Privacy & Cookie Policy

Here at Homechain we know how important it is to keep your personal data safe, that’s why we’re committed to making sure that you receive the service you’d expect and that your privacy is protected every step of the way.

In this notice you’ll discover exactly what information we collect from you and how we then use it to deliver our services, as well as your rights. Please take the time to read this policy and let us know if you have any questions.

We may change this policy by updating this page from time to time. You should check this page occasionally to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from 10^th June 2022.

The expression “Homechain” or “us” or “we” or “our” refers to the proprietor of the site The Investment Mill Ltd whose enlisted office is The Mill, Congleton Road, Talke, Stoke on Trent, ST7 1NE.

The expression “you” refers to the user or viewer of our website.

What Information We Collect

When you request a cash offer or instruct us to buy your property, we will collect some of your personal details to make sure we have everything we need to make an accurate offer you’ve requested and to ensure a fast completion of sale.

Examples of the types of personal information we usually collect are:

Name;
Date of birth;
Gender;
Correspondence Address
Property Address
Email address;
Telephone number;
Payment information;
Names of All Joint Property Owners
Property Details & Description
Property Interior / Exterior Photographs
IP address;
Web browser type and version;
Other information relevant to customer surveys and/or offers

What We Do With The Information We Gather

We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with a better service.

Under the GDPR, we must always have a lawful basis for using personal data. This may be because the data is necessary for our performance of a contract with you, because you have consented to our use of your personal data, or because it is in our legitimate business interests to use it. Your personal data will / may be used for one of the following purposes:

Provide our services to you, your personal details are required in order for us to enter into a contract with you.
Communicate with you. We use the information that we have to send you marketing communications, communicate with you about our products and services and let you know about our Policies and Terms. We also use your information to respond to you when you contact us and we may offer property related advice and tips via email.
Promote safety, integrity, and security. We use the information that we have to verify accounts and activity, combat harmful conduct, detect and prevent abuse spam and other bad experiences.
We collect IP addresses and computer host names from users submitting information. This is done for the purposes of moderating genuine customer enquiries.
If you change your mind about being contacted in the future, please tell us or, if you have consented to being contacted by third parties for marketing purposes, you will need to contact them directly. Alternatively, if you are registered user, you can log in and change your contact permissions settings.
Send you updates about your potential or current sale of your property.
Use in creating statistical reports for our internal purposes like audits, data analysis, fraud monitoring and prevention, in improving our website features, determining effectiveness of our promotional campaigns.
Supplying you with information by email OR post that you have opted-in to (you may unsubscribe or opt-out at any time using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails)
Analysing your use of Our site and gathering feedback to enable us to continually improve Our site and your user experience.

With your permission and/or where permitted by law, we may also use your personal data for marketing purposes, which may include contacting you by email or telephone or text message or post with information, news, and offers on our products or services. You will not be sent any unlawful marketing or spam. We will always work to fully protect your rights and comply with our obligations under the GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, and you will always have the opportunity to opt-out.

We use the following automated systems for carrying out certain kinds of decision-making or profiling. If at any point you wish to query any action that we take on the basis of this or wish to request ‘human intervention’ (i.e. have someone review the action themselves, rather than relying only on the automated method), the GDPR gives you the right to do so.

How Long Will You Keep My Personal 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. This is generally 7 years unless the law prescribes a longer period.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers and will be encrypted using SSL technology.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Do You Share My Personal Data?

We may share your personal data with other companies for the purposes of providing services related to purchase or sale of properties including:

Business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you.
Advertisers and advertising networks that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others. We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we may provide them with aggregate information about our users (for example, we may inform them that 50 women aged under 40 have clicked on their advertisement on any given day). We may also use such aggregate information to help advertisers reach the kind of audience they want to target (for example, men in Staffordshire). We may make use of the personal data we have collected from you to enable us to comply with our advertisers’ wishes by displaying their advertisement to that target audience.
Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.
Credit reference agencies for the purpose of assessing your credit score where this is a condition of us entering into a contract with you.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

If we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets. If our business or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.

If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our business, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

If any of your personal data is required by a third party, we will take steps to ensure that your personal data is handled safely, securely, and in accordance with your rights, our obligations, and the third party’s obligations under the law. If any personal data is transferred outside of the EEA, we will take suitable steps in order to ensure that your personal data is treated just as safely and securely as it would be within the UK and under the GDPR. In some limited circumstances, we may be legally required to share certain personal data, which might include yours, if we are or I am involved in legal proceedings or complying with legal obligations, a court order, or the instructions of a government authority.

How Can I Control My Personal Data?

In addition to your rights under the GDPR, when you submit personal data via Our Site, you may be given options to restrict our use of your personal data. We aim to give you strong controls on our use of your data for direct marketing purposes (including the ability to opt-out of receiving emails from us which you may do by unsubscribing using the links provided in our emails).

You may also wish to sign up to one or more of the preference services operating in the UK: The Telephone Preference Service (“the TPS”), the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (“the CTPS”), and the Mailing Preference Service (“the MPS”). These may help to prevent you receiving unsolicited marketing. Please note, however, that these services will not prevent you from receiving marketing communications that you have consented to receiving.

Can I Withhold Information?

You may access certain areas of Our Site without providing any personal data at all. However, to use all features and functions available on Our Site you may be required to submit or allow for the collection of certain data.

How Can I Access My Personal Data?

If you want to know what personal data we have about you, you can ask us for details of that personal data and for a copy of it (where any such personal data is held). This is known as a “subject access request”.

All subject access requests should be made in writing and sent to Homechain, The Mill, Congleton Road, Talke, Stoke on Trent, ST7 1NE.

There is not normally any charge for a subject access request. If your request is ‘manifestly unfounded or excessive’ (for example, if you make repetitive requests) a fee may be charged to cover our administrative costs in responding.

We will respond to your subject access request as soon as we can. Normally, we aim to provide a complete response, including a copy of your personal data. In some cases, however, particularly if your request is more complex, more time may be required up to a maximum of two months from the date we receive your request. You will be kept fully informed of our progress.

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to or email us as soon as possible at the above address.

We will instantly amend any information found to be wrong or inaccurate

Cookie Policy

This is an explanation for visitors to our website of how cookies are used and how they affect them whilst browsing or buying from us.

What are website cookies?

A cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and is stored as a small text file on your computer hard drive. This occurs when you are browsing a website. Cookies perform various roles on a website and most cookies are unobtrusive and harmless. Cookies cannot carry viruses and cannot install malware on your computer.

How does homechain.co.uk use cookies?

We use a range of cookies to enable us to collect information about visitors to our website. This includes information such as visitor numbers to each of the pages on our site and whether you visited our website via a search engine or social media site(such as Google, Bing or Facebook).

Cookies and your privacy

Cookies allow us to collect information about visitors to our website in an anonymous manner. If, for any reason, we do wish to obtain personal information which may identify you, we will obtain it in a clear and fair manner, and also explain what we plan to do with your information.

How to control your cookie preferences

You have full control over your cookie preferences for each website you use. You can edit your cookie preferences by following the steps in the table below. For browsers not listed in the table, we recommend that you refer to the 'Help' menu in your chosen browser.

Browser Editing your cookie preferences

Google Chrome

Click the spanner icon on the browser toolbar
Select “Settings”
Click on “Show Advanced Settings”
In the “Privacy” section, click the “Contents Setting” button
In the “Cookies” section, you can change the following cookie settings:

Delete cookies
Block cookies by default
Allow cookies by default
Make exceptions from specific cookies or domains

Internet Explorer 7+

From the “Tools” menu, click “Internet Options”
Select the “Privacy” tab
Move the slider to the preferred level of privacy
For more detailed cookie options, click “Advanced” and check the “Override automatic cookie handling” box then modify your settings

Firefox

From the “Tools” menu select “Options”
Select the “Privacy” tab
Select the cookies option, if available, otherwise select “Use custom settings for history from the “Firefox will” drop down menu
Choose your preferred cookie settings

Please be aware that:

You may not be able to use any interactive features on our website if cookies are disabled
By removing certain kinds of cookies, you may miss out on future offers and advertisements from us which may be of interest to you.

Further cookie preferences

For more information on website cookies, and the ways in which you can delete and control them on your computer, please go to www.aboutcookies.org.uk