Privacy and Cookie Policy

Privacy Policy

Welcome to the Whitacre Garden Centre Limited (trading as Stratford Garden Centre) privacy policy.

Stratford Garden Centre respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

This privacy policy is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below. Please also use the Glossary to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy policy.

  1. IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE
  2. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
  3. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?
  4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
  5. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
  6. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
  7. DATA SECURITY
  8. DATA RETENTION
  9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
  10. GLOSSARY

1. Important information and who we are

Purpose of this privacy policy

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how we collect and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you purchase a product.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

Controller

Whitacre Garden Centre Limited (trading as Stratford Garden Centre) is the controller and responsible for your personal data (“Stratford”), “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).

We have appointed a data privacy manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact the data privacy manager using the details set out below.

Contact details

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact our data privacy manager in the following ways:

Postal address: Stratford Garden Centre, Campden Road, Clifford Chambers, Stratford upon Avon, CV37, 8LW

Telephone number: 01789 205745

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

2. The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

  • Identity Data includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier.
  • Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
  • Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products you have purchased from us.
  • Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
  • Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses. 
  • Usage Data includes information about how you use our website and products .
  • Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods). In this case, we may have to cancel a product  order you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3. How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

  • Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
    • order our products through the web site or through our click and collect service;
    • create an account on our website;
    •  request marketing to be sent to you; or
    • give us feedback or contact us.
  • Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.

4. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Click here to find out more about the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/Activity

Type of data

Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest

To register you as a new customer for our web site or for our click and collect service

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

Performance of a contract with you

To process and deliver your order including:

(a) Manage payments, fees and charges

(b) Collect and recover money owed to us

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Financial

(d) Transaction

(e) Marketing and Communications

(a) Performance of a contract with you

(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us)

To manage our relationship with you which will include

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Profile

(d) Marketing and Communications

(a) Performance of a contract with you

(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

(c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated, to study how customers use our products and to analyse the types of customers who buy products from us)

To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) 

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Technical

(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)

(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

To use data analytics to improve our website, and products/services.

(a) Technical

(b) Usage

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy.)

Direct marketing, customer relationships and experiences.

(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Technical
(d) Usage

Necessary for our legitimate interests to promote and market our business.

We have engaged with a third party supplier to provide us with information about customer shopping experiences on our website. The third party supplier will tell us if you have left items in your basket without completing your purchase, and we may send you an e mail to let you know, so you can come back and complete the purchase.

 

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

We work with social media platforms, like Facebook, to help promote our products. Sometimes we share e mail addresses of customers who have opted into receive direct marketing from us with the social media platforms, so we can display relevant marketing to them on those platforms. In other cases, we profile our customers to help us identify types of customers who might be interested in hearing about our products. However, we only send direct marketing information electronically to individuals who have consented to receive it, or who are already customers of ours and have not opted out of receiving marketing.

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased products from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Opting out

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a product purchase, product experience or other transactions.

Cookies

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our Cookie Policy.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table above.

  • External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
  • Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6. International transfers

We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

7. Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

8. Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

9. Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. 

  • Request access to your personal data
  • Request correction of your personal data
  • Request erasure of your personal data
  • Object to processing of your personal data
  • Request restriction of processing your personal data
  • Request transfer of your personal data
  • Right to withdraw consent

Please see the Glossary for more information on these rights.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

10. Glossary

LAWFUL BASIS

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to.

THIRD PARTIES

External Third Parties

  • Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
  • Companies who help us with data analytics for the purposes of identifying potential customers for our products. Examples of this are Facebook, Google and marketing agencies.
  • Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
  • Delivery companies who provide delivery services to us

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes or we are profiling you to understand our customer base. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

  • If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
  • Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
  • Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
  • You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

Cookie Policy

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

We use the following cookies:

  • Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website and use a shopping cart.
  • Analytical or performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
  • Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests.

You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the tables below:

Strictly necessary cookies   

Cookie Key Expiry Purpose
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress 30 minutes The cookie is set so Hotjar can track the beginning of the user’s journey for a total session count. It does not contain any identifiable information.
_hjFirstSeen 30 minutes The cookie is set so Hotjar can track the beginning of the user’s journey for a total session count. It does not contain any identifiable information.

Performance cookies  

Cookie Key Expiry Purpose
_gat 1 minute This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics, according to documentation it is used to throttle the request rate – limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites.
_ga 2 years The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site’s analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors.
_gat_UA-177641420-1 1 minute 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. It is a variation of the _gat cookie which is used to limit the amount of data recorded by Google on high traffic volume websites.
_gid 1 day Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website’s performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.

Targeting Cookies

Cookie Key Expiry Purpose
test_cookie 15 minutes The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user’s browser supports cookies.
_gcl_au 3 months Used by Google AdSense for experimenting with advertisement efficiency across websites using their services.
IDE 2 years Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile.
_fbp 3 months This cookie is set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website. 
fr 3 months Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.
_lo_uid 2 years This cookie is set by the provider Lucky Orange. This cookie shows the unique identifier for the visitor.
_lorid 30 minutes This cookie is set by the provider Lucky Orange. This cookie is used to identify the ID of the visitors current recording.
_lo_v 1 year This cookie is set by the provider Lucky Orange. This cookie is used to show the total number of visitor’s visits.
__lotl 6 months This cookie is set by the provider Lucky Orange. This cookie is used to identify the traffic source URL of the visitor’s original referrer, if there is any.
_hjFirstSeen 30 minutes Hotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user.
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress 30 minutes Hotjar sets this cookie to detect the first pageview session of a user. This is a True/False flag set by the cookie.
_hjSessionUser_2484049 1 year  
_hjSession_2484049 30 minutes  
lightbox_header-newsletter-signup 1 year Indicates that user viewed the newsletter popup so it won’t appear again.
mailchimp_landing_site 28 days

These cookies are used to keep track of newsletter sign ups.

Cookies set by WooCommerce (eCommerce platform)

Cookie Key Expiry Purpose
woocommerce_cart_hash Session Information regarding shopping basket contents.
woocommerce_items_in_cart Session Helps WooCommerce determine when cart contents/data changes.
wordpress_test_cookie Session This cookie is used for the WordPress content manager to check if the browser has cookies enabled.
tk_ai Session Stores a randomly-generated anonymous ID. This is only used within the dashboard (/wp-admin) area and is used for usage tracking, if enabled.
yith_wcwl_session_ 24 hours Stores information about the list of items marked as favourites (wish list).

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.

The tables above set out when the cookies expire.