Privacy policy

Privacy Policy

  1. Who we are.

snowdoniacheese.co.uk (“Website”) is operated by Snowdonia Cheese Ltd (“we” or “us” or “our“). We are a company registered in England and Wales with company number 4171512.

  1. What is Personal Information

Personal information is any information which we collect about you that can be used to identify you and includes any information, such as your name, address, email and IP address. It also includes any personal information that we may collect about you that is in the public domain, such as information made public on social media that is available to us when you connect with us on social media.

It is our intention to provide you with as much information as possible about what we do with that personal information, so that when you provide the personal information to us, you do so with an awareness of how it will be used.

  1. Our Privacy Statement

The protection of your privacy while we process your personal information is a very important concern to us. We have legal obligations to you about how we handle your personal information and keeping you informed about such use. We take our responsibility to do this very seriously. Any personal information collected by us about or during your visits to our Website (or otherwise) is processed by us according our legal obligations and our own privacy standards.

It is important that you read this Privacy Notice together with any other privacy policy or fair processing 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 other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

  1. How we collect your personal information and why

There are different ways that we will collect personal information about you and this Privacy Notice tells you what to expect when we collect personal information from:

  • visitors to our Website;
  • social media;
  • contacting us;
  • online purchases;
  • marketing subscriptions.

For information on our use of cookies and the types of personal information we collect through cookies, please view our Cookies Policy.

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal justification for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

Visitors to our Website

Our Website is managed by third party developers. As part of the service provided by the developers, they will help to maintain the security and the performance of our Website by (i) encrypting data in transit and protecting user connections (ii) using third party scanning services to scan against known web attacks (iii) investigating site errors and (iv) providing secure hosting services through third party hosting service providers.

As part of the service our developers provide they also use cookies for our benefit. For more information on the use of cookies on our Website what cookies are and how long we save them for, please view our Cookies Policy.

Social media

Our Website contains links to our social media pages. You can “like”, “follow” or otherwise interact with us on social media. Any information you provide to us via social media (including messaging, “liking”, “following” and other communications) is controlled by the social media network. We do not extract this information and we have no control over how the social media network uses your personal information.

Our social media pages linked to on our Website are:

We recommend that you read their privacy notices and contact them directly if you have any concerns regarding their use of your personal information.

Contacting us

Our Website provides you with different ways to contact us, including by telephone, post or through the Website messaging form. All communications are handled, reviewed and responded to internally by us.

Please note, however, that:

  • We use an email monitoring or blocking software and that you have a responsibility to ensure that any email you send to us is within the bounds of the law;
  • We use telecoms service provider, BT, for our main call system, which provides caller ID services, we will only use this information in our legitimate interests for the purposes of handling your call and contacting you in relation to the purpose of your call.
  • As part of communicating with us, we will collect personal information about you that we require in our legitimate interest to deal with your enquiry. This includes your name, email and any other personal information you provide to us in your message or communication with us.

We will delete this personal data after 6 years from your last communication.

Please note that we will need to keep in contact with you from time to time by post, email or telephone in order to respond to your communication, comply with any requests, notify you of changes to this Privacy Notice or for any other reason you have contacted us for. Please can you make sure that you keep us updated of any changes to your contact details.

Online purchases

We provide you with the facility to order our products online. In these circumstances we will collect personal information from you as a contractual necessity in order to fulfil your order. These details include your name and contact details, including your email in order to send our confirmation of the order, address for the purposes of arranging delivery and payment details in order to process your payment of our products. If you do not provide us with these details we will be unable to fulfil your order.

We use an e-commerce platform to facilitate our online retail experience. Our service provider will not use your personal data for any reason other than as we direct them to in the provision of their e-commerce services. Your personal information is deleted on our behalf by our service provider 3 years after your last order.

As part of the online purchasing facility we use reputable payment service providers to process the payment of your purchase, who have their own direct responsibilities to you for the processing of your personal information. These payment service providers only provide us with your name and, where applicable, email. They do not share your financial details with us for any purpose as they process the payment and make the funds available to us.

We use delivery services in order to despatch your order to you once it is ready, who have their own responsibilities to you about their use of your personal delivery information.

Marketing subscriptions

We provide a number of different marketing communications: from promotions, to updates and newsletters to competitions. You can choose to receive these communications or change your mind at any time.

If you are a customer, or have made an enquiry with regards to making a purchase, we will have given you a clear opportunity to object or opt-out of receiving marketing communications at the time of collecting your personal information.  If you have not opted out of receiving the marketing communication, we will contact you by email or telephone in our legitimate interests to promote our products and services that are relevant to your purchase or enquiry. You have the right to object to receiving these communications at any time by contacting us on the details below.

If you are not a customer but are interested in our products and services, we will provide you with a clear choice to consent to receiving marketing promotional material, updates, reminders and communications by giving you an “opt-in” to receiving such communications. If you have consented to receiving marketing we will collect your contact details email address to provide you with such communications. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. For full details on how to withdraw consent please see below.

We use Mail Chimp, a marketing platform to manage our e-marketing activities.

If you ever decide you no longer wish to receive our marketing communications, you opt out at any time by unsubscribing from the mailing list, using the link provided in the marketing communications email, or by using the contact details below. If you do unsubscribe, please note that we will still keep your email in a separate secure list so that we can make sure that you do not receive our marketing communications again in the future.

Use of your personal information of an anonymised, aggregated basis

Depending on the marketing preferences (as explained in this Privacy Notice and through our Cookies Policy) which you have notified to us, we may share in aggregate, statistical form, non-personal information with our advertising partners and agencies for the purposes of creating a “lookalike audience”. Our advertising partners and agencies will not use any of your personal information for the purposes of delivering marketing materials to you in connection with this lookalike audience – instead we use an anonymised, aggregated data set to help us identify other customers who might be interested in our products.

  1. Your data and third parties

We do use third parties to provide services to us from time to time; therefore, we will need to share data with them that it is in our legitimate interests for business administrative needs. We have explained throughout this Privacy Notice which categories of processors we use for different collection purposes. Section 7 below also explains certain circumstances in which we may need to share your personal information.

  1. Transferring data outside of the European Economic Area

Certain of our external third parties are based outside the UK and the European Economic Area and so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA. When personal data is transferred to countries outside of the UK and the EEA those countries may not offer an equivalent level of protection for personal data to the laws in the UK. Where this is the case we will ensure that a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

  • We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission; or
  • Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK and the EEA.

  1. Disclosure of personal information

We will not usually disclose your personal information other than as already explained in Sections 4, 5, and 6 above. However, there may be circumstances where we need to share personal information other than as anticipated in Sections 4,  5 and 6 above. These include:

  • where we are legally required to disclose the information. This includes sharing the personal information with tax authorities and law enforcement agencies for the purposes of the prevention and detection of crime;
  • where we need to disclose the personal information for the purpose of or in connection with any legal proceedings, or for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, or the disclosure is otherwise necessary for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending legal rights;
  • disclosure is required to protect the our interests, or someone else’s interests (for example, to prevent fraud);
  • it is to a third party for the purposes of providing administrative or processing services on our behalf. If such disclosure is required we will take steps to ensure that the third party protects the personal information in the same way that we do and notify you of any changes to this Privacy Notice; and
  • to any prospective purchaser of our business assets or organisation.
  1. Keeping personal information secure and data retention

We know that you provide your personal information in good faith and expect it to be looked after. This is why we take the security of your personal information seriously. This means that we have taken steps internally in order to ensure that our systems adequately protect your personal information. This includes:

  • taking reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information;
  • storing all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall-protected) servers;
  • protecting all electronic transactions entered into via our Website by 128bit encryption technology.

Please be aware that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

You are responsible for keeping your password and other login details confidential. We will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our Website).

We have set out specific retention periods for your personal information throughout in respect of certain of our processing, but generally speaking we will store your personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, as explained in this notice. In some circumstances we may store your personal information for longer periods of time, for instance where we are required to do so in accordance with legal, regulatory, tax, accounting  requirements.

In specific circumstances we may store your personal information for longer periods of time so that we have an accurate record of your dealings with us in the event of any complaints or challenges, or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation relating to your personal information or dealings.

  1. Your rights

Withdrawal of consent

Where you have explicitly consented to us processing your personal data for marketing purposes, you can withdraw consent to processing at any time. If you wish to withdraw consent, please do so by sending your request in writing to our contact details below.

Right of access to a copy of your personal information

We want you to fully understand and be comfortable with how we use your personal information. You can contact us at any time to ask whether we process any personal information about you. If we do hold or use your personal information in any way, you have the right to access that personal information. All we ask is that:

  • you make your request to access in writing to the contact details below;
  • you verify your identity; and
  • you are fair and reasonable with how often you make this kind of request (otherwise we may be entitled to charge a fee for handling excessive requests).

Please allow us up to one month from receipt of your request in order to provide a response.

Requesting more information

We hope that you can understand that it is very difficult to cover all the possible ways in which we collect and use personal information. We have tried to be as clear and as open as we can and will continue to update this Privacy Notice as our use of personal information develops. However, if you have any questions regarding our use of your personal information, we will be happy to give you peace of mind by answering any questions or providing any additional information that we can. If you do have any specific questions, or need anything explaining, please get in touch on the contact details below.

Deleting your data

If at any point you no longer want to receive communications from us and you wish to permanently delete your personal data records we will facilitate this without undue delay upon receiving your communication, provided that:

  • your personal information is no longer required for the purposes it was collected for (for example, we need your personal information to respond to a communication);
  • the collection, storage or use of the personal information by us is prevented by law;
  • your personal information is not required for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending a legal claim such as in the conduct of legal proceedings.

This action can be instigated at any time by using the contact details below.

Your additional rights in respect of your personal data

In addition to your rights set out above you have various other rights in respect of your personal data. In each instance we may ask you to make your request in writing to the contact details below and provide verification of your identity.

You have the following additional rights:

  • a right to object to processing personal information where:
    • where we are using that information based on our legitimate interests, and where we do not have compelling overriding grounds to continue to use your personal information; or
    • where we use your personal information to send you direct marketing communications, in which case we will no longer use your data to contact you for marketing purposes, but may use it for another lawful purpose.
  • right to request that we restrict or refrain from processing your personal information:
    • for the time it takes us to verify the accuracy of your personal information where you have disputed its accuracy;
    • where the collection, storage or use of the personal information by us is unlawful but you decide not to ask for erasure;
    • where, we no longer need your personal information but you need them for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending a legal claim;
    • for the time it takes to determine whether we have an overriding legitimate ground to continue to process your personal information, where you have exercised your right to object to processing.
  • a right to object to decisions being taken by automated means;
  • a right to have inaccurate personal data rectified in which case we may ask you to verify the corrected information (for example, we may ask for a recent utility bill for proof of change of address);
  • a right to data portability in respect of information we have collected from you based on consent or for the reason of entering into a contract. If you exercise this right, we will transfer a copy of the personal information that you have provided to us ­­­at your request.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please use the contact details below.

  1. Complaints

You are important to us, and so is protecting your personal information. We have high standards when it comes to collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive from you about our use of your personal information very seriously and request that you bring any issues to our attention.

Where you are communicating with us for the purpose of making a complaint, we will only use your personal information to handle, investigate and respond to the complaint and to check on the level of service we provide. Where the complaint is about a member of our team, we may have to disclose your identity to whoever the complaint is about. You may let us know that you don’t want information that identifies you to be disclosed and we will try to respect your request; however, it may not be always possible to handle a complaint on an anonymous basis.

If you are unhappy, you can also contact the Information Commissioner’s office to make a complaint directly.

  1. Third party websites

Our Website may contain links to other websites. This Privacy Notice applies to our Website only and we are not responsible for the privacy notices or practices of third party websites. We recommend that you read the privacy notices of those other websites.

  1. Policy amendments

We may revise and update this Privacy Notice from time to time and will indicate at the top of this page when this Privacy Notice was last revised. Please periodically review this Privacy Notice to make sure you are aware of and understand our use of personal information.

  1. Updating information

It is important that the information we hold about you is up to date and accurate so that we can properly provide you with the service you require, whether that is in respect of processing an order or with respect to dealing with an enquiry. Please let us know if the personal information which we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

  1. Contact

Any questions about this Privacy Notice or our treatment of your personal information are welcome. Please address any questions or correspondence regarding this Privacy Notice or your personal information to:

Telephone: 01745 360 246

Email: info@snowdonia-cheese.co.uk

Post: Snowdonia Cheese Company Limited, Unit 14, Cefndy Employment Park, Rhyl, LL18 2HJ