Monthly Archives: January 2023

In House Complaints Procedure

Posted on by

IN-HOUSE COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

We are committed to providing a professional service to all our clients and customers.  When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it.  This will help us to improve our standards.

If you have a complaint, please put it in writing, including as much detail as possible.  We will then respond in line with the timeframes set out below (if you feel we have not sought to address your complaints within eight weeks, you may be able to refer your complaint to the Property Ombudsman to consider without our final viewpoint on the matter).

What will happen next?

  • We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within three working days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.

  • We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally be dealt with by the office manager who will review your file and speak to the member of staff who dealt with you.  A formal written outcome of our investigation will be sent to you within 15 working days of sending the acknowledgement letter.

  • If, at this stage, you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for a separate review to take place by a senior member of staff.

  • We will write to you within 15 working days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final viewpoint on the matter.

The Property Ombudsman

Milford House

43-55 Milford Street

Salisbury

Wiltshire

SP1 2BP

01722 333 306

admin@tpos.co.uk

www.tpos.co.uk

Please note the following:

You will need to submit your complaint to The Property Ombudsman within 12 months of receiving our final viewpoint letter, including any evidence to support your case.

The Property Ombudsman requires that all complaints are addressed through this in-house complaint’s procedure, before being submitted for an independent review.

Client Protection Membership & Privacy & Cookies Policy

Posted on by

Please click on link below to access our Client Money Protection Certificate

CMP MemberShip Certificate

 

Who we are

Open House Staffordshire (‘We’) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This privacy policy sets out the basis on how we process and protect any information that you give, or we collect, when you use this website. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Our nominated data controller is Steve Lythgoe Managing Director. Open House Staffordshire ( S A Lythgoe Property Services Limited trading as Open House Staffordshire) of 113 Wolverhampton Rd, Stafford, ST17 4AH.

What information may we collect about you?

We may collect personal data about you in the course of our work. That may include things like:

  • Your contact details.
  • Your date of birth.
  • Where you work.
  • Your wishes and criteria in any transaction you are considering.
  • Financial information, for example about your income and capital resources.

Usually we will have received this directly from you. However we may also receive personal data about you from others, such as from the other party to a transaction you are engaged in or from joint agents. Family members also sometimes provide information about each other.

How will we use the information?

Our use of such personal data is subject to data protection law.

We mainly use your personal data to provide you with information or services you have requested. We may also use it for any other purpose for which you give your consent. For example we may send you additional information about the firm or its services, if you have consented to us doing so.

We may also use it for other normal purposes connected with our work. For example we will use your information to update our own business records, complete statutory returns, and otherwise comply with our regulatory obligations.

Will we share information about you with anyone?

We take your privacy seriously. We will never sell your personal data to anyone, and we take precautions to keep it secure.

It will sometimes be a normal and necessary part of our work to pass on information to third parties. For example:

  • We may pass on information about you to solicitors to help them proceed with a transaction in which you are involved.
  • If you are a prospective tenant, we may pass on references about you to the landlord.
  • We may inform utility companies of changes in the occupiers of property.
  • We may pass on information to maintenance and repair contractors, in respect of property where we have responsibilities.
  • We may need to pass on information to those who help collect outstanding accounts.

In addition our practice may be audited or checked by third parties such as our accountants, which may enable them to see some information about you. Such third parties are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your information.

Your rights

You have a right of access under data protection law to the personal data that we hold about you. We seek to keep that personal data correct and up to date. You should let us know if you believe the information we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

What data breach procedures we have in place

In the event of a personal data breach we will notify the ICO within the required 72 hours and provide them with

  • a description of the nature of the personal data breach including, where possible:
    • the categories and approximate number of individuals concerned; and
    • the categories and approximate number of personal data records concerned;
  • the name and contact details of the data protection officer
  • a description of the likely consequences of the personal data breach; and
  • a description of the measures taken, or proposed to be taken, to deal with the personal data breach, including, where appropriate, the measures taken to mitigate any possible adverse effects.

Cookies Poilicy

Our values mean it is important to us that we are open about our use of cookies on https://openhousestaffordshire.co.uk

Cookies Introduction

In accordance with the EU law on Cookies we are committed to cookie compliance and provide the following advice to enable you to manage the use of cookies.

This website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that contain information sent from a web server, and then stored by your web browser on your computer’s hard drive or mobile device and used when you browse our website or access our free blog content. They enable our site to identify your web browser but do not contain personal information such as your name or other personal details.

They help us to improve our site and deliver a better experience for our users. Some of the cookies that we use are essential for the site to operate.

We do not use cookies to:

  • Collect any personal identifiable information (without your express permission)
  • Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
  • Pass data to advertising networks
  • Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
  • Pay sales commissions

Our Cookies help:

  • Effectively administer our website
  • Improve the user experience
  • Remember your settings during and between visits
  • Improve the security/speed of the site
  • Aggregate information about the usage and effectiveness of our site
  • Allow you to share pages with social networks

You can learn more about all the cookies we use below.

Allowing us to use cookies

If the settings on your software that you are using to view this website (your browser) are adjusted to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, as your consent to accept our use of cookies. Should you not consent then we provide information on how to remove cookies below, however doing so will likely mean that you may not be able to access all, or parts of our site.

We use traffic log cookies on our website and blog to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website to be more user friendly. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Our own cookies

We use cookies to make our website work in the following ways, and all are used to improve the user experience:

  • Allowing you to add comments to our site
  • Contact form validation to prevent spam emails being sent
  • Tracking anonymous visits to website for statistical purposes

Social website cookies

These are used to help you ‘share’ or ‘like’ content on our website on various social media websites, as we have added sharing buttons on our site.

Turning Cookies Off

Most modern browsers allow you to control your cookie settings. You can disable them completely by editing your browser settings, however in doing this you may be limiting the functionality that is displayed on our website and also a large population of websites on the Internet that use cookies to serve their content.

To learn how to disable cookies on browsers please click here. http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=61416

If you are concerned about cookies tracking your movements on the Internet then you may be concerned about spyware. Spyware is the name given to a particular band of cookies that track personal information about you. There are many antispyware programs that you can use to prevent this from happening. Learn more about antispyware software – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware

Cookie Check

Our website uses a cookie to display our “Cookie Notice” at the top of the page. In order for us to remember that a user has agreed and wishes to close that notice we store an anonymous cookie that removes that notice for a period of 7 days. If you do not wish this cookie to be stored then you can choose not to close the notice.

Contact Forms (Captcha)

Our website uses a session cookie to provide users with a contact form validation service known as captcha. This cookie does not store any personal information about you and is only used to check the captcha form field to verify that a human being has entered the information.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website. Google Analytics uses cookies to generate anonymous statistical and other information about website use. The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of the website. Google will store this information. Google’s privacy policy is available at: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html

Google Maps

We use Google Maps to give users the opportunity of visiting our business location. Google Maps only uses cookies to enable you to use the functionality of their map software. No personal information is stored on our website through the use of Google Maps.

Happy to Accept?

Please accept via the on screen Cookie Policy Option.