Privacy Notice
Last updated: April 2026
Who we are
This privacy notice applies to Emergency House Clearance ("we", "us", "our"), the trading name of the UK-based clearance and biohazard cleaning service operating at emergencyhouseclearance.co.uk. We are the data controller for the personal data described in this notice and are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office. Our contact details are at the foot of this page.
This notice explains, in plain English, what personal data we collect about you when you use our website or engage our services, why we collect it, how we use and protect it, and what rights you have under the UK General Data Protection Regulation ("UK GDPR") and the Data Protection Act 2018.
The data we collect
We collect personal data in three main ways:
- Information you give us directly, when you complete the contact form on this website, telephone our 24/7 helpline, or email us. This will typically include your name, telephone number, email address, the postcode of the property concerned, and any details of your situation that you choose to share.
- Information we collect during a clearance, where we may take photographs of property and contents for inventory and insurance purposes. These images may incidentally contain personal information (paperwork, photographs of family members, identifying documents). We treat such material with the same care as the data we collect directly.
- Information collected automatically by our website, such as your IP address, browser type, pages visited and approximate location, gathered in aggregated form via privacy-respecting analytics. We do not use third-party advertising cookies.
Lawful basis for processing
We rely on the following lawful bases under Article 6 of the UK GDPR:
- Contract — to provide a quotation, deliver our services and invoice you for them.
- Legal obligation — to comply with our duties as a Waste Carrier, Broker and Dealer, with HMRC and Companies House requirements, and to keep records that satisfy environmental health and HSE regulators.
- Legitimate interests — to keep records of past quotations and customer correspondence, to defend or pursue legal claims, to maintain the security of our IT systems, and to respond to enquiries you have initiated.
- Consent — for any marketing communications, which we will only send if you have asked us to. You can withdraw consent at any time by replying to any email or calling us.
Where the personal data we collect during a job includes special category data (for example, health information disclosed during a hoarding clearance), we rely on Article 9(2)(f) — the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims — and on the substantial public interest condition where applicable.
How we use your data
The personal data you provide is used only for the purposes for which it was collected:
- To respond to your enquiry and produce a written quotation.
- To deliver the clearance, biohazard or related service you have engaged us for.
- To liaise with third parties who you have authorised — typically loss adjusters, probate solicitors, executors, social workers or local authority housing officers.
- To comply with our regulatory and tax obligations.
- To improve our website and service, in aggregated form only.
Who we share data with
We share personal data only where it is necessary, and only with parties bound by appropriate data-protection obligations. These include:
- Our regulated subcontractors — for example, registered category-A clinical waste contractors and PROMPT-registered pest control specialists — where their involvement is required to deliver your job.
- Our IT, hosting, email and accounting providers, all of whom are based in the UK or the EEA and provide adequate contractual safeguards.
- Insurers, loss adjusters, solicitors or local authority officers, where you have specifically authorised us to do so.
- Regulators or law-enforcement bodies, only where we are required by law to do so.
We do not sell, rent or otherwise share your personal data with marketing companies, data brokers, or any third party for advertising purposes.
How long we keep data
We retain enquiry data for up to 24 months from the last contact, customer records and invoicing data for the statutory period of 6 years following the end of the financial year in which the work was completed, and waste-transfer paperwork for the statutory 2-year period (or longer where contractually required by a customer). Job photographs are retained for the duration of any potential insurance or legal claim window — typically 6 years — and then securely destroyed.
Security
We hold personal data on UK-hosted servers protected by industry-standard encryption and access controls. Internally, access is restricted on a need-to-know basis and logged. Paper records, where they exist, are held in locked cabinets in our depots and shredded by a registered confidential-waste contractor at end of life. We will report any qualifying personal data breach to the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and notify affected individuals where required by law.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to: be informed about how we use your data; access a copy of the data we hold about you; have inaccurate data corrected; request erasure of your data ("right to be forgotten") in certain circumstances; restrict or object to processing; data portability; and rights in relation to automated decision-making (we do not carry out any automated decision-making). To exercise any of these rights please email info@emergencyhouseclearance.co.uk.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, but we'd appreciate the opportunity to put things right first.
Cookies
This website uses only strictly-necessary cookies for site functionality. We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels or third-party social-media trackers. Aggregated, anonymised analytics are used to understand traffic patterns and improve the site.
Changes to this notice
We may update this notice from time to time. The "last updated" date at the top of the page will reflect the most recent version. Any material changes will be highlighted on this page.
Contact
To exercise your rights or to ask any question about this notice, please contact us at info@emergencyhouseclearance.co.uk or write to: Data Protection, Emergency House Clearance, United Kingdom.