Privacy policy

This is the bit the lawyers insist on. We're a small block-management firm run by actual people, not a faceless corporation. But if we're going to hold any of your details, the law says we have to tell you exactly what we've got, where we got it, and what we do with it. So here it is, in plain English rather than legalese.

Who we are

Blocks Alliance Limited (company no. 17269606, registered in England). In data-protection terms we're the "data controller", which just means we're the ones responsible for looking after your information. If you have a question, want to see what we hold, or want us to remove your details, email hello@blocksalliance.com and a real person will reply.

What we hold, and where we got it

There are only two ways your details end up with us.

1. We wrote to you about managing your block

If you received a letter from us because you're a director of a residents' management company (RMC) or right to manage (RTM) company, here's the full picture:

• What we have: your name, the company you're a director of, and the correspondence address listed for you. That's it.
• Where we got it: the public Companies House register (the same one anyone can search), which lists the directors of every UK company. We looked you up there. We didn't buy your details off a list or get them from a data broker.
• Why we got in touch: you've recently taken on running a residential block, which is a lot of work and legal responsibility, and managing blocks is exactly what we do. So we wrote to introduce ourselves, once. We're not going to keep pestering you.
• The legal basis: "legitimate interests" under Article 6(1)(f) of the UK GDPR. In plain terms, the law lets us send a relevant, one-off message to someone in your position, as long as it's reasonable and you can tell us to stop. You can: see below.
• How long we keep it: only as long as we need it to get in touch. If you ask us to stop, we delete your details and keep just a small note that you asked, purely so we don't write to you again by mistake.

2. You got in touch with us

If you fill in the form on our contact page or send us an email, we keep what you give us: your name, email, phone number (if you add one), and your message. We use it to reply and to run the free accounts review if you've asked for one, and nothing else. Behind the scenes your enquiry notifies our team on Slack so someone picks it up quickly. We keep it while we're helping you and for a sensible period after, then it's gone.

Who else sees it

We don't sell your information, and we never hand it to anyone else to market their own products to you. The only outsiders who touch it are the everyday tools we use to run the business: our email, hosting and messaging providers (such as Slack, for enquiries), and only as much as they need to do their job for us.

Your rights

UK data protection law gives you the right to:

• ask for a copy of what we hold about you;
• get us to fix anything that's wrong;
• ask us to delete it;
• ask us to limit what we do with it;
• object to us using it, and if you don't want marketing from us, that's the end of it;
• ask us to hand it over to you or another provider.

If you think we've got it wrong, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data-protection regulator, at ico.org.uk. We'd rather you gave us the chance to sort it out first, though, so do get in touch.

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If this policy changes

We may update this from time to time. When we do, the new version goes up here and we'll change the "last updated" date at the top so you can tell something has changed.