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Privacy Policy

1.0 Our core beliefs regarding user privacy and data protection

2.0 Relevant legislation

Along with our business and internal computer systems, this website is designed to comply with the following national and international legislation with regards to data protection and user privacy:

This site’s compliance with the above legislation, all of which are stringent in nature, means that this site is likely compliant with the data protection and user privacy legislation set out by many other countries and territories as well. If you are unsure about whether this site is compliant with your own country of residences’ specific data protection and user privacy legislation you should contact our data protection officer (details of whom can be found in section 9.0) for clarification.

3.0 Personal information that this website collects and why we collect it

This website collects and uses personal information for the following reasons:

3.1 Site visitation tracking

Like most websites, this site uses Google Analytics (GA) to track user interaction. We use this data to determine the number of people using our site, to better understand how they find and use our web pages and to see their journey through the website.

Although GA records data such as your geographical location, device, internet browser and operating system, none of this information personally identifies you to us. GA also records your computer’s IP address which could be used to personally identify you but Google do not grant us access to this. We consider Google to be a third party data processor (see section 6.0 below).

GA makes use of cookies, details of which can be found on Google’s developer guides. FYI our website uses the gtag.js implementation of GA.

Disabling cookies on your internet browser will stop GA from tracking any part of your visit to pages within this website. More information about cookies that this website sets and how you can disable them can be found on our cookies policy page.

3.2 Email links

Should you choose to contact us using an email link like this one, none of the data that you supply will be stored by this website or passed to / be processed by any of the third party data processors defined in section 6.0. Instead the data will be collated into an email and sent to us over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Our own SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted using SHA-2, 256-bit cryptography before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by our local computers and devices. However, not all mail servers are secured in such a way. Therefore, we would suggest that you always consider email as an insecure medium and not include personal, confidential or otherwise sensitive information within an email.

3.3 Contact forms

Should you choose to contact us using a contact form such as that found on our contact us page, the data you include will be sent to the most relevant individual or department within our organisation via email and also saved to a secure, web-based database. Once our staff team have responded to your enquiry, the form submission details will be deleted from the database but they may be retained within our email systems for auditing purposes or so that that we can continue the dialogue that has been opened.

Should you complete the mortgage enquiry form (found on our Mortgages page) the data that you include will be sent to us in the same way as for a regular contact form. It will also, however, be passed on to the most suitable individual within Mortgage Republic, our financial services partner.

3.4 Facebook Pixel

We use the Facebook Pixel to monitor the effectiveness of advertising campaigns that we run on the Facebook social media platform. Data collected by the Facebook Pixel from users of the Shires Residential website is used to improve the effectiveness of and better target our Facebook advertising campaigns.

Although the Facebook Pixel itself doesn’t collect and / or transmit any personally identifiable data from the Shires Residential website, Facebook users who click on our adverts (displayed within the Facebook social media platform) will have their browsing journey through the Shires Residential website tracked with the data returned to Facebook and applied to their Facebook user profile.

If you have visited the Shires Residential website as a result of an advert displayed on the Facebook social media platform, you can disable cookies on your internet browser to stop the Facebook Pixel from tracking your user journey and returning the data to Facebook. More information about cookies that this website sets and how you can disable them can be found on our cookies policy page.

4.0 How we store your personal information

Personal data submitted to our website is stored on encrypted solid state drives on UK-based servers operated by one of the UKs leading website hosting companies (see section 5.0).

As outlined in section 3, all personal data that is stored by our website is deleted once it has been used for the purposes for which it was collected for example once a contact form submission has been responded to or a mortgage enquiry passed on to Mortgage Republic.

5.0 Website and database server

The Shires Residential website and its database are all hosted within a Tier III data centre located in North London within the United Kingdom.

Some of the data centre’s more notable security features are as follows:

All traffic (transferral of files) between our website and your browser is encrypted and delivered over HTTPS. SSL certificates are provided by Let’s Encrypt.

6.0 Our third-party data processors

We use a number of third parties to process personal data collected by our websites on our behalf. These third parties have been carefully chosen and all of them comply with the legislation set out in section 2.0. US-based data processors are also EU-U.S Privacy Shield certified.

6.1 Google LLC

Used for website analytics as outlined in section 3.1Privacy policyEU-U.S Privacy Shield certification

6.2 Facebook, Inc.

Used to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook advertising campaigns as outlined in section 3.4. Privacy policy EU-U.S Privacy Shield certification

6.3 Fellowship Productions Ltd.

The UK-based design and digital marketing agency responsible for building and maintaining the Shires Residential website.

6.4 United Communications Ltd.

The UK-based web hosting company employed to host the Shires Residential website.

7.0 Data Breaches

We will report any unlawful data breach of our website’s database or the database(s) of any of our third party data processors to any and all relevant persons and authorities within 72 hours of the breach if it is apparent that personal data stored in an identifiable manner has been stolen.

8.0 Data Controller

The data controller for the Shires Residential website is: Shires Estate Agents Limited, a UK Private limited Company with company number: 02123767

Whose registered office is:
4 New Street,
Mildenhall,
Bury St. Edmunds,
Suffolk,
IP28 7EN

9.0 Data Protection Officer

Robert Love
Director, Shires MBC Ltd
+44 (0)1638 712132

10.0 Changes to this privacy policy

This privacy policy may change from time to time inline with legislation or industry developments. We will not explicitly inform our clients or website users of these changes. Instead, we recommend that you check this page occasionally for any policy changes. Specific policy changes and updates are mentioned in the change log below.

10.1 Change log

01/12/2019

17/05/2022