Privacy Notice

Who we are

Dart & Partners Ltd ("we", "us", "our") is an estate agency providing residential and commercial property sales, lettings and property management services. We are the data controller for personal data processed in the course of our business.

This notice explains how we use personal data about the people we deal with, including sellers, buyers, landlords, tenants, applicants, guarantors and other occupiers, and anyone who contacts us or uses our website.

Company details:

Dart & Partners Ltd, Registered in England & Wales (Company No. 07458798).

Registered office: Ground Floor, Centenary House, Peninsula Park, Rydon Lane, Exeter, EX2 7XE.

ICO registration number: Z4622488

Contact details:

Email: property@dartandpartners.com

Telephone: 01626 772507

Address: 12 The Triangle, Teignmouth, TQ14 8AT

Questions about this notice or about how we use your personal data can be sent to our data protection lead using any of these details.

Personal data we collect

We may collect and process the following categories of personal data:

• Names, contact details and dates of birth
• Proof of identity and address
• Financial and transactional information relevant to property sales or lettings, including bank details for paying rent, deposits or sale proceeds
• Information about a buyer's position and ability to proceed, such as proof of funds, mortgage agreements in principle and details of any property they need to sell
• Anti-Money Laundering (AML) verification information, including the results of identity, sanctions and politically exposed person checks
• Right to Rent documents for tenants and adult occupiers, such as passports, visas or Home Office share codes
• Tenancy application and referencing information, such as employment, income, previous addresses, landlord references and credit history, and details of guarantors and other people who will live at the property
• Information about properties we let or manage that relates to you, such as tenancy records, rent and deposit payments, repair requests, and photos and reports from inventories and inspections, which may show your belongings
• Correspondence and communications, including notes of phone calls and meetings
• Recordings of calls made to us through Rightmove's tracked phone numbers
• CCTV images if you visit one of our branches
• Your marketing preferences
• Website usage data, including IP addresses and cookies

We only collect personal data that is necessary and proportionate to the services we provide.

Sensitive information

We do not usually need special category information, such as details about your health. If you choose to tell us about a health condition or other personal circumstances, for example so that we can make reasonable adjustments or prioritise a repair, we will only use it for that purpose. AML and sanctions checks may occasionally reveal information about criminal convictions or allegations, which we only process where the law requires it.

Where we get your personal data

Most of the personal data we hold is provided by you. We may also receive personal data from:

• Property portals and our website, when you make an enquiry, including recordings of calls made to us through Rightmove
• Other parties in a sale or letting, such as solicitors, other agents, mortgage advisers, buyers and sellers
• Joint applicants, guarantors or other people acting on your behalf
• Referencing, credit reference and identity verification providers
• Landlords, tenants and previous managing agents, for example when we take over the management of a property
• Tracing agents, if we need to find a former tenant or guarantor who owes money
• Publicly available sources, such as HM Land Registry, Companies House and sanctions lists

How we use your personal data

We use your personal data to:

• Provide estate agency, lettings and property management services
• Arrange viewings, valuations, offers and transactions
• Carry out referencing and assess tenancy applications
• Collect rent, protect deposits, arrange repairs and inspections and manage tenancies on behalf of landlords
• Recover rent arrears and other money owed, including through rent guarantee insurers, debt recovery agents and tracing agents
• Review recordings of calls made to us through Rightmove for training and quality purposes and to keep an accurate record of enquiries and offers
• Keep our branches, staff and visitors safe and prevent crime, including through CCTV
• Comply with legal and regulatory obligations, including AML legislation and Right to Rent checks
• Communicate with you about services you have requested
• Send you property alerts and marketing where you have asked for or agreed to receive them
• Deal with complaints and legal claims
• Maintain accurate business and financial records

We do not sell personal data.

Lawful basis for processing

We process personal data under the following lawful bases:

• Legal obligation, to comply with law, including AML and economic crime legislation, the Right to Rent requirements of immigration law and the duty under estate agency law to pass offers to sellers
• Contract, to perform or prepare for a contract with you, such as our terms of business with sellers and landlords
• Legitimate interests, for the effective operation of our business, including checking buyers' ability to proceed, progressing sales and lettings, managing tenancies on behalf of landlords, recovering money owed, reviewing call recordings, using CCTV for security, dealing with complaints and claims, fraud prevention, and maintaining accurate records, where these interests do not override your rights
• Consent, for activities such as marketing communications. You may withdraw consent at any time.

If you do not provide your personal data

Some information is required by law or is needed before we can enter into an agreement with you. If you do not provide it, for example proof of identity for AML checks or documents for a Right to Rent check, we may not be able to act for you, put forward your offer or proceed with a tenancy.

Anti-Money Laundering and reliance on other regulated firms

As a regulated estate agency, we must carry out Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and AML checks. Where permitted by law, we may rely on CDD checks carried out by another regulated person (e.g., another estate agent or a legal professional) in accordance with Regulation 39 of the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds Regulations 2017.

Where reliance is used:

• Appropriate written arrangements will be in place
• The other party will be subject to equivalent AML supervision
• Dart & Partners Ltd remains responsible for ensuring compliance with AML obligations

If we verify your identity electronically, the provider may check your details with a credit reference agency. This leaves a record on your credit file that does not affect your credit rating.

Personal data processed for AML purposes will be limited to what is necessary and handled securely for the prevention, detection and reporting of financial crime.

Who we share your data with

We may share personal data with:

• Sellers of the properties we market, in relation to buyers and applicants
• Buyers, sellers, their solicitors and other agents in the same transaction or chain, where needed to agree and progress a sale
• Landlords of the properties we let or manage, in relation to tenants, applicants and guarantors, including inspection reports and photos
• Tenants of the properties we let or manage, for example where the law requires us to give them the landlord's name and an address for service
• Government-approved tenancy deposit protection schemes
• The Home Office, where needed to confirm a person's right to rent
• Local authorities, for example for council tax, property licensing or housing standards
• Solicitors, conveyancers and other estate or letting agents
• Mortgage advisers (where instructed)
• Referencing, credit-checking and identity verification providers
• Rent guarantee and landlord insurers, including referencing information and, if a claim is made, details of the tenancy and any arrears
• Debt recovery and tracing agents, where rent or other money is owed
• Utility providers (with consent where required)
• Third-party contractors instructed on behalf of a property transaction, letting, or management
• Service providers who support our business, such as our property software, IT, e-signature and cloud storage providers, who act only on our instructions
• Our professional advisers, auditors and insurers, Propertymark and The Property Ombudsman, for example when dealing with a complaint
• Regulators or law-enforcement bodies where legally required
• A buyer of, or successor to, all or part of our business, if it is sold or restructured

All third parties are required to process data securely and lawfully.

If you make an offer on a property we are selling, the law requires us to pass it to the seller promptly and in writing. We will share your name and your offer with the seller, together with information about your position and ability to proceed, such as whether you have a property to sell and whether you have proof of funds or a mortgage agreement in principle. If your offer is accepted, we will share the further details needed to progress the sale, such as your contact details and your solicitor's details, with the seller, their solicitor and others in the chain.

AI search and voice search

Our website offers an optional AI-powered property search that lets you describe the property you are looking for in your own words. When you use it, the text of your search is sent securely to our artificial-intelligence service provider (Anthropic) so it can be interpreted into property search filters (for example location, price and bedrooms). Under our agreement with the provider, search text is not used to train its AI models.

Please do not include personal or sensitive details in your searches - the tool only needs the property features you want. Any information you do choose to include will be processed as described in this notice.

We keep a log of the search queries themselves (not linked to your name, account or IP address) to improve search quality and understand what properties people are looking for.

If you use the microphone button, your speech is converted to text by your web browser's built-in speech-recognition service (provided by Google for Chrome and Edge, or Apple for Safari) in accordance with that provider's privacy policy. We never receive or store your voice audio - only the resulting text, which is treated the same as a typed search. Voice search is entirely optional; you can always type instead.

International transfers

Most of the personal data we hold is stored in the UK or the EEA. Where a service provider transfers personal data outside the UK, we make sure it remains protected, for example because the country is covered by UK adequacy regulations or because the transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.

Data retention periods

We retain personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected and to comply with legal and regulatory obligations.

• AML records are retained for five years after the end of a business relationship or the completion of a transaction, as the law requires, and are then securely deleted.
• Records relating to a sale, letting or property management are generally kept for six years after the transaction, tenancy or management ends, as this is the period in which most legal claims can be brought. Documents signed as deeds, such as some commercial leases, are kept for 12 years.
• Right to Rent documents are kept for the length of the tenancy and one year afterwards.
• Unsuccessful tenancy applications and referencing reports are kept for six months after the decision.
• If you register with us to hear about properties, we review your registration after 12 months without contact and delete it unless you ask to stay registered.
• Other transactional, contractual and correspondence data is retained in accordance with our internal retention schedule and securely deleted or anonymised when no longer required.
• Rightmove makes recordings of calls made through its tracked numbers available to us for up to 90 days. CCTV footage is kept for 31 days and then overwritten. We only keep a call recording or CCTV footage for longer if it is needed to deal with a complaint, dispute or incident.
• If you ask us to stop sending you marketing, we keep a record of that request so that we do not contact you again.

Details of our retention schedule are available on request.

Data security

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data, including secure electronic systems, restricted staff access and secure storage of paper records. If a personal data breach occurs that is likely to put you at high risk, we will tell you without undue delay.

Automated decision-making

We do not make decisions based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on individuals. Referencing providers may use automated credit scoring as part of their checks, but the decision on a tenancy application is made by a person.

Your rights as a data subject

You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data
• Request rectification of inaccurate or incomplete data
• Request erasure where legally permitted
• Restrict or object to processing, including the right to object to direct marketing at any time
• Request data portability
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent

To exercise your rights, please contact us using the details in this notice. There is normally no charge, and we will respond within one month, or let you know within that month if we need longer because your request is complex. We may require proof of identity before responding. Some rights are limited by law; for example, we cannot delete records that we are required to keep for AML purposes.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have collected, used, shared or looked after your personal information, you have the right to complain to us. Please contact our data protection lead by email at property@dartandpartners.com, by telephone on 01626 772507, or in writing to 12 The Triangle, Teignmouth, TQ14 8AT. You don't need to use any particular words, just tell us what has concerned you. We will acknowledge your complaint within three working days, look into it and tell you the outcome, normally within fifteen working days. Our full complaints procedure is available on our website and from any of our branches.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection. The ICO will usually expect you to have raised your concern with us first, so that we have the chance to put things right.

ICO, 4th Floor, No. 3 Circle Square, 5 Hawkshaw Street, Manchester, M1 7BL

Website: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

Telephone: 0303 123 1113

Cookies

Our website, and third-party customer software platforms, use cookies to improve functionality. Non-essential cookies, including the Meta (Facebook) advertising pixel, are only used with your consent, which you can manage through our cookie banner or your browser settings. To analyse usage we use our own analytics software on our own server in the United Kingdom; it sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device, so there is nothing to consent to. See our Cookies Policy for more detail.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice from time to time. The latest version will always be available on our website, and where appropriate we will tell you about significant changes.