Privacy notice

Who we are

Banks Gas is a trading name of Elsien Ltd. Elsien Ltd is the data controller for the personal information described in this notice, which means we decide how it is used and we are responsible for looking after it.

Any question about your data, or any request to see or delete it, can go to the email address above. There is no separate data protection officer — enquiries come straight to us.

What we collect

We only ask for what we need to price a job, turn up at the right house, and invoice you afterwards.

When you use a quote tool

• Details about your property and rooms — house type, number of bedrooms, room sizes, glazing, existing system
• Your postcode, so we can confirm we cover your area
• Your name, email address and mobile number, if you choose to save a quote, have it emailed to you, or reserve an installation date

You can see a price without giving us any contact details at all. We only ask for them at the point you want the quote saved, sent, or booked.

When you enquire or book

• Name, email, phone number and the installation address
• What you have told us about the job, including any notes or access instructions you add
• Appointment dates and preferred callback times
• Photographs of the existing installation, where you send them or where our engineer takes them on site
• Invoices, payments and any finance application you make through us
• Our correspondence with you — emails, texts, WhatsApp messages and notes of phone calls

When you visit the website

Your browser sends technical information such as your IP address, device type and the pages you look at. Our quote tools also store your answers in your own browser so you do not lose your progress if you close the tab. That data stays on your device and is not sent to us unless you submit the form. There is more detail in our cookie policy.

We do not knowingly collect information about anyone under 18, and we do not ask for special category data such as health information. If you tell us something about a health condition because it affects the installation — a vulnerable resident, for example — we record only what the engineer needs to know to do the job safely.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

UK data protection law requires us to have a specific lawful basis for each use of your information. Ours are set out below.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered whether our reason is fair to you. Pricing a job you have asked us to price, and contacting you about it, is what you would reasonably expect. If you disagree with that judgement in your case, you can object — see your rights.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your information, and we do not pass it to marketing lists or lead brokers. It is shared only with the suppliers we need to run the business, and with bodies we are legally required to notify.

Where a supplier handles data on our behalf they act as our processor, under a contract that requires them to keep it secure and to use it only for the purpose we have given it to them for. We may also disclose information where we are legally obliged to, for example to HMRC, a court, or the Health and Safety Executive.

How long we keep it

• Quotes that never turn into a job — 12 months, then deleted. This is so we can pick up where you left off if you come back to us in a season or two.
• Customer and job records — 6 years from the date of your final invoice. Tax law requires us to keep accounting records for this long, and it also covers the period in which a claim could be brought.
• Gas and building regulations certificates — for as long as the relevant regulations require, which may be longer than 6 years.
• Warranty records — for the length of the warranty on the appliance, plus one year.
• Marketing consents — until you withdraw consent, and we keep a note of the withdrawal itself so we do not contact you again by mistake.

When a retention period ends we delete the record or anonymise it so it can no longer identify you.

Our online quote tools

Our boiler and air conditioning quote tools calculate a price automatically from the answers you give. That calculation is not a decision about you in the legal sense — it does not assess your creditworthiness or your character, and it has no consequence beyond showing you a number.

Every online price is an estimate based on what you have told us. It is confirmed by a person, on site, before any work is agreed. If a finance application is added to the tool in future, any automated credit decision would be made by the finance provider under their own privacy notice, and we will say so clearly at that point.

Marketing

We will contact you about a job you have asked us about without needing your consent — that is a service message, not marketing. Anything beyond that, such as a reminder that your annual service is due or a seasonal offer, is only sent if you have opted in.

Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and you can also reply to any message or ring us and ask to be taken off. We act on it the same working day. Withdrawing marketing consent does not affect anything else — we will still contact you about live work.

Your rights

You have the following rights over the information we hold about you. All of them are free to use, and we respond within one month.

• Access — ask for a copy of what we hold about you
• Correction — have anything inaccurate or incomplete put right
• Erasure — ask us to delete it, where we have no legal reason to keep it
• Restriction — ask us to pause using it while a dispute is sorted out
• Objection — object to us using it where we rely on legitimate interests
• Portability — receive it in a portable format, or have it sent to another provider
• Withdraw consent — at any time, where consent is what we relied on

To use any of these, email enquiries@banksgas.co.uk or ring 0121 517 0286. We may ask you to confirm who you are before we release information, which protects you as much as us.

One limit worth being straight about: where the law requires us to keep a record — a gas safety certificate, or an invoice inside the six-year accounting period — we cannot delete it on request. We will tell you if that applies and delete everything we are free to delete.

Keeping it safe

Customer records are held in Gas Engineer Software and Xero, both accessed with individual accounts and multi-factor authentication. Access is limited to the people who need it to do the job. Paper records are kept secure and destroyed once they have been entered into the system.

If a breach ever occurred that risked your rights, we would report it to the ICO within 72 hours and tell you directly where the risk to you was high.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, tell us first — email enquiries@banksgas.co.uk and we will look into it properly and reply within 10 working days.

If you are still not satisfied, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, which is the UK regulator for data protection. You can reach them at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113. You do not have to come to us first, but it is usually quicker.