Privacy policy

About us

water2business Limited, a company owned by Wessex Water Limited and Bristol Water plc is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Notice covers the collection and use of personal data of individuals, sole traders, small partnerships, contractors/ employees of contractors, prospective employees and referees.

water2business Limited is a company registered at 21e Somerset Square, Nailsea, Bristol BS48 1RQ and our registered company number is 8518831.

water2business Limited as the company responsible for your personal information is the Data Controller. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration ZA225056.

Why we need your information

This Privacy Notice lets you know how and why we collect and use your personal information. This includes what you tell us about yourself and what we might learn about you from others. This Privacy Notice explains how we do this and tells you about your rights.

We are a company that retails water and/or sewerage services to non-household customers and we need your information to provide these services to you and charge you for the water you use.

We explain how we use your information in more detail in the rest of this Notice which we hope you'll read carefully.

Lawful bases for our using your information

We will be processing your information for a variety of different reasons but it will mainly be:

  • to provide services and send bills to you under our contract;
  • to use your information with your consent, for instance, if we are contacting you with marketing information or we need to obtain your agreement for us to use information about your health;
  • where we need to comply with a legal obligation we are under, an example would be providing your information to our regulator Ofwat;
  • where what we are doing falls within one of our legitimate interests - this would cover carrying out market research or customer satisfaction surveys.

What personal data do we collect about you?

We may collect and use your personal data in the following ways:

Information you give us.You can give us personal information by filling in forms on our website www.water2business.co.uk/(our site)or by contacting us by phone, email or otherwise.

This might be information you give us when you register to use our site, sign-up as a customer, pay us (through our site or otherwise), sign-up to or use a service, get involved in discussion boards and other social media areas of our site or enter a competition, promotion or survey. We also have accounts on sites like Facebook and Twitter that you could use to give us personal information and through other on-line channels that become available to us.

The information we will ask you for may include your name, address, email address and phone number, date of birth, financial and payment card information. We will also collect and use information about your water usage and your connections to mains water, sewers and drains. Sometimes, we'll need to ask if you agree to us collecting and using information about your health if it makes a difference to the amount of water you use or so we can be better prepared to help you if there's a problem when we're supplying services. We can only do this by asking you to say that you're happy for us do this. If you're not happy then you can tell us and we'll stop using the information to do that but we'll tell you more about this when we ask you to give us the information. If you are applying for a job with us then we'll ask you to fill in your personal details for us to use in the recruitment process. For further information please see our section 'If you are applying for a job with us'.

Information we collect about you.As well as you sharing information with us, we may gather it when we are providing a service to you. For example, we take meter readings by visiting your property or you can give these to us so that we know how much water you use. We may also obtain information from other organisations, for example, information about your company from Companies House, to help us administer your account. When you contact water2business by telephone, all calls are recorded for quality, compliance and training purposes.

Information we collect about you when you use our website.Whenever you visit our site we automatically collect the following information: technical information, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; information about your visit, including the full uniform resource locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); products you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call our customer service number.

Information we receive from other sources.We work closely with a number of people or organisations we trust (including business partners, companies we use to provide technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies, debt recovery agencies) and may receive information about you from them. For instance, we use a different company to send our bills. This company is called Bristol Wessex Billing Services Limited, which operates as Pelican Business Services. Pelican Business Services is jointly owned by Wessex Water Services Limited and Bristol Water Plc and they will receive information about you from us.

Information we receive from other water companies.We may also receive limited information about you (your supply point information, meter reads, enquiry or complaints information and contact details) from Wholesaler and Retailer water supply and sewage companies so you can be notified of service-related issues including unplanned interruptions to water supply and emergency events.

Cookies and using our website

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also helps us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookie Notice.

How do we use your personal data?

We will use your personal data in the following ways:

  • to process and respond to requests, enquiries and complaints we receive from you;
  • to provide products and services you've requested;
  • to manage and administer your account;
  • to carry out Credit Checks where appropriate (for more information please see the Credit Check section below);
  • to communicate with you about services provided to you;
  • to process payments - we use a legitimate interest to preserve the security of any payment made through our online portal using authentication measures that require disclosure of an identifying email address. When you provide your email address, it will only be used for these purposes and will not be retained for other uses;
  • to make sure our records are accurate and up-to-date;
  • to analyse trends and profiles;
  • to carry out market analysis (on a non-personal basis);
  • for audit purposes;
    to carry out customer satisfaction and market research;
  • to improve our products and services;
  • to stop someone committing fraud or to help authorities investigate fraud;
  • to resolve unpaid bills;
  • to comply with something the law says we must do;
  • where you have said that we may do so: to recommend products and services that we believe will be of value to you or to contact you about how we can help you make savings on your water and sewerage supply costs;
  • to contact you (including by SMS texts) about service related issues including: disruptions to service or planned events which may affect service, emergency events, water quality issues or major roadworks that could require road closures;
  • to help third parties we appoint to carry out any of the purposes above on our behalf; and
  • to process applications for roles and positions we advertise as current vacancies.

How do we share your personal data?

We will not share your personal data unless we need to as part of providing services to you, seeking payment of our charges, pursuing our legitimate interests or where the law lets us do so. If we do have to share your information then we'll keep it to a minimum to let the person or organisation do what we've asked, or as the law requires.

We may need to share your information with other organisations as follows:

  • We sometimes use agents and service providers to process personal information on our behalf. As mentioned above, we will share your information with Pelican Business Services to send out bills on our behalf. We also use other companies to send out letters, to process credit card payments, recover debts and to maintain our IT systems as well as providing additional services (like leak detection and repair) to our customers. Where we use other organisations to process your personal information, we will ensure that they have adequate security measures in place to safeguard it.
  • If there is a problem with your water or sewerage supply or your metering, then we will need to share your information with the relevant Wholesale water and sewerage company to enable them to deal with your problem. We will keep this data to a minimum and they are obliged to treat your information confidentially in accordance with the requirements of their Water and Sewerage Supply Licence (WSSL) as regulated by Ofwat.
  • We will release your personal information when we're required to do so for legal or regulatory purposes or as part of legal proceedings. This may include sharing your information with regulators such as the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. We may need to share it with Ofwat, our regulator, or the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
  • We may share your personal information with organisations outside of water2business Limited, including Local Authorities, Police, Fire and Ambulance services in the event of an emergency (this may include information about your health if we think you could be in danger).
    We may give information we hold about you to a third-party as part of the process of selling one or more of our businesses, in which case we may provide your information to a prospective buyer.
  • When we carry out Credit Checks, we pass your information to credit reference agencies. This information may also be accessed by third parties who carry out credit checks on you. Please see the section below on Credit Checks for more information.
  • We pass your information to debt recovery companies for the collection of unpaid charges on our behalf.
  • We will disclose your personal data if we're under a duty to share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce our contractual rights and other agreements, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
  • We will share limited information (your supply point information and contact telephone number) with the wholesaler supplying your water and sewage services so you can be notified of service related issues including unplanned interruptions to water supply and emergency events.
    We may share information with advertisers and advertising networks or other carefully selected partners that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others. We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we may provide them with aggregate information about our users. We may also use such aggregate information to help advertisers reach the kind of audience they want to target. We may make use of the personal data we have collected from you to enable us to comply with our advertisers' wishes by displaying their advertisement to that target audience.
  • We share information with analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.
  • Your information will also be accessed and used by Market Operator Services Limited (MOSL). MOSL is an independent body that has been set up to help facilitate opening up the water market for business customers and MOSL has its own privacy policy which applies to the use of your information by MOSL. For more information about MOSL and how MOSL will use your information, please see https://www.mosl.co.uk/
  • We comply with the Wholesale Retail Code which, by law, governs the non-household retail market. This requires us to provide contact details of non-household customers to water supply companies so they can make plans for when water supplies are disrupted. When we do this we are carrying out a task in the public interest.

Credit Checks

We share your personal information with credit reference agencies so we can keep your records up-to-date, check if debt risks apply to you and manage our debt collection process.

Information that we give to credit reference agencies includes information held in our records, such as your name, date of birth, address or other relevant information.

Where we store your personal data

All the information you give us is stored on our secure servers and if you chose to pay us by credit or debit card then the transactions are securely processed by a specialist company following the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. If we have given you a password (or you have chosen one) then you need to keep this password confidential. Please don't share your password with anyone.

To get the best value for money when we improve our computer systems and websites, we use part of Wessex Water Group's IT development services which are based outside of the European Economic Area. Some development projects may involve them working with your information. If this happens, we will take proper steps to keep your information safe through European Union approved contracts and by making sure your information stays protected within our own UK security arrangements using high standards of encryption in any transfer.

Unfortunately, sending 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 sent to our site by email; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access or use.

How long we need to keep your information

We will need to keep details about your use of our services for as long as you stay one of our customers and then for 6 years after that as we may need to refer to it to sort out any differences or problems that arise after our relationship ends.

If you are applying for a job with us

We will normally ask you to apply for a vacancy via our online recruitment system. During the recruitment process, the information you give us may include your name, age, contact details, details of your education, your employment history, emergency contact details, immigration status, financial information (if we need to carry out financial background checks), documentary evidence of your identity and national insurance number. You may decide to share other information with us if you think it is relevant to your application. Where appropriate and in accordance with UK laws, we may also collect information related to your health, diversity information or details of any criminal convictions which we will need your agreement to use.

If we ask to collect information which we need your consent to gather and use then we'll tell you why we need this and ask for your agreement to use it and tell you about how you can withdraw your agreement but we'll let you know more about this if we need to ask you to give us this information.

Information we collect about you.As well as you giving us information, we may gather it from other organisations connected with your previous employment which hold it.

Information we receive from other sources about you and which we may share with them.We may ask for a reference from a person you have given as a referee. We may obtain details about you from other third party sources like 'Linked-In' and other job-related websites. We also have accounts on sites like Facebook and Twitter that you could use to give us personal information and through other on-line channels that become available to us. We may also receive information about you from past employers, educational establishments, examining bodies and employment and recruitment consultants who contact us or we contact.

How we use your information.

We will use your personal data:

  • to store your details to contact you to process applications for roles and positions we advertise as current vacancies;
  • to contact referees for references about you;
  • to process, with your agreement, information about your health or details about criminal convictions if they are required for the role you have applied for.

How long we will keep your information as a candidate. If you accept an offer of employment with us, we will keep your information for as long as you are employed by us and for six years after that. If your application is unsuccessful or you do not accept an offer of employment then we will keep only your application and assessment information. We will keep this for six months and will then destroy it.

If you are a referee or contact

How we use your information if you are a referee or contact.

We will use your personal data:

  • to contact you if a candidate has given us your name as a referee so we can take up a reference; or
  • to contact you if we have been provided with your details by a candidate as a contact in the event of an accident or emergency affecting them.

Your rights

As a business customer you have the following rights. These are:

Your right to be informed- this Notice is an example of this. We may need to update this Notice if we need to do something different with your information and so we may change it on our site. If you've given us your email address we may use it to let you know we've changed the Notice.

Your right to rectification- it is important that the information we are holding is accurate and up to date so if you think any of your information is incorrect or needs updating then let us know and we will update it.

If you are a business customer who is a sole-trader or part of a small partnership then you have further rights regarding the information we hold about you.

Your right of 'access'- you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you. We may ask for a copy of your passport or driving licence and for a copy of a document that shows your address so we can give your personal information out. Please email requests to dpo@wessexwater.co.uk or contact the Data Protection Officer whose details appear at the end of this Notice.

We have a calendar month to respond to your request for information. If we need more information to process your request, we will contact you to let you know.

Your right to erasure- customers who are individuals have the right to request that their personal information be deleted where there is no longer a legitimate purpose for it being processed.

Your right to information about automated decision making- if a human being isn't involved in making a decision using your information and it's done automatically, then you can ask us about how the decision is made. We don't make decisions like this at the moment but if we start then we'll let you know and tell you about why we're doing it.

Your right to data portability- you have the right to ask us to give you a copy of the personal information you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable form which we can send to another water retailer.

Your right to restrict processing- you have the right to ask us to restrict or suppress our use of your personal data. If we agree that we should stop processing it, we will still hold it but will not use it.

Your right to object- if you don't want us to use your personal information any more then you can ask us to stop what we're doing with it. Please bear in mind though that we need it to provide services to you and we may need to keep your data for a certain amount of time as we've explained above. You can also ask us not to use your personal data for marketing purposes. You can exercise this right at any time by contacting us at hello@water2business.co.uk or by contacting our Data Protection Officer whose details are at the end of this Notice. If you ask to stop using your personal information then we will contact you to confirm the position as there may be some circumstances where we will have to continue using it.

Links to other websites

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Changes to our Privacy Notice

We will update this Privacy Notice from time to time to keep you informed of any changes to the ways in which we use your personal data. Any changes we may make to our Privacy Notice in the future will be posted on our site and, where possible, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our Privacy Notice.

Complaints

If you're not happy and have issues with the way we've dealt with your information or your rights then you can ask the Information Commissioner's Office to look into what we've done. They can be reached at ico.org.uk or by phone on 0303 123 1113.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Notice are welcomed and should be emailed to the Compliance Manager and Data Protection Advocate, Emily Jerrome, who can be contacted by emailing:

GDPR@water2business.co.uk in the first instance, or writing to:

water2business Limited
21e Somerset Square
Nailsea
Bristol, BS48 1RQ

Alternatively, the Group Data Protection Officer can be contacted at dpo@wessexwater.co.uk, or please write to:

The Data Protection Officer
Wessex Water Operations Centre
Claverton Down Road
Claverton Down
Bath
BA2 7WW