Privacy & Cookies Policy

This is the privacy statement for Hilmark Homes. Please read it carefully. You should only use this site and send any information to us if you agree to our use of information about you in accordance with this privacy statement.

1. Protecting your personal data

Hilmark Ltd, trading as Hilmark Homes, is committed to ensuring that your personal data and information is protected. This Privacy Policy together with the Terms and Conditions of Use and any other documents referred to in it sets out the basis on which any personal data which we collect from you, or that you or others provide to us, will be processed by us.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully and ensure that you understand it. Your acceptance of this Privacy Policy is deemed to occur upon your first use of our site. If you do not accept and agree with this Privacy Policy, you must stop using our site immediately.

Our Site is owned and operated by Hilmark Ltd, trading as Hilmark Homes, a Limited company, registered in Northern Ireland under company number NI039845.

2. Our commitment to you

We are firmly committed to protecting your personal information and we will ensure that we comply with all data protection laws including:

The Data Protection Act 1998;
The GDPR - General Data Protection Regulations; and
Any regulations made under or to supplement either of the above, relating to the personal information that we collect about you.

3. What is Personal Data?

Personal data is defined by the General Data Protection Regulation (EU Regulation 2016/679) (the "GDPR") as "any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified in particular by reference to an identifier".

Personal data is, in simpler terms, any information about you that enables you to be identified. Personal data covers obvious information such as your name and contact details, but it also covers less obvious information such as identification numbers, electronic location data, and other online identifiers.

4. This policy covers the following

what personal information we collect about you
how we obtain your personal information
how we use your personal information
on what basis we use your personal information
with whom we share your personal information
the countries to which we transfer your personal information
how long we keep your personal information
your rights regarding your personal information
the use of cookies on our websites and how you can control these in addition to how you can contact us

This Privacy Policy applies only to your use of our site. Our site may contain links to other websites. Please note that we have no control over how your data is collected, stored, or used by other websites and we advise you to check the privacy policies of any such websites before providing any data to them.

5. When and what personal information do we collect about you?

We may collect personal information when you:

Visit/access one of our websites or platforms
Contact us by telephone, email, SMS, letter or any other form of messaging
Visit any of our offices or developments in person
Complete any of our website forms for a service request
Access information about our developments and/or new homes via a third-party provider, such as a property portal e.g. Property Pal, Property News or others
Information may be received from an authorised Estate Agent or other third party, including but not limited, to advertising networks, search information providers, credit reference agencies or other marketing sources
Whenever you enter into any transaction with us, whether it’s in person or any other way
If you request information from us with a view to entering into a transaction with us
Automated technologies or interactions- as you intact with our website, we may automatically collect technical data, for example: your equipment used, browsing action and patterns. This data is collected using cookies and similar technologies, please see our cookie policy below for further details.

The information collected may include, for example your:

Name
Email address
Postal address
Telephone or mobile number

As well as information about

your communication preferences
the type and price of the homes you are looking for
the home you currently own (if any) and its sales status
why and when you want to move
some demographic information about you including age range, household type, profession
the source of your enquiry
Your use of our website.
The purpose of your visit to our website or the reason you made contact with us.

If you contact us online, we may monitor the type of device used by you. This may include specific identification, such as your IP address. IP addresses are specific to any device used, for example, this could be a computer, tablet or phone.

Our developments and sales offices may use CCTV to make sure we provide a safe and secure environment for all visitors to our premises and to ensure the protection of our employees and property.

We may also record calls for training, monitoring and quality purposes to and from our Customer Services Helpline.

Our social media pages, such as Twitter and Facebook, are monitored by a third-party company. They pass any customer queries, questions or complaints onto us, so that we can respond accordingly.

This policy also covers our use of any of your personal information, whether provided to us in person, over the phone, via email, SMS or any social messaging, via website forms, property portals or in other correspondence.

6. Requests for additional information

Sometimes we will require you to provide additional personal information. For example, when following up your enquiry, reserving a home or completing a home purchase. Examples of information that may be required to be collected and processed in relation to some of these activities can be found the appendix in section 20.

Whenever we do this, we will tell you why we are collecting this information and how we will use it.

7. How will we use this information?

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 may be used for the following purposes:

Providing and managing your access to our site
Personalising and tailoring your experience on our site. For example, with your permission, we may use IP addresses and device identifiers to identify your location. We will use this for general, depersonalised statistical purposes. We may also use this information to direct you to specific developments/properties in your area.
Supplying our products and/or services to you. Your personal details are required in order for us to enter into a contract with you.
Provide a relevant service. If you have contacted us for a specific purpose or accessed our services by completing a website form and not opted out, we'll take into account your perceived preferences for a specific property type or location. In the event that you do not wish to receive this personalised service, you can unsubscribe from our emails or similarly contact us as set out in section 11 of this policy.
Personalising and tailoring our products and/or services for you.
Communicating with you. This may include responding to emails or calls from you.
Contacting you. This may involve supplying you with information by email and/or post that you have opted-in to (you may unsubscribe or opt-out at any time section 11.). For example, when you have indicated a specific interest in a property/development, or a particular area in which we have properties/developments available.
Improve our service. We may provide information to third parties for research and analytical purposes, so that we can improve the services we offer you.

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 AND/OR telephone AND/OR text message AND/OR post with information, news, and offers on our products AND/OR[service]. 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 will only contact you for marketing purposes, if you have agreed to this or where you have requested a service from us and not opted out. You can easily unsubscribe from any of those sources at any time.

We will deem a service request to be any of the following:

Contact Agents via our website – This may be to request more information or to request a viewing etc.
Call-back request - when you request us to call you back to find out more about one of our developments.
Register for Updates – this is where you ask us to keep you updated on an existing development
Have contacted us in relation to a new development - that has not launched yet, either via 'coming soon site' or phone call, email etc.
Download brochure - when you request to download a brochure of one of our developments.

We do not sell customer's personal data to third parties and will only use your personal information to provide you with details of our own products, properties or developments which we believe will be of interest to you. However, if you show an interest in a specific property/development or type of property/development via a third-party website, such as a property portal, this is outside of our remit - we have no control over who else can contact you.

8. How long do we keep your information?

We will not keep your personal data for any longer than is necessary in light of the reasons for which it was first collected. Your personal data will therefore be kept for the following periods:

Purchasing a property: If you enter into a contract with us to purchase a property, we will hold your information for a maximum of 12 years from the date of completion of that purchase. It must be noted that this will include the 10 Year Structural Warranty cover.
Anti-money laundering: In the event that you provide us with personal information so that we can satisfy any anti-money laundering obligations, we will retain such information for a period of 5 years, this is to fulfil our legal obligations.
If you contact us: If you get in touch regarding any of our properties/developments or types of property/developments or the services, we provide, whether we receive such contact directly from you or via a third party, we will retain your information until whichever of the below happens first:
- You request that we delete it: We will need to retain a record of your request to be deleted.
- A maximum period of 2 years: From the date that you last made contact with us directly or via a third-party in relation to any of our properties or developments.

We will use all reasonable efforts to delete (aside from the note of your request to be deleted) all information in our possession which constitutes, in our reasonable opinion, personal data belonging to you.

9. Data Security

Appropriate security measures have been put in place in order to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, accessed, disclosed, or altered or used in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal data to those employees, contractors, service providers and other third parties whom have a requirement to know these to enable them carry out business (see below).

10. Do You Share My Personal Data?

We may share your personal data with other companies in our group, this includes subsidiaries and our holding company and its subsidiaries.

We may sometimes contract with the following third parties to supply certain products and/or services. These may include service providers, delivery, and marketing firms. In some cases, those third parties may require access to some or all of your personal data that we hold.

This could include:

To our solicitors, your solicitors or other advisers for the purposes of progressing a sale or dealing with any issue you may have.
To a third party for the purposes of carrying out a survey in relation to your experience with us.
With a consultant, supplier or a subcontractor appointed to carry out/required to carry out work to a property which you have purchased.
To any of your advisers in connection with any contract or transaction entered into with us for the purposes of performance of our obligations
For statistical or similar analysis in relation to purchase or use of our properties, products or any service we provide.
Advertisers and networks (such as MailChimp/ Social Media) that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you.

If any of your personal data is required by a third party, as described above, 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, as described above in Part 15 below.

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, as explained below in Part 15.

In some limited circumstances, we may be legally required to share certain personal data, which might include yours, if we are involved in legal proceedings or complying with legal obligations, a court order, or the instructions of a government authority.

When you enter into a contract with us, we will set out, in as much detail as possible, the purposes for which we may use your personal information to fulfil our contract with you and address any issues relating to our performance.

11. What Are My Rights?

In accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) effective from 25th May 2018, you have the right to access the information we hold about you, to correct it, erase it, ask us to discontinue or restrict processing it, to object to how we are using it, the right to data portability and the right to withdraw any consent previously given.

Under the GDPR, you have the following rights, which we will always work to uphold:

The right to be informed about our collection and use of your personal data. This Privacy Policy should tell you everything you need to know, but you can always contact us to find out more or to ask any questions using the details in Part 19.
The right to access the personal data we hold about you. Part 14 will tell you how to do this.
The right to have your personal data rectified if any of your personal data held by us is inaccurate or incomplete. Please contact us using the details in Part 19 to find out more.
The right to be forgotten, i.e. the right to ask us to delete or otherwise dispose of any of your personal data that we have. Please contact us using the details in Part 19 to find out more.
The right to restrict (i.e. prevent) the processing of your personal data.
The right to object to us using your personal data for a particular purpose or purposes.
The right to data portability. This means that, if you have provided personal data to us directly, we are using it with your consent or for the performance of a contract, and that data is processed using automated means, you can ask us for a copy of that personal data to re-use with another service or business in many cases.
Rights relating to automated decision-making and profiling. We do not use your personal data in this way.

A request for the deletion or correction of personal data should be addressed to the management of Hilmark Ltd at our registered office (details below), or by email to sayhello@hilmarkhomes.com. Please note that while we always strive to comply with any requests you make, we cannot guarantee to action any application for the deletion or modification of your personal data if it is not made using the method outlined above.

Within reason, we will aim to make anonymous and/or delete any of the personal data which we hold in relation to you. However, due to the nature of digital or computer records we cannot guarantee that every trace or record of your personal data can be removed, but we will erase it as far as it is reasonably possible for us to do so.

For more information about our use of your personal data or exercising your rights as outlined above, please contact us using the details provided in Part 19.

Further information about your rights can also be obtained from the Information Commissioner's Office or your local Citizens Advice Bureau.

If you have any cause for complaint about our use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office.

12. How Can I Control My Personal Data?

In addition to your rights under the GDPR, set out above, when you submit personal data via our site, you may be given options to restrict our use of your personal data. In particular, 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 and at the point of providing your details.
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.

13. 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.

You may restrict our use of Cookies. For more information, see Part 16

14. Finding out what personal information we hold.

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 the email or postal addresses shown in Part 19.

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 may wish to establish your identity prior to a request being answered and thus a copy of a form (or forms) of identification may be requested, examples include a Passport or Driving licence.

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

15. Accessing our platforms from outside the UK/ Transfers of your personal information outside of your home country

Depending upon your location, different privacy rules may apply as a matter of law. These are presently harmonised within the EU, but you should note that any personal information that we use, or process is done so in accordance with the law applicable in England, Wales or Scotland, as appropriate.

We may store or transfer some or all of your personal data in countries that are not part of the European Economic Area (the 'EEA' consists of all EU member states, plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein). These are known as 'third countries' and may not have data protection laws that are as strong as those in the UK and/or the EEA. This means that we will take additional 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 as follows.

We share your data within the group of companies of which we are a part. Where this involves the transfer of personal data outside the EEA, our group ensures that personal data is protected by requiring all companies within the group to follow the same rules with respect to personal data usage. These are known as 'binding corporate rules'. More information on binding corporate rules is available from the European Commission.

16. Web browser cookies.

A cookie is a small text file placed on your computer or device, this (typically) a unique identifier. When you visit certain parts and/or when you use certain features of our website (or those of third-party providers) a cookie will be sent to your device. The cookie records information about your online preferences and therefore allows us to tailor our websites and any contact with you to your specific interests.

Our site may place and access certain first-party Cookies on your computer or device. First-party Cookies are those placed directly by us and are used only by us. We use Cookies to facilitate and improve your experience of our site and to provide and improve our products and services. We have carefully chosen these Cookies and have taken steps to ensure that your privacy and personal data is protected and respected at all times.

All Cookies used by and on Our Site are used in accordance with current Cookie Law (relevant parts of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003).

Before Cookies are placed on your computer or device, you will be shown a pop-up requesting your consent to set those Cookies. By giving your consent to the placing of Cookies you are enabling us to provide the best possible experience and service to you. You may, if you wish, deny consent to the placing of Cookies; however certain features of our Site may not function fully or as intended.

In addition to the controls that we provide, you can choose to enable or disable Cookies in your internet browser. Most internet browsers also enable you to choose whether you wish to disable all Cookies or only third-party Cookies. By default, most internet browsers accept Cookies, but this can be changed. For further details, please consult the help menu in your internet browser or the documentation that came with your device.

You can choose to delete Cookies on your computer or device at any time, however you may lose any information that enables you to access Our Site more quickly and efficiently including, but not limited to, login and personalisation settings.

It is recommended that you keep your internet browser and operating system up-to-date and that you consult the help and guidance provided by the developer of your internet browser and manufacturer of your computer or device if you are unsure about adjusting your privacy settings.

We cannot control any information concerning websites other than those operated by us. You must refer to those websites for their terms and conditions and privacy policies.

17. Changes to our privacy and cookies policy.

We may change this Privacy Notice from time to time. This may be necessary, for example, if the law changes, or if we change our business in a way that affects personal data protection.

Any changes will be immediately posted on our site and you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Privacy Policy on your first use of our site following the alterations. We recommend that you check this page regularly to keep up-to-date.

18. Applicability

This Privacy Notice is intended for users of this website, as well as any clients of Hilmark Ltd (trading as Hilmark Homes) and any companies that are part of the same group (the holding company and its subsidiaries) as Hilmark Ltd, as well as any Joint Ventures, in which we hold a material interest, that we may act on behalf of. In this policy, “we” refers to all of the above.

19. Contacting us concerning our privacy and cookies policy.

Any contact you wish to make with us concerning this policy or how it works in practice should be directed to the management. Please either write using the email address provided, or via post to our registered office:

Hilmark Ltd
19 Church Rd
Portadown
Craigavon
BT63 5HT

sayhello@hilmarkhomes.com

20. Appendix: Additional Information

When you make an enquiry, we will use the personal information we hold about you to take steps towards entering into a contract with you such as to: including:

your ability to purchase, including financial resources, and any assistance you may require
notes on conversations and meetings you have had with us
any correspondence we send and/or have received from you

If you decide to start the process of purchasing from us by reserving a home, we may process further information on:

details of your new mortgage (if you require one)
details about the sale of your current house
contact details of your solicitor, and estate agent if used
information required to support any Shared ownership scheme (or any other similar government scheme)
the upgrades you purchase and selections you make on either at a visit or our show room, via phone, email or message.
the dates various activities in the process of purchasing a home occurred

Our conveyancer will send contract documents to your solicitor, respond to their queries and process any information they or you may provide in furthering the sale to you of your new home, or in acquiring your home if a part exchange agreement has been made, including:

contract terms, deposit payments
enquiries and responses
certified copies of your passport, driving licence and/or utility bill as required by the CML to support money laundering/fraud legislation
a marriage or death certificate in some circumstances to prove succession of title
a check on HM Treasury’s Financial Sanction list for evidence of criminal activity

When you complete the purchase of a Hilmark home we will process further information relating to:

your utility companies and meter readings
details of any issues with your home that you have reported to us and how they were followed up
your responses to our customer satisfaction survey, unless you elected to respond anonymously