This privacy policy applies to all areas of www.localenergy.scot.

About Local Energy Scotland

Local Energy Scotland is a consortium made up of:

  • Energy Saving Trust is a social enterprise with charitable status. We have incorporated a charitable parent company, under which is a non-profit company continuing to deliver substantial government-funded programmes, and a wholly owned trading subsidiary.
  • Changeworks is an environmental charity and social enterprise, working in collaboration with public and third sector organisations, schools, communities and businesses.
  • The Energy Agency is a registered charity with an established trading company to operate interest-free loans and grant schemes.
  • SCARF is a social enterprise with its head office in Aberdeen, and activities across the North East of Scotland.

We administer and manage the Scottish Government’s Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) with support for delivery from Ricardo Energy & Environment and QMPF.

CARES was established by the Scottish Government to encourage local and community ownership of renewable energy across Scotland and to help maximise the benefits to communities of renewable energy systems – whether commercial or community-owned.

Local Energy Scotland is independent and provides free and impartial advice.

We will treat any personal data you provide us carefully and securely.

When we collect data from you

We collect information about you (including name, email and address) when you:

  • complete forms
  • provide information when you contact us by email, telephone and letter
  • provide feedback

What information will we collect about you?

We might collect:

  • Contact information (e.g. name, postal address, email address, phone number)
  • Bank account details and other financial information

Why do we ask for this information?

We collect information about you to provide you with our services. We will use information about you:

  • to process and respond to requests, enquiries and complaints received from you
  • to provide services requested by you
  • to contact you about services requested by you
  • to contact you for ‘service administration purposes’ – password reminders or to notify you that a particular service has been suspended or changed
  • to monitor customer satisfaction
  • to keep our records up to date
  • to analyse customer trends
  • for audit purposes
  • to recommend products and services that we believe will be of interest to you, where you have opted in to receive this information.
  • to enable third parties to carry out any of the purposes above on our behalf

For grants and other funding, we may require information about you:

  • to process payments and repayments
  • to assess your eligibility for funding or assistance
  • to ensure compliance with scheme conditions (this may include site inspections depending upon the scheme)

Where we collect information about you

We will normally only collect information directly from you. If we have received your information from a 3rd party, we will explain to you where we obtained your personal information from. The organisation sharing your information with us will get your permission to do so before sharing.

If you telephone us your call may be recorded for training and monitoring.

We will ask you to provide information for instance, when you contact us by telephone, if you make use of one of our tools (eg our Local Energy Marketplace), if you submit a ‘contact us form’, attend an event, or complete a survey. If you ‘like’ or ‘follow’ any of our social media accounts (such as Facebook and Twitter) we will collect information about this (including any posts you ‘like’ or share). We will use this information to provide you with more personalised advertising and to understand how people are using the information we publish on social media. You can change your settings within your social media accounts to set how organisations can target advertising to you through them.

Sharing information about you

We sometimes use other companies and organisations (third parties) to process personal information for us. For example, we use third parties to:

  • send postal mail
  • carry out credit checks
  • maintain our IT systems.

Where we make use of third parties to process personal information, we will ensure that they have adequate security measures in place and that they comply with this privacy policy.

We share information, for analysis purposes, with government departments and bodies (including the devolved nations) that provide funding to Local Energy Scotland or have an interest in our activities.

We will also share information about you when we are required to so by law or if we have your permission to do so.

All information collected by Local Energy Scotland may be shared between the consortium partners as listed above. We also share relevant information with third parties who provide technical advice to projects when instructed to do so on our behalf.

Direct marketing

Local Energy Scotland will only send you direct marketing information if you have agreed to receive this information when you provided your contact details, or when you have specifically asked us to send you direct marketing.

You have the right to stop us using information about you for direct marketing purposes. You can do this at any time even if you previously consented to receive direct marketing. If you wish to change your marketing settings either select the link included in emails or contact us directly to let us know. We will change your setting as soon as we are able and at least within 28 days.

Targeting

If you have agreed that we can send you direct marketing using email, we may make use of social media to target advertising to you. This will take the form of adverts about Local Energy Scotland services that appear in your newsfeed etc. This is done by ‘hashing’ your email address. A process which converts your email address to a line of numbers which is then matched against the social media provider’s records. Any hashed addresses which do not match to their records will be destroyed. No personal data is shared. You can adjust your setting within your social media:

Facebook ad settings information

Twitter: how Twitter ads work

How long will we keep your data for?

Local Energy Scotland will keep your information for:

Financial records –  Where you have applied for a loan through CARES we will keep those records for the length of the loan and an additional 7 years.

Contact information – 7 years from the last active contact with Local Energy Scotland. Unless we have a reason to keep for longer (for example where you have received a loan from us or where the funder has included longer data retention as part of their terms and conditions).

Your rights

The General Data Protection Regulation will change the rights you have with regards to the personal data we hold and use about you. Your new rights are described in the guidance below. If you have any questions or concerns about how we use your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer*. You can also find useful information on the Information Commissioner’s Office’s website.

*Data Protection Officer details for Energy Saving Trust:

Write to: Energy Saving Trust England, 223-231 Pentonville Road, London, England, N1 9NG.

Email: DataProtectionOfficer@est.org.uk

If you feel that we have not responded appropriately to any requests to use your rights you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (as detailed above).

For any request relating to your information we will ask for proof of identity to make sure we are talking to the right person, and to avoid disclosing information that belongs to another person. This may be done through asking questions (such as your address, telephone number, email address and reference number, should you have one) or sometimes we might ask for other evidence.

Accessing information we hold about you

If you think we hold information about you, you can ask us about that information. You do not have to make this request in writing, however we will always ask questions to make sure we know who you are or we might ask for further proof of identity. This additional proof may take the form of recent utility bills or we may request to see photographic identification such as a current driving licence.

We will let you know if we are using your information and let you have access to it. We may ask you to let us know exactly what information you are looking for if we hold a large amount of information about you.

We will give you the following information:

What we are using your information for (including the details of any credit check carried out if you applied for loan funding through us), What sort of information about you that we hold, Who we have shared your information with, If we didn’t get your information from you, we will tell you where we got it from, How long we are likely to keep your information.

Right to object to direct marketing

See section regarding direct marketing.

Research

You may have agreed to be part of some research that we are carrying out. If you change your mind about being part of any research, please let us know and we will stop using your personal information and remove your details from the research.

Automated Decisions

You have rights relating to any automated decisions that we may take about you.

We use a credit checking service when you apply to receive loan funding us. The service provider does not give a ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ answer when we use their services. Instead we are given a ‘score’ based on your information held by them. We have used our knowledge to decide what ‘score’ is needed for people to be eligible for the loan.

If you do not meet the requirements, we will give you an opportunity to appeal this decision, by giving us some additional information. It may be that the information held by the credit checking service is incorrect – you can contact them to find out what they hold and make any corrections if needed

We will always carry out a credit check if you apply for a loan and this forms part of the conditions of the funding.

Profiling

We may use your information to map the way people use energy in their homes, to get an understanding of how energy efficiency measures can change the amount of energy used in homes or to get a better picture of the housing stock of the UK.

When we use your information in this way, we will always make sure your information is kept secure. We will use modelling techniques and data minimisation to make sure that you are not able to be identified from any reports produced.

Additionally, only certain types of organisations will be able to access this information. When we do so we will make sure there is a contract in place restricting the use of the information.  We will only release information at level that will ensure no individual can be identified. Organisations will only be able to use the information for specific reasons related to improving the efficiency of buildings and reducing the impact of climate change.

  • if we still have a valid reason for using your personal information, or
  • in connection to any legal action.

If we have agreed to restrict the use of your personal information, we will only use it with your agreement, to defend any legal action, to protect the rights of another person or in the public interest.

We will let you know if we intend to remove any restriction on using your personal information, for example when we have found your personal information to be correct.

If we have shared your information with other organisations, we will let them know about any corrections, deletion or restriction of use of your personal data.

Right to Object

You can object to our use of your personal information. This is because we will have either obtained you permission to use your personal information, or we will have provided you with a condition known as a ‘legitimate interest’. A ‘legitimate interest would be where, for example, you had asked us to send you a loan application form. In order to complete this request we need to know and be able to use some of your personal information.

We will always let you know you have this right when we first take your information.

In some cases, we will be unable to carry out your instruction to stop using your information. This will be:

  • When we are carrying out a legally required task

We will provide you with information about the action we have taken in one month of receiving your request to delete your information and having received any proof of identity asked for. In some cases, we may require additional time to provide you with a response. We will only do this if the request is complicated or there are more than one request submitted. We will always keep in touch and let you know the status of your request.

Restricting the use of your personal information

You have the right to restrict our use of your personal information where:

The accuracy of your personal information is in dispute and until we have been able to check your personal data to ensure that it is right The use of your personal data is unlawful and you want to prevent us from deleting it We no longer need your personal data for the reason it was collected but you want the information kept to take or defend legal action You have objected to our use of your personal information for direct marketing (in this case we would no longer send you direct marketing but would keep your information on a ‘list’ of people not to be contacted by us)

In some cases, we may have received permission to use your image in our marketing material, on our website and/or through our social media sites when you were a child (either from you or your parents/guardian). Please let us know if you would like to withdraw this permission and we will remove your images as requested.

Refusing your request

We may refuse a request to delete your information if the use of your information is:

for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information (e.g.  for the purposes of journalism), to comply with legislation, or carrying out a task in the public interest, or used in relation to a legal claim.

We will provide you a copy of your personal information in one month of receiving your request for your personal information and having received any proof of identity asked for. In some cases, we may require additional time to provide you with all your information. We will only do this if the request is complicated or there are more than one request submitted. We will always keep in touch to let you know when you will receive the copy of your information, if there will be a delay in providing your information and the reason for any delay.

If you request your information via email (or by any other electronic way) we will normally provide the copy of your personal information electronically where we can. However, we will discuss with you how you would prefer to receive the copy of your information and explain any reasons if we cannot provide your information in the way you would prefer.

Charges and refusing requests for personal information

We will normally not request payment to give you a copy of your personal information. However, we may make a charge if you have already recently requested the same information. In some very rare cases where numerous requests for the same information have been made we may refuse to provide the information again. Where we can, we will always clearly explain any decision to refuse to provide you with your personal information.

If the information you have requested includes the personal information of another individual we will (depending upon the circumstances) remove information that identifies that person.

Correcting information

If we hold information about you that is wrong you have the right to have this corrected. If we agree that the information is incorrect we will always correct this information quickly or complete information where appropriate. If we do not agree that the information is wrong we will record that you have raised a request to have the information altered and that it is in dispute.

Removing information

You can request that we delete, remove or that we erase the information we hold about you. We will do this if any of the following is true and if no legal reason to keep your personal information exists:

Your personal information is no longer needed for the reason they were collected You withdraw consent where the use of your information was based on consent and we have no other legal basis to continue using your information We have been using your personal information unlawfully We are required to remove your personal information because of a law applying to us

When we respond to your request for your information we will give you details about the other rights you have. Including:

The right to submit a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office The right to request correction or deletion of personal information The right to request the restriction of your personal information or to object to the processing of your personal information.

Cookies

Introduction

Local Energy Scotland may collect information about you when you visit our website.

To do this we will use cookies which are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.  Most browsers allow visitors some control of most cookies through the browser settings.  To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit allaboutcookies.org.

Categories and Types of Cookies

Local Energy Scotland use a number of Google related cookies described below. View an overview of privacy at Google. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Users can also control the ads they see on Google and find out more about how the ads are selected for them by visiting google.com/adsettings. Alternatively, users can also manage and opt out of Google products and other third party cookies by visiting www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices.

Below is a summary of the cookies we use.

Google Analytics

Cookie Description Category Type
_gid This cookie is part of Google Analytics and is primarily used to distinguish users on the website. This is a third-party cookie with an expiration time of 24 hours. Persistent Performance
_ga This cookie is part of Google Analytics and is used to report the traffic that comes to the website, information on the source of where users come from or what campaign to explain how a user reaches the website.  This is a third-party cookie with an expiration time of 2 years. Session Performance
_gat_UA-45844808-1 This is a pattern type cookie set by Google Analytics, where the pattern element on the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. Session Performance

ARRAffinity cookies

Cookie Description Category Type
ARRAffinity This cookie is present in our contact/client portal and is set by websites run on the Windows Azure cloud platform. It is used for load balancing to make sure the visitor page requests are routed to the same server in any browsing session. Cookie expires after the user’s session has ended. Session Performance

Changes to our privacy policy

We regularly review our privacy policy to keep it up-to-date. This privacy policy was last updated on 14/10/22.