Hero Privacy policy

We last updated this page on the 17 July 2020

• Our Hero Terms and Conditions

1. Local Heroes and your personal information

This privacy notice explains how we collect, share and use your personal data.

You can contact us through the normal channels, and we’ve also put our privacy team’s contact details below.

Local Heroes is a service offered by British Gas Services Limited, which is the data controller.

You must comply with all applicable laws and governmental rules, regulations and orders including but not limited to the UK Bribery Act 2010 at all times. Any failure to comply will be a material breach and we reserve the right to withhold payment and terminate the agreement.

We may vary this notice from time to time and the most up to date version will be available on the trader portal.

2. Personal information we collect

(What constitutes your personal data will depend on whether you are a sole trader or part of a partnership, or trade through a legal entity such as a company.)

We collect the following types of personal information from you for the purposes of providing Local Heroes:

• Your contact details: information that allows us to contact you directly such as your name, email address, telephone number and addresses.
• Qualifications, certificates and accreditations
• Insurance details
• Payment information: credit/debit card details and bank account details you provide so we can make payments to you.
• Responses to surveys, competitions and promotions: we keep records of any surveys you respond to or your entry into any competition or promotion we run.
• Records of your discussions with our customer support teams: when you share comments and opinions with us, ask us questions or make a complaint we will keep a record of this.
• Conversations you have on our Messaging feature: when you message your customer via a job that they’ve raised on our site, we will store these conversations on a third party site (TalkJS) which we can access in case we need to resolve any queries between you and your customer.
• How you use our website: when you use our website we collect information about the pages you look at and how you use them.
• Additional information you choose to provide for your Hero profile page: about us content, job photos, photos of team members who will do work for customers
• Advertising and direct marketing: information about how you respond, or interact with, any direct marketing or advertising communications directed to you, including any requests for these communications to stop.

You are not required to provide any of the personal information described above to us, however, if you do not do so, you may not be able to use the Local Heroes service.

3. What we use your personal information for

We process some of your personal information to enter or fulfil the contract between us, including:

Purpose:	Personal information used:
Provide our services to you	All the personal information we collect other than “How you use our website”
Provide our services to customers	Your full name, business name, phone number and business address
Make payment	Payment information
Answer your queries or complaints	All the personal information we collect

We process some of your personal information because we have a legitimate interest to improve the services we provide to you and to our customers, or to identify new services you might be interested in, including:

Purpose	Personal information used
A profile page to promote your business	Your full name, business name, town or city of your business, qualifications, reviews provided by Local Heroes customers, additional information you chose to provide for the profile page.
Maintain and improve our products and services	All the personal information we collect
Staff training	All the personal information we collect
Develop new products and services	All the personal information we collect
Determine products and services that may be of interest to you	All personal information we collect (but not your payment information)
Investigating misuse of your account and fraud	All the personal information we collect
To help us identify and distribute our advertising to traders who may be interested in our platform on social media sites	An encrypted version of your full name, business name, email address and phone number
To contact traders who have shown an interest in joining the platform	All the personal information we collect

Where we process your personal data because you have allowed us to:

We process these items of your personal data because you have provided your consent to the processing. You may revoke your consent at any point by emailing heroes@localheroes.com

Purpose	Personal information used
Direct marketing	Contact Details Marketing preferences Local Heroes products and services and selected partner offers that we have determined may be of interest to you.

We may anonymise and aggregate any of the personal information we hold (so that it does not identify you). We may use anonymised and aggregated information for purposes that include testing our IT systems, research, data analysis, improving our site, and developing new products and services.

4. Sources we collect your personal information from

We will collect personal information from a number of sources. These include the following:

• Directly from you: when you sign up as a trader, you provide us with information about you, and the services you will offer. If you complete forms we provide to you, enter our competitions and promotions, make a complaint, or contact us by phone, email or communicate with us in some other way, we will also have this information.
• Our website: provides us with information about how you use them.
• Other companies and people we work with: provide us with information to help us deliver our services to you. These include:
  • Companies in the same group of companies as us.
  • Local Heroes customers: if they give us feedback about you.
• Vetting agencies: provide us with information on your suitability for our service.

5. Who we share your personal information with

We share personal information with the following parties:

• Companies in the same group of companies as us: for the purpose of providing a service to you.
• Any party approved by you.
• Vetting agencies: to enable us to vet your application.
• Other service providers and advisors: such as companies that support our IT, help us analyse the data we hold, process payments, communicate to customers, Heroes and applicants, provide us with legal or financial advice and generally help us run our business and deliver our services to you.
• Companies that provide tools which enable you to message your customer directly on our site
• Advertising partners including social media sites and providers: to understand which traders might be interested in our platform and to help us distribute our advertising on social media sites such as Facebook
• Purchasers of our business: buyers or perspective buyers who we sell or negotiate to sell our business to.
• The Government or our regulators: where we are required to do so by law or to assist with their investigations or initiatives.
• Police and law enforcement: to assist with the investigation and prevention of crime.
• Independent Quality Assessors: people we engage to check the safety and quality of your work.
• Rewards services: so that you can access discounts, rewards and other concierge services
• Customers: When you have indicated you wish to carry out a job for a particular customer and you are the selected Hero for that job; we may share your full name, business name, phone number and business address with that customer.
• Website users: Your Hero profile page will be accessible on the website and will display your full name, business name, town or city of your business, qualifications, reviews provided by Local Heroes customers, and the additional information you chose to provide for this page.

We do not disclose personal data to any other categories of recipient.

We may provide third parties with aggregate statistical information and analytics but we will make sure no one can be identified from this information before we disclose it.

6. Direct Marketing

From time to time, we may contact you with information about products and services we believe you may be interested in, by phone, email, SMS or push notifications from the Toolbox App.

We will only send marketing messages to you if you tell us you are happy to receive them and we’ll never sell your data on.

You can unsubscribe from our marketing by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the marketing messages we send to you. You can also let us know at any time that you do not wish to receive marketing messages by sending an email to us at heroes@localheroes.com

7. Advertising on other websites and apps

We work with our advertising partners to show you advertising about our services and products and services offered by group companies and services on websites or apps where our partners have advertising space. To do this, our advertising partners use information about the websites, apps, social media content and ads you interact with or view when connected to the Internet, and information which we provide to them about you, to make sure the advertising you see is more relevant to you.

The techniques our advertising partners use (to determine what advertising to show you), recognise the device you are using but are not aimed at you as a named individual. Typically cookies and similar technologies are used to provide this type of advertising. You can find out more about cookies and how to manage their use by reading our cookie policy

8. Transferring your personal information internationally

British Gas is part of a global organisation and in common with other organisations, we use third parties located in other countries to help us run our business. As a result, personal data may be transferred outside the countries where we and our customers are located. This includes countries outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”) and to countries that do not have laws that provide specific protection for personal data. We have taken steps to ensure all personal data is provided with adequate protection and that all transfers of personal data outside the EEA are done lawfully. Where we transfer personal data outside of the EEA to a country not determined by the European Commission as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data, the transfers will be under an agreement which covers the requirements for the transfer of personal data outside the EEA, such as the European Commission approved standard contractual clauses.

9. How long do we keep personal information for

We will keep your personal information for as long as you have an account with us. After you close your account with us we will keep your personal information for a reasonable period to maintain our records and legal obligations to you.

10. Your rights in relation to your personal data

You may have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

• the right to be informed about the personal data we collect, how your personal data is being used, and from whom we collect your personal data when we obtain it from other sources;
• the right to access the personal data we hold about you;
• the right to request the correction of inaccurate personal data we hold about you;
• the right to request the blocking or deletion of your personal data in some circumstances;
• the right to request that we port elements of your data either to you or another service provider;
• the right to object to us processing your personal data (where we do so on the basis of legitimate interests, or because we are using automated means to make decisions that significantly affect you); and
• the right to withdraw your consent.

You only have the benefit of some of the above rights in limited circumstances, which depend on the legal reason why we collected your personal data.

To exercise any of the above rights, or if you have any questions relating to your rights, please contact us by using the details set out in section 1 above.

If you are unhappy with the way we are using your personal information you can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office or your local data protection regulator. We are here to help and encourage to contact us to resolve your complaint first.

11. Changes to this notice

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. When we change this notice in a material way, we will update the version date at the bottom of this page. For significant changes to this notice we will try to give you reasonable notice unless we are prevented from doing so. Where required by law we will seek your consent to changes in the way we use your personal information.

12. Getting in touch

In the event of any privacy-related query or complaint, to exercise your rights, or to contact our data protection officer, please email privacy@centrica.com, or write to us at The Data Protection Officer, Centrica Plc, Millstream, Maidenhead Road, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 5GD.