Who we are
Marches Energy Advice is a registered charity that provides energy saving advice services directly to householders, work with trusted companies providing energy saving products and assist in accessing energy saving grants or debt relief. Our advisory services are delivered through schemes funded by local authorities, grant schemes and donations, with the aim of supporting householders with any concerns they have.
Our registered address is:
The Pump House, Coton Hill, Shrewsbury, Shropshire. SY1 2DP
Registered charity no. 1070942.
When delivering funded schemes on behalf of local authorities or other organisations, we will be acting as a Data Processor or Joint Data Controller of your personal information and under a contractual agreement with them. In other situations, we will be acting as the Data Controller for personal data collected.
This policy is provided to inform you of our intentions when handling your personal data in whatever capacity we are collecting it from you.
Your Privacy
Your privacy matters to us and we are committed to the highest data privacy standards, confidentiality and adherence with the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR.
To disclose this to you, our Privacy Notice includes the following:
- What data we collect from you.
- How and why we process it.
- Who we share it with and why.
We adopt the six core principles of data protection which are:
- Lawfulness, fairness and transparency– we process personal data lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to you, the data subject.
- Purpose limitation– we only collect personal data for a specific, explicit and legitimate purpose. We clearly state what this purpose is in this Privacy Notice, and we only collect data for as long as necessary to complete that purpose.
- Data minimisation– we ensure that personal data we process is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the processing purpose.
- Accuracy– we take every reasonable step to update or remove data that is inaccurate or incomplete. You have the right to request that we erase or rectify erroneous data that relates to you, and we will complete this task as soon as possible but guarantee to do so within a month.
- Storage limitation– we delete personal data when we no longer need it. Whilst the timescales in most cases aren’t set, we outline our retention strategy within this Privacy Notice.
- Integrity and confidentiality– we keep personal data safe and protected against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures.
Collection of your Personal Data
We may collect your personal information via disclosure directly from you or sometimes referral through other organisations or local authorities. This might be via our website, funded scheme websites, e mail, telephone or face to face engagement.
Categories and Type of Personal Data Collected and processed
We will collect personal information from you in order to provide information about our services, respond to your enquiries, collect donations, subscribe you or work in partnership with you:
- Name
- Address
- Company Name (If applicable)
- Telephone number(s)
- E mail addresses
- Nature of enquiries
If you require energy advice and support as a householder, we will need also to collect more information, including some or all of the following:
- Age / Date of Birth, Next of Kin, Power of Attourney, employment details
- Physical and mental health
- Financial details – Income, savings, benefits
- Maintain records of our meetings, calls or visits
We recognise that some of this information is classified as ‘Special Category’ which requires particular protection. We will treat all personal data in the strictest confidence.
We will need to gain additional personal information from individuals who apply to us for employment or volunteering roles, which will be relative to determining their suitability and qualification for any opportunities we have. This will include information about criminal records.
We may also capture some data which can be considered as personal data when you use our website through the use of cookies.
Our website has links to other companies websites and social media platforms, which we do not control and you should be aware of their Privacy policies before providing your personal information to them.
Reason for Data collection and processing activities.
The information which we collect about you, is used to enable us to communicate with you, respond to your enquiries, work with you or provide our energy advice services.
In particular when providing energy advice your personal information will enable us to:
- Give energy advice relevant to your property and personal circumstances
- Refer you to selected partners for further advice or grant support/intervention
- Refer you to grant supported installers of energy saving products
We will not allow the use of your personal data for marketing purposes.
Sharing of your Personal Data
If you receive advisory services from us, we will often share your personal information with other organisations who can provide the types of support recommended by us. We will always make you aware of this intention and ensure you agree to this.
We may also be required to share some of your information with the organisations that provide funding to us and/or have contracted us to run schemes on their behalf. We will, when possible, anonymise this information so that you cannot be identified.
We use data storage and communication systems provided by other companies. These companies will not normally need to access the information we hold about you but do have access to the systems to maintain them.
We may also need to share your data in order to meet our commercial legal obligations, respond to requests from regulatory bodies or authorities, in cases of emergencies or for our own legal defence.
We will not share your personal data with other parties who are located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
A full list of organisations we share information with is available on request.
Securing and Processing of your Personal Data
The personal data collected from you will be held securely by us and those that we share it with are contractually required to provide the same levels of security and confidentiality.
We employ a range of Technical and Organisational measures to ensure that your data remains secure and cannot be accessed by unauthorised persons, mis-used, lost or altered. Our staff and volunteers work under the provisions of strict confidentiality requirements, are background checked (DBS) and receive training in our data security policies and procedures.
In the unlikely event that we lose your data, or a device on which your data resides, or it is accessed by someone unauthorised, we have obligations to ensure you are inform of this.
If the loss or unauthorised access of your data has potential to cause you harm, this will also be reported to the Information Commissioners Office, who are responsible for regulating data protection legislation in the UK.
Our legal basis for processing your personal data
We are required to identify one of six possible legal grounds for processing. These are:
- consent
- contract
- legitimate interests
- vital interests
- public task
- legal obligation
Most of our processing activities are crucial to the provision of our energy advisory services to you or our ongoing working relationship with you, so we process your personal data on the basis of a contractual relationship. (Whether directly with you or with the provider of the funds or scheme).
Where we process your health information, which is ‘Special Category’, we will do so under on the basis of providing ‘social care and management services’.
We also process your data under our legitimate interests when utilising various third-party systems through which to provide services or communications.
Should we wish to use your information specifically for a published case study or other promotional activities about the work of the Agency, in which you would be identified; we would specifically gain your consent to do this.
You may also Consensually provide personal information to us when making a donation or signing up for our newsletters or online access.
How long do we keep your personal data for?
If we have provided our services to you, we will retain your data for 7 years following our last engagement, in order to satisfy our legal and contractual obligations. We will not retain personal data which is not required for those purposes following our last engagement with you and it will be securely destroyed or erased from our systems.
If we have worked in partnership with you in delivering support to householders, we may retain that information for up to 7 years following our last engagement but will not keep it for any longer than it is required.
If you made enquiries with us, we would only retain this data for as long needed to provide responses or support required.
We will only use your data for any promotional or marketing purposes until such time that you withdraw your consent or a period of 2 Years. Your personal information will be used for marketing , subscription or online access until you have withdrawn consent for this.
If you applied to us for employment or a volunteer role and were not successful, we will not hold your personal data for longer than twelve months.
Your rights in relation to personal data
Under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act, you have rights to access and control your personal data. These rights include:
- access to personal information
- correction and deletion
- withdrawal of consent (if processing data on condition of consent)
- data portability
- restriction of processing and objection
- lodging a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office
You can exercise your rights by emailing us at:
If you are unhappy with anything we have done with your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioners Office.
To make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office use the link below or call their hotline on Tel No.: 0303 123 1113.
How to contact us
For all data protection matters or questions relating to how we manage your data, you can contact our responsible Manager:
Davina Allen, Operations Manager
Email: [email protected] FAO: Davina Allen
or by writing to the Operations manager at the above address.
Policy updated: May 2024