Last updated: January 4 2007

Data Policy

Data Controller

Any personal information that you provide on this website is controlled by North East Renewables.

Your personal information

Occasionally you will be asked to submit personal information about yourself (e.g. name, address and email address) in order to receive or use services on our websites. Such services include details of grants and offers, newsletters, publications, information and advice.

By entering your details in the fields requested and pressing 'Submit', you are consenting to the processing of your information by North East Renewables and its agents in accordance with this Data Policy. You may also provide personal information to us when you contact us by email, telephone or letter. Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat that information in accordance with this policy. Our services are designed to give you the information that you have requested. North East Renewables will, at all times, act in accordance with current legislation and aim to meet current Internet best practice.

Use and storage of your personal information

When you supply any personal information to North East Renewables we have legal obligations towards you in the way we deal with that information. We must collect the information fairly, that is, we must explain how we will use it. This Data Policy explains how we will use your personal information. The 'Data Protection Notice' that you will find present whenever personal information is collected will provide additional information about how your personal information will be used by North East Renewables .

You will find the following symbol, known as the 'Information Padlock', wherever we collect personal information from you. The Information Commissioner and the National Consumer Council have devised this symbol to alert consumers that their personal information is being collected and processed. Wherever you see this symbol you should read the information carefully as it will explain exactly how, and for what purpose(s), your information will be processed.

We will use personal information provided by you or gathered by North East Renewables for the following purposes:

• To process and respond to requests, enquiries and complaints received from you;
• To provide services requested by you;
• To communicate with you about services provided to you;
• To process payments];
• To update our records;
• To analyse trends and profiles;
• For audit purposes;
• To carry out customer satisfaction research;
• To prevent or detect fraud;
• To recommend products and services that we believe will be of interest to you;
• To enable third parties to carry out any of the purposes above on our behalf.

If you are notified that your personal information may be used to allow North East Renewables to contact you for 'service administration purposes', this means that North East Renewables may contact you for a number of purposes related to the service you have signed up for. For example, we may wish to provide you with password reminders or notify you that the particular service has been suspended or changed.

We will not contact you for promotional purposes, such as notifying you of new offers and grants relating to sustainable energy use, unless you specifically agree to be contacted for such purposes at the time you submit your information on the site, or at a later time if you sign up specifically to receive such promotional information.

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out above and we will remove it when the purposes have been met, unless you opt-in for future communications with us.

Where you have opted-in to future communications, we will, on each subsequent communication, offer you an easily executable 'opt-out' option, which will allow you to remove yourself from any future mailings.

Sharing of your personal information

North East Renewables may share your personal information with third parties in the following ways:

• We sometimes use agents and service providers to process personal information on our behalf. For example, we use third parties to [carry out inspections, to send postal mail, to carry out credit checks and to maintain our IT systems]. Where we use agents and service providers to process your personal information, we will ensure that they have adequate security measures in place and are governed by our privacy policies in respect to the use of your personal information.
• We share information with government departments and government bodies that provide funding to North East Renewables or have an interest in North East Renewables' activities. Information is passed to government departments and government bodies [for analysis purposes].
• We will release your personal information when we are required to do so by law.
• We will release your personal information to others when you have given your consent to that release.
• North East Renewables may occasionally present a promotion that is sponsored by a third-party company. To qualify for entry, we may ask you to provide personal information. If we plan to share that information with the sponsor(s) we will make this clear at the point of collection of your information.

Use of Cookies

During the course of any visit to an North East Renewables website, the pages you see, along with something called a cookie, are downloaded to your computer. Most, if not all, websites do this, because cookies allow the website publisher to accumulate useful data such as whether the computer (and sometimes its user) has visited the site before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

We use cookies to help us to provide you with a better service and to assist us to analyse the profile of our visitors. From time to time we will review the information cookies provide on how the site is used in order to improve navigation and increase the relevance of content.

What is a cookie?

When you enter a site your computer will automatically be issued with a cookie. Cookies are text files that identify your computer to our server. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used. Many websites do this whenever a user visits their site in order to track traffic flows.

Cookies themselves only record those areas of the site that have been visited by the computer in question, and for how long. Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these, of course, means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user.

Access to your personal information