while your request is dealt with. 

How long we keep your information

If we collect your personal information, the length of time we retain it is determined by a number of factors including the purpose for which we use that information and our obligations under other laws.

We may need your personal information to establish, bring or defend legal claims or due to government institution requirements like HMRC. For this purpose, we will always retain your personal information for 7 years after the date it is no longer needed by us for any of the purposes listed under ‘How we use your information’ above. The only exceptions to this are where:

• the law requires us to hold your personal information for a longer period or delete it sooner.
• you exercise your right to have the information erased (where it applies) and we do not need to hold it in connection with any of the reasons permitted or required under the law.
• we bring or defend a legal claim or other proceedings during the period we retain your personal information, in which case we will retain your personal information until those proceedings have concluded and no further appeals are possible; or
• in limited cases, existing or future law or a court or regulator requires us to keep your personal information for a longer or shorter period.

Your rights

You are entitled to request the following from Consort, these are called your Data Subject Rights and there is more information on these on the Information Commissioners website www.ico.org.uk 

• Right of access – to request access to your personal information and information about how we process it
• Right to rectification – to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate and to have incomplete personal information completed
• Right to erasure (also known as the Right to be Forgotten) – to have your personal information erased. Email info@consort-hw.com/ info@consortme.com or call us to do so.
• Right to restriction of processing – to restrict processing of your personal information
• Right to data portability - to electronically move, copy or transfer your personal information in a standard form
• Right to object - to object to processing of your personal information
• Rights with regards to automated individual decision making, including profiling –rights relating to automated decision making, including profiling
• Right to withdraw your consent to the use of your personal information

If you have any general questions about your rights or want to exercise your rights, please contact info@consort-hw.com/ info@consortme.com and put ‘GDRP’ in the subject line and describe in full what you would like to know and like us to do and how you would like us to contact you to confirm we have satisfied your request.

The accuracy of your information is important. If the personal information you have provided to us changes: if you change telephone number, email address, company name, postal address, or any of the other information we hold, please email us at info@consort-hw.com/ info@consortme.com or by writing to us at Consort Architectural Hardware Limited 25/31 Lower Loveday Street, Birmingham, B19 3SB United Kingdom.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection regulator in Europe, in particular in a country you work or live or where your legal rights have been infringed. The contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the data protection regulator in the UK, are available on the ICO website www.ico.org.uk where your personal information has or is being used in a way that you believe does not comply with data, however, we encourage you to contact us before making any complaint and we will seek to resolve any issues or concerns you may have.

Security

We will ensure that your personal information is held securely.

Some of your “non-sensitive” details (such as your email address) may be transmitted over the internet and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. 

Cookies Notice

This notice is designed to help you understand what cookies are, how Consort uses them and the choices you have in regard to their use.

By continuing to use the Consort “website”, you are agreeing to our use of cookies in the manner described in this notice.

About cookies

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your browser or the hard drive of your computer or other device when you visit the website. This allows the website to recognise you as a user either for the duration of your visit (using a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (a ‘persistent cookie’). They are not harmful and do not contain any information such as your home address, date of birth or credit card details.

The cookies we may use fall into four broad types:

Functionality cookies:

These cookies allow websites and applications to remember choices you make (such as your username, language, or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. The information these cookies collect is usually anonymised which means we can't identify you personally. They do not gather any information about you that could be used for selling advertising or remembering where you've been on the internet but do help us to serve you with advertising that is more relevant to you. 

Targeted marketing cookies:
We may also use cookies to assist in targeted advertising. Without these cookies, online advertisements you encounter will be less relevant to you and your interests. We also use them to measure the effectiveness of our marketing communications, for example by telling us if you have responded to an advert that we have sent you. 

If you would like more information on any of these types of cookies, including how to opt-out, please visit www.youronlinechoices.com/

What we use cookies for

• They enable you to transact, whilst other non-essential cookies enable us to give you an enhanced, personalised web experience and determine relevant products to show you
• To personalise and improve your customer experience
• To allow you to securely sign into your Consort account, so that you can use "My Account" features such as order information and invoices
• To recognise the device that you are using
• To store the content of your basket whilst you browse the site and to complete an order
• To distribute visitors to our website evenly across platforms to ensure the content is served at the fastest possible speed
• For re-marketing purposes to determine relevant related products to show you when you're browsing on other selected websites. These cookies can be associated with services provided by a third party such as an advertising network
• We also offer you the facility to share your experience on our website through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. By using these features, you are consenting to allow cookies from these providers. More information about how these providers use cookies can be found at their websites.

Cookies are an essential part of how our website works, as they remember certain information about a visitor. Consort uses First Party cookies (these are placed there and used solely by us) and Third-Party cookies (these are placed there by third parties we work with). 

Are cookies safe?

Yes. The information stored in cookies is safe and anonymous to any external third party, and your account security is never compromised. You can find more information about cookies at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ and www.youronlinechoices.com/. For a video about cookies visit https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/policies/technologies/cookies/ 

Can I turn off cookies?

Yes – but if you choose not to allow the use of cookies, your experience of our website will be limited and many integral aspects of the website, including (but not limited to) adding items basket and accessing your account, will not work.

To change your cookie settings, or if you want to be notified each time a cookie is about to be used, you should amend the settings provided in your web browser to prevent us from storing cookies on your computer hard drive. 

For information on how to disable cookies, please consult the "Help" tab of your browser via the menu bar. For further information on non-essential cookies used for targeting and banner advertising please see below.

Other websites

Our website and associate websites may contain links to other websites which we do not own 
but this Privacy Policy only applies to our website and our associate websites. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites whether or not you access them using links from Consort websites. 

Telephone and website recordings 

We record some telephone calls and sales appointments for training purposes. We may also use website recording services which may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, page scrolling and any text keyed into website forms. The information collected does not include bank details or any sensitive personal information. Information collected in such a fashion is for our internal use only to help us improve our internal systems and processes. 

Contact 

Should you need to contact us regarding your data acquisition or usage please write to: Consort Architectural Hardware Limited 25/31 Lower Loveday Street, Birmingham, B19 3SB United Kingdom or alternatively call us on Tel:+44 (0) 121 359 8189 or email info@consort-hw.com/ info@consortme.com

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 22.10.21