Collins M&A Limited

 

Privacy Notice

We take your privacy very seriously. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website www.collinsma.com (“our Website”) (regardless of where you visit from) and when you correspond with us by telephone, email or otherwise. It tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE

 

Purpose of this privacy notice

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how Jim Collins Acquisition & Consultancy Services Limited collects and processes your personal data through the use of our Website, including any data you may provide through our Website when you make an online enquiry via our ‘contact us’ form and when you correspond with us by telephone, email or otherwise.

It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other policies and is not intended to override them.

 

Who we are

Collins M&A Limited (“we”, “us”, “our”) is a ‘data controller’ for the purposes of your personal data. This means that we determine the purpose and means of the processing of your personal data. You will find our contact details at the end of this privacy notice (see below: “How to contact us”).

 

PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

Personal data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.

Depending on our relationship with you, we collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you. This may include:

  • Full name;
  • Date of birth/age;
  • Address;
  • Job title;
  • Role and responsibilities;
  • Business name;
  • Business address;
  • Email address;
  • Telephone numbers (mobile and landline);
  • Bank account details;
  • Financial and other information e.g. salary, pensions and benefits, shareholding, loans and overdrafts, hours worked, reasons for selling business, plans for the future; and
  • Information that you volunteer to us when you correspond with us by telephone, email or otherwise.

 

If you do not provide personal data

For clients, where we need to collect personal data to enter into a contract with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to enter the contract with you or provide our services.

 

HOW PERSONAL DATA IS COLLECTED

Depending on the circumstances, we use different methods to collect data from and about you including:

  • Directly from you. You may give us your personal data by filling in the contact form on our Website or by corresponding with us by email, telephone or otherwise.
  • Other sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties as set out below:
  • Creditsafe (credit reference agency);
  • From an employee or representative of the organisation for whom you work;
  • Vendors for whom we are acting; and
  • From publicly accessible sources e.g. Companies House 

 

HOW AND WHY DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason for doing so, for example:

  • to comply with our legal obligations;
  • for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
  • for our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or
  • where you have given consent.

A legitimate interest is when we or a third party have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.

The table below explains what we use your personal data for and our lawful basis for doing so.

What we use your personal data for

Our lawful basis for processing data

For clients with whom we have contracts – to provide you with advisory services

Necessary for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract

For other individuals who work for or represent corporate clients (or prospective corporate clients) e.g. for corresponding with you about the advisory services we offer, provide a price quote, responding to your queries and taking steps under the contract with the organisation you work for or represent

Necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party e.g. to deal with pre-contractual enquiries or issues and to take steps under the contract with the organisation you work for or represent

For individuals who work for or represent our suppliers (or prospective suppliers) e.g. for corresponding with you about the products or services your organisation offers, to obtain a price quote and to take steps under the contract with the organisation you work for or represent

Necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party e.g. to deal with pre-contractual enquiries or issues or to take steps under the contract with the organisation you work for or represent

To manage our relationship with you which will include notifying you about changes to our terms of business or privacy notice

Necessary to comply with our legal obligations

To administer and protect our business and our Website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)

Necessary for our legitimate interests e.g. for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud

Necessary to comply with our legal obligations

To make suggestions and recommendations to you about services that may be of interest to you

Necessary for our legitimate interests e.g. to develop our products/services and grow our business

Other processing otherwise permitted or required by law

Necessary to comply with our legal obligations

Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies

Necessary to comply with our legal obligations

Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information

Necessary to comply with our legal obligations

Necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party i.e. to protect commercially valuable information

Updating and maintaining customer records

For our clients, necessary for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract

Necessary to comply with our legal obligations

Necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party e.g. to make sure we can keep in touch with our clients and other contacts

For the audit of our accounts

Necessary to comply with our legal obligations

For testimonials on our Website

With your consent

 

Where we rely on consent as a lawful basis to process your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. To do this, please telephone, email or write to us (see below: “How to contact us”).

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

 

Marketing communications

We may use your personal data to send you periodic communications by email and post about our services.

We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data for marketing purposes. This means we do not usually need your consent to send you information about our services. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.

We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by:

  • emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; or
  • writing to us at 2 Parkview Cottages, Chawton, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 1SG (for the attention of Jim Collins).

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

 

Cookies

We may obtain information about your general usage of our Website by using a cookie which is stored on your browser or the hard drive of your computer, although we do not use cookies to identify individuals. Usage information helps us to improve our Website and to deliver a better and more personalised service. Some of the cookies we use are essential for our Website to operate.

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. You can also indicate your preference to our Website to control its use of cookies. However, if you block cookies you may not be able to use all the features of our Website. For further information about our use of cookies, please refer to our cookies policy which you will find on our Website.

 

WHO WE SHARE PERSONAL DATA WITH

Depending on the circumstances, we may share your personal data with:

  • External service providers e.g. email service provider and postal service providers who provide email hosting and postal services;
  • Professional advisers including lawyers and property agents.

We only allow our service providers to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data.

We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal obligations.

We may also need to share some personal data with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible.


TRANSFERRING YOUR PERSONAL DATA OUTSIDE OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA

We share your personal data with organisations based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) (which comprises the countries in the European Union and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) in which case their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer outside of the EEA. Also, during the course of our dealings with you, it may be necessary to transfer personal data outside of the EEA.

These transfers are subject to special rules under European and UK data protection law.

Whenever we transfer your personal data outside of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to your data by ensuring one of the following (or one of the other grounds set out in data protection law) applies:

  • your data is transferred to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission;
  • the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us;
  • the transfer is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims;
  • there are adequate safeguards in place between us and the organisation receiving it (e.g. by the use of European Commission approved contractual terms); or
  • you have provided explicit consent to the proposed transfer after being informed of any potential risks.

Please contact us (see below: “How to contact us”) if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data outside of the EEA.

WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS IN RESPECT OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

Data protection law gives you certain rights, which you can exercise free of charge. Your rights will differ depending on our lawful basis for processing your data:

Access

The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data

Rectification

The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data

To be forgotten

In certain situations, the right to require us to delete your personal data

Restriction of processing

In certain situations, the right to require us to restrict processing of your personal data e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data

Data portability

In certain situations, the right to ask us to transfer any  personal data you provided to us to another organisation

To object

The right to object at any time to your personal data being processed for direct marketing and in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal data e.g. where processing is carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests

We do not use personal data for automated decision making.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us or see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please email or write to us (see below: “How to contact us”) and let us have enough information to identify you e.g. your full name and address as well as what right you want to exercise and the personal data to which your request relates.

 

HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DATA? 

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for including;

  • to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf;
  • to show that we treated you fairly; and
  • to keep records required by law to comply with our legal obligations.

We will not retain your data for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this notice.

 

KEEPING YOUR PERSONAL DATA SECURE

We have put in place reasonable and appropriate security measures to endeavour to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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 Website; any transmission is at your own risk. 

Our Website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you.  We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements.  When you leave our Website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

 

HOW TO COMPLAIN

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your personal data.  If you want to complain about how we have used your personal data, please email or write to us (see below: “How to contact us”). However, if we are not able to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction, you can complain to the UK’s supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Further information about how to make a complaint to the ICO can be found on the ICO website www.ico.org.uk.

The EU General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in the European Union state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred.

 

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

This version was last updated on 15th August 2022.

We may change this privacy notice from time to time and when we do so, we will inform you via our Website. If any changes are likely to have an adverse impact on your rights under data protection law, we will use reasonable endeavours to notify you of the changes in advance by email or by alternative means.

  

CHANGES TO YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Please let us know if you change your name, address or any other personal detail (see below: “How to contact us”).

 

HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have any queries about this privacy notice or how we use your personal data, you can contact us by email or post as follows:

Collins M&A Limited

2 Parkview Cottages

Chawton

Alton

Hampshire

GU34 1SG

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

Do you need extra help?

If you would like this notice in another format (for example large print) please contact us (see above: “How to contact us”).