Periscope Landscape and Architecture Ltd takes data protection and data security extremely seriously. This Privacy Notice explains the types of personal data we may collect about you. It also explains how we’ll store and handle that data and keep it safe.

We know that there’s a lot of information here, but we want you to be fully informed about your rights, and how Periscope uses your data. We hope the following sections will answer any questions you have but if not, please do get in touch with us.

We are only entitled to hold and process your data where the law allows us to. The current law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons for which a practice like ours may collect and process your personal data. These include:

The main purpose for our holding your data is to provide you with professional services in the fields of architecture, landscape and urbanism (the ‘professional services’) under the agreement we have with you. This agreement is a contract between us and the law allows us to process your data for the purposes of performing a contract (or for the steps necessary to enter in to a contract).

In specific situations, we require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running Periscope and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests. This may include to satisfy our external quality auditors, our insurers or our Regulators.

If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity.

In some situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent.

When collecting your personal data, we’ll always make clear to you which data is necessary in connection with a particular service.

We normally collect your data when you provide it to us or when it is provided to us by others. You may give us your data by email; through an online web form; via a survey or questionnaire, over the telephone; face to face; at a public consultation event, or by post.

See below for more information about what data we collect about you if you are using our website.

If you are a client or making an enquiry for our services, we collect your name and contact details.

We also collect and hold information about your project or enquiry.

We only use your data for the purposes of providing you with professional services or for reasons directly associated with those services. We may use your data to provide statistical information for reports, but such information will be anonymised.

We take protecting your data very seriously. The data you give us may be commercially or publicly sensitive and confidential.

With this in mind we will treat your data with the utmost care and take all appropriate steps to protect it. We have clear data protection and information security policies and procedures in place (along with professional and other legal obligations to keep your data safe) and these are regularly assessed as part of our Quality Standards and compliance processes.

We protect our IT system from Cyber Attack. Access to your personal data is password-protected.

We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks to identify ways to further strengthen security.

We only keep your data for as long as is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was provided. Normally this is for 6 years after your project or matter ends.

This is because we are required to keep client files for that period by our professional bodies and insurers. This also protects you should you be unhappy with our services and want to complain after your project ends.

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties including our website provider. We only do this where it is necessary for providing you professional services or for the effective operation of our Company.

For example, if you are a client, we may share your data with public bodies or agencies; experts; technical specialists; secure file storage and destruction companies; auditors; the company that securely hosts our off-site cloud storage servers.

Here’s the policy we apply to those organisations to keep your data safe and protect your privacy:

We provide only the information they need to perform their specific services.

They may only use your data for the exact purposes we specify in our contract with them.

We work closely with them to ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all times.

If we stop using their services, any of your data held by them will either be deleted or rendered anonymous.

Some data will be made available to our website provider, such as your IP address, which has been anonymised so no identifying data will be collected by our website or website provider.

We use certain third party software on our website.

We use Google Analytics for the purposes of understanding how users are interacting with our website. You can understand how Google uses your data through Analytics by reading the site "How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps", located at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.

We use Mailchimp for the purposes of offering and managing subscriptions to email updates from our company. By subscribing to our emails and providing your name and email address, you are giving us permission to store and process your data in order to send our emails. You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking the clear 'unsubscribe' link sent in every email, or by contacting us at hello@periscope... , including if you wish to be removed permanently from our database. You can understand how Mailchimp processes your data on our behalf here: https://mailchimp.com/legal/.

Your data is stored and processed within the EEA. If we ever have to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside the European Economic Area (EEA) we will seek your specific consent to do so.

The EEA includes all EU Member countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

Cookies may be either "persistent" cookies or "session" cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

We use cookies for the following purposes:

(a) security - we use cookies as an element of the security measures used to protect user accounts, including preventing fraudulent use of login credentials, and to protect our website and services generally

(b) analysis - we use cookies to help us to analyse the use and performance of our website and services

(c) cookie consent - we use cookies to store your preferences in relation to the use of cookies more generally

Our service providers use cookies and those cookies may be stored on your computer when you visit our website.

We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of our website. Google Analytics gathers information about website use by means of cookies. This data may be stored outside the EU, under a EU-US Privacy Shield agreement. The information gathered relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of our website. Google's privacy policy is available at: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy

The analytics cookies used by our website have the following names: [_ga, _gid, _gat, __utma, __utmt, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz and __utmv].

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies and to delete cookies. The methods for doing so vary from browser to browser, and from version to version. You can however obtain up-to-date information about blocking and deleting cookies via these links (which open in a new window; please note we can't be responsible for the content of external websites).:

(a) https://support.google.com/chr... (Chrome);

(b) https://support.mozilla.org/en... (Firefox);

(c) http://www.opera.com/help/tuto... (Opera);

(d) https://support.microsoft.com/... (Internet Explorer);

(e) https://support.apple.com/kb/P... (Safari); and

(f) https://privacy.microsoft.com/... (Edge).

Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.

If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.

You have the right to request:

Access to the personal data we hold about you, free of charge in most cases.

The correction of your personal data when incorrect, out of date or incomplete.

For example, when you withdraw consent, or object and we have no legitimate overriding interest, or once the purpose for which we hold the data has come to an end.

That we stop any consent-based processing of your personal data after you withdraw that consent.

You have the right to request a copy of any information about you that we hold at any time, and also to have that information corrected if it is inaccurate.

To ask for your information, please contact the Office Manager at Periscope, 2-4 Tottenham Road, London N1 4BZ

If we choose not to action your request, we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal.

Whenever you have given us your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and withdraw that consent.

In cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can ask us to stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must then do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your personal data.

If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

You can contact them by calling +44 (0)303 123 1113.

Or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns (opens in a new window; please note we can't be responsible for the content of external websites).