Privacy and Cookie Policy

We, Pickering and Ferens Homes (PFH), operate this Privacy and Cookie Policy because we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our website visitors and the confidentiality of any information that we collect about you. This policy sets out how we will use any personal information that we may obtain from you.

If we change any of the terms of this policy, we will post the revised policy on our website at www.pfh.org.uk within the Policies section. This policy applies to anybody who submits their personal data to us (whether it is submitted by using our website, by email, over the telephone, in person or by any other means). However, please note that if you submit to us a completed application for a property, your completed application will be processed in accordance with our separate Applicant and Resident Data Protection Statement (a copy of which is available on our website within the Policies section).

You warrant that any information you supply to us is accurate and up to date, that you will inform us if any such information requires updating, and that if you submit a third party’s details to us you have that third party’s permission to do so.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office if you have any concerns about the way in which we process your personal data.

1. Who are we?

We are Pickering and Ferens Homes. We are a non-profit making registered Housing Association (A4020) and registered charity (No 1014862) whose head office is at 7 Beacon Way, Hull, HU3 4AE. We operate this website, the homepage of which can be found at www.pfh.org.uk. We are committed to ensuring that all personal information we hold is treated properly and in accordance with applicable data protection legislation. We are registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office and our registration number is Z4854829. In accordance with applicable data protection legislation, we are required to explain to you how we will treat any personal data which we collect about you.

Our Information Compliance Officer oversees our general compliance with data protection legislation, for any queries regarding data protection please contact: Racheal Hoult.

2. What information do we collect and how do we use it?

It is possible to visit and browse our website without being required to tell us who you are or reveal any information about you.

You may give us information about you by filling in forms on our website or by corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. This may include the following kinds of personal data:

(a) information that you provide to us for the purpose of registering with us or submitting an enquiry or initial application for a property, including name, contact details (e.g. address, telephone number, email address), age group, financial circumstances and other relevant personal details. This information will be used for the purposes of registering you or responding to your enquiry or initial application (as the case may be) and managing any subsequent arrangements that we enter into with you.

(b) information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our website services, email notifications and/or newsletters including your name and e-mail address. This information will be used for the purposes of providing you with such services for which you subscribe.

Please note that where we process your personal information in any of the circumstances described in (a) and (b) above, this will be on the basis that you consent to that personal information being used for the relevant purpose described above. You may withdraw your consent to us using your information for the relevant purpose at any time (please see section 4 below for further details).

We may also use certain information collected from you via our website where the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract that we have entered into with you. For example:

(c) information relating to any transactions carried out between you and us on or in relation to this website, including information relating to any financial transactions you make relating to our services (e.g. paying a bill). This information will be used for the purposes of fulfilling the relevant transaction and submitting related statements to you. However, your financial information itself will be protected by 128bit encrypted SSL connections and will not be stored by or otherwise accessible by us (as it will be submitted directly to our payment services provider Allpay – please see section 3 below for further details).

(d) information that you provide to us for the purpose of reporting a repair, including your name, contact details, access details and details of the required repairs. We will use this information for the purposes of reviewing the repair report and administering and subsequent repairs.
We may also use any information collected from you for our legitimate interests to improve our services and for our own audit and assurance purposes (including as part of our own research and statistical analysis).

If you correspond with us by telephone, we may retain a record of and/or the content of your telephone correspondence with us (a) in order for us to appropriately respond to such correspondence where necessary, and (b) for staff training and quality purposes. This may include us recording and monitoring our telephone calls with you for such purposes. Whenever we do this, it shall be on the basis that such recordings and other records are necessary for our legitimate interests (provided that such interests are not overridden by your own interests or fundamental rights and freedoms).

As a customer of ours, you may be subject to statutory or contractual obligations to provide certain personal data. this information is crucial for us to fulfil our responsibilities and obligations in accordance with relevant laws and contractual agreements.

Statutory requirements may include obligations imposed by local housing laws and regulations. Contractual obligations refer to the terms outlined in your tenancy or housing agreement with PFH.
Fulfilling these requirements ensures the provision of essential housing services and helps maintain a safe and secure living environment for all residents. Failure to provide the required data may result in a breach of statutory or contractual obligations.

3. Third Parties

We will share personal information about you with the following parties:
• Contractors
• Professional, legal and financial services providers
• National and local government, health and benefit departments
• Utility suppliers
• Fire and police services
• Support services providers

If you receive services from us which involve the services of a third party, we will pass information about you to that third party so they can provide you with those services. This may include our data processors Home Marketing (who distribute marketing materials on our behalf) and Platinum Print (who distribute printed materials on our behalf). It may also include any third-party contractor who we engage in respect of any repairs that you report to us. If you provide us with feedback regarding our services, we may disclose that feedback to our suppliers. All our website financial transactions are handled through our payment services provider, Allpay. You should only provide your personal information to Allpay after reviewing and agreeing to the Allpay Terms and Conditions.

We will share information with Allpay only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing payments you make via our website.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets (in which case we may disclose your personal information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets) or if we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal information held by us about our residents, newsletter subscribers and other individuals will be one of the transferred assets.

Except as provided in this privacy policy or where we have stated or informed you otherwise, we will not provide your information to third parties without your express consent for any purpose (including but not limited to direct marketing).

4. How do you withdraw your consent to us using your personal information?

Where we are processing your personal information on the basis of your consent – for example, if you no longer want to receive our newsletter – you can withdraw your consent at any time. This can be done by emailing us at info@pfh.org.uk or writing to us at Pickering and Ferens Homes, 7 Beacon Way, Hull, HU3 4AE or clicking on the appropriate link in the footer of any related email. Any such withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of our processing based on your consent before you withdrew it.

Please note that if you withdraw your consent to us processing your personal information for any of the purposes described in section 2(a) above, this may result in us being unable to process your enquiry or initial application.

5. What if you apply for a role with us?

If you submit your CV or other information to us for the purpose of being considered for a role within Pickering and Ferens Homes, we will only use the information you submit for the purposes of assessing your application and contacting you in relation to the role that you apply for. This will be on the basis that by submitting any personal information to us in such circumstances you consent to that personal information being used for this purpose. You may withdraw your consent to us using your information for this purpose at any time; however please note that if you do this, we will no longer be able to consider your application.

6. Security of your personal data

We will take all reasonable steps to protect your personal information.

All electronic financial transactions you make to or receive from us will be encrypted using industry standard SSL technology. All card details are taken and handled via Allpay.

However, the Internet is global, and no data transmitted via the Internet can be guaranteed by us to be completely secure during transmission. We cannot guarantee the security of any data that you disclose online, and we will not be responsible for any breach of security unless this is due to our negligence or wilful default. It is possible that information you provide to us will be temporarily transferred via a route outside the European Economic Area as it passes between you and us.

7. Your rights

You have a legal right to see a copy of the personal data that we keep about you and to correct any inaccuracies, subject to certain exemptions. In some circumstances you may also have the right to:
(i) request that we erase any personal data held about you;
(ii) restrict our processing of your personal data;
(iii) data portability; and
(iv) object to our processing of your personal data.

Requests in respect of the above should be made in writing to Pickering and Ferens Homes, 7 Beacon Way, Hull, HU3 4AE. Please contact us at the same address if you have any reason to believe that information we hold about you is inaccurate. Any personal data held by us in relation to any contract you have entered into with us will be retained in accordance with our information retention policy (a copy of which is available upon request) for a reasonable period having regard to the relevant purpose, following which it will be destroyed.

If you have consented to us providing you with marketing materials, your personal details will be retained by us in order that we can provide you with such marketing materials unless and until: (i) we cease producing the marketing materials in respect of which we have obtained your consent; or (ii) you withdraw your consent, following which we will destroy or suppress such personal data without delay following the date that: (i) we cease producing the marketing material; or (ii) you withdraw your consent (as appropriate).

In accordance with applicable data protection legislation, we follow security procedures in the storage and disclosure of your information. We may therefore request proof of your identity before disclosing certain information to you or complying with any other request of a nature described in this section 7.

8. Automated decision making

At PFH we do not undertake any automated decision-making processes that significantly impact individuals without any human intervention involved. We believe in maintaining transparency, if any changes occur in the future, we will update this notice accordingly.

8. Cookies

Our website uses “cookies” to ensure you receive the best possible visitor experience and to help ensure the efficiency of our website. A cookie is a small file which is sent by a web server to an individual’s computer which are then stored on that computer’s hard drive. The information contained within the file is then sent back to the server each time the individual’s computer requests a page from the server. This enables the web server to identify and track the individual’s web browser. A cookie contains text and is like an identification card which can only be translated by the server it originated from.

Cookies cannot tell us information such as your email address, which we can only collect where you tell us (for example if you submit it to us using our website).
Our website uses the following cookies for the following purposes:

Cookie Domain Description Duration Type
PHPSESSID www.pfh.org.uk This cookie is native to PHP applications. The cookie is used to store and identify a users’ unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. Session cookies do not collect information from the user’s computer. They typically will store information in the form of a session identification that does not personally identify the user. http://www.allaboutcookies.org/cookies/sessioncookies-used-for.html session Necessary
_ga .pfh.org.uk This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site’s analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. 1 years 11 months 28 days 23 hours 59 minutes Analytics
_gid .pfh.org.uk This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. 23 hours 59 minutes Analytics
_gat .pfh.org.uk This cookies is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the colllection of data on high traffic sites. Performance

The cookies detailed above will (save for any ‘strictly necessary’ cookies) only be used where you have given consent to their use and you may withdraw your consent at any time to such cookies by https://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/stop-cookies-installed.html.

Some parts of this website require certain ‘strictly necessary’ cookies to be enabled to function correctly (which we use as necessary for our legitimate interests in ensuring that this website functions correctly). Therefore, unless you change your browser settings you will automatically accept such cookies from this website.

Our payment services providers (e.g. Allpay) may also send you cookies. Please consult the relevant payment service provider’s cookies policy for further details. Most internet browsers allow you to prevent cookies being stored on your computer.

For example, in Internet Explorer you can refuse all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy” and selecting “Block” for all cookies within the “Advanced” tab. Blocking all cookies will however have a negative impact on the usability of many websites (including this one).

Alternatively, you may be able to configure your browser to accept all cookies or to notify you when a cookie is offered by our server. You may also be able to delete all cookies currently stored on your web browser. Therefore, unless you change your browser settings you will automatically accept cookies from this website. More here https://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/clear-cookies-installed.html

We may also collect information about where you are on the Internet (e.g. the URL you came from, IP address, and domain names such as, .co.uk and .com), your browser type, the country where your computer is located, the pages of our website that were viewed during your visit and any search terms that you entered on our website. We may collect this information even if you do not make any transactions using our website, and will use it to administer our website, for internal operations (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes) and as part of our efforts to keep our website safe and secure.

We do not use cookies to market or promote the interests of any third party. For further information about cookies and how they are used, please visit www.aboutcookies.org.

9. Policy amendment

We may amend this policy from time to time. You are bound by any changes we make to this policy with effect from the date of the change. If we make any substantial changes to the way in which we use your personal information we will notify you by posting a notice on our website’s homepage. You can view the current version of our Privacy and Cookie Policy by clicking on the Privacy and Cookie Policy link on our website’s Policies section.

10. Third party websites

The website contains links to other websites which are out of our control and are not covered by this policy. If you access other websites using the links provided, the operators of those websites may collect personal information from you which will be used in accordance with their respective privacy policies which you should read. We are not liable for the privacy policies or practices of such third-party website operators in respect of your personal information. You acknowledge that any information that you post using our social media facilities will be viewable by anybody who visits those websites and that such information is also subject to the relevant provider’s privacy policy. You are advised to consult each such privacy policy to see how they will use your data.

11. Data Processing for Non-Pickering and Ferens Homes Residents

We may also hold and use personal information in relation to non-residents with an interest in an applicant or resident of PFH or the services provided by PFH, or those who may take part in PFH events or activities. This information may include the non-resident’s name, address and telephone number(s). We will collect and use this information where necessary for our legitimate interests in the following circumstances:

a) Personal information relating to non-PFH residents taking part in an event or activity arranged and facilitated by PFH will be used as necessary or our health and safety purposes (including compliance with fire regulations).

b) Personal information relating to a Next of Kin or key holder of a PFH resident will be used as necessary to provide our contracted support services to the relevant PFH resident.

c) Personal information relating to a nominated ‘third party’ of a PFH resident or applicant will be used as necessary to provide our contracted or related support services to the relevant PFH resident/applicant.

d) Personal information relating to a person collecting or returning keys on behalf of a PFH resident will be used to maintain a record of the person to whom keys have been distributed, or who has returned keys to PFH on behalf of the relevant PFH resident.

e) Personal information relating to a person giving notice to terminate the Licence Agreement of a PFH resident will be used to maintain a record of the person giving notice to terminate the relevant Licence Agreement and to send correspondence relating to the termination of the relevant Licence Agreement.

f) Where a former PFH resident moves into residential care, we may disclose the name and contact details of the former PFH resident’s next of kin, attorney and/or any other person who contacts us in relation to the former PFH resident’s Licence Agreement with us, to any utility company that contacts us in connection with any utility charges arising in respect of the property to which that former PFH resident’s Licence Agreement relates prior to its termination (any such disclosure shall be on the basis that it is necessary in connection with legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings, and/or necessary for us to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights)

g) The name and contact details of a deceased PFH resident’s executor or personal representative may be disclosed by us to any utility company that contacts us in connection with any utility charges arising in respect of the property to which that deceased PFH resident’s Licence Agreement relates prior to its termination (any such disclosure shall be on the basis that it is necessary in connection with legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings, and/or necessary for us to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights).

The above information will be collected using the appropriate PFH form related to the relevant processing activity.

12. Persons Providing Events or Activity Services to PFH residents

We may hold and use personal information relating to those who deliver or facilitate events, activities or services to PFH residents. This information may include name, address, email address, telephone number(s) and bank account details. We will collect this information where necessary and for our legitimate interests in contacting the provider.

13. Contact

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our treatment of your personal data, please write to us by email to info@pfh.org.uk