Privacy & Cookie Policy

Ace Fire & Security Systems Limited (hereinafter known as the Company) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Policy has been written in for compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and to explain when and why we collect personal information about people who are employees or our clients or potential clients, how the Company uses it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure. We are registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and our Registration No. is: ZA187544.

We may change this Policy from time to time so please check that you have the current version. If you are using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent to us in writing at Ace Fire & Security Systems Limited, 1, St Martins Business Centre, Cambridge Road, Bedford, MK42 0LF.

Who are we?

Founded in 1990, Ace Fire & Security Systems has maintained focus on the same core business from day one: Fire and security systems for organisations and consumers.

Over the past thirty years we have grown both organically and through acquisition to broaden both our technical capability and geographic coverage.

Our investments include:

– Prosec – Specialists in hotel and leisure club fire and security systems

– Domestic security specialists

– Closed Circuit (TV) UK – CCTV and access control specialists

-NSI Gold Certification for Security Systems and Fire Alarms (BAFE SP203-1 Scheme)

All these investments have been incorporated into our flag ship brand: Ace Fire and Security Systems Limited. Often when a company grows by acquisition, there is a high level of change amongst staff and customers.

We are very proud to say that we have lost very few staff and at present, staff are remaining with us for an average of more than seven years. Almost all the customers who were with the companies we acquired have stayed with us, valuing the greater breadth and depth of service we have been able to bring them.

The Company is an independently run company and with a team of highly skilled Installation and Service Engineers wherein we offer a professional, yet personal service where clients are guaranteed of our ongoing commitment to fulfilling all their security and fire alarm system needs, including the facility of an on-call engineer 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The Company’s security and fire alarm services are underpinned by a Quality Management System that ensures full compliance with ISO9001:2015 that is certificated under the NSI Gold Security Systems and Fire Alarms Schemes. Through the services that we provide we have attained many industry standard accreditations.

The continuing success of any company is its people and its service to customers. All our employees are committed to the quality concept while all our engineers are carefully selected for their commitment to the company’s core values along with their experience and qualifications.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about our:

a) Potential employees when they initially apply for positions in the Company and

b) Clients when they make and initial enquiry for our services and ongoing through the term of the contract services provided.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect is usually limited to name, address, and email address, contact telephone number. In relation to our clients, this may also include keyholders for the systems.

How is this information used?

We may use this information to:

– process an application for employment;

– process enquiries and orders from our clients;

– to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into;

– dealing with system users and keyholders in relation to installed and maintained systems;

– seeking views or comments on the services we provide;

– notification of changes to our services;

– Sending of information which has been requested and that may be of interest. This may include information about terms and conditions, system installations, maintenance & monitoring, and the like.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory or regulatory obligations (for example Security Screening Records are retained for term of employment plus 7 years, captured CCTV images 90 days unless required to be held for evidence). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity or as long as is set out in any relevant contract agreement.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent information to third parties other than the emergency services.

Legal disclosures. We may, in appropriate cases, voluntarily or where required by law, pass your data to the Police and similar organisations such as law enforcement agencies (including fraud prevention and detection) or other governmental agencies.

We will never share information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Product Providers with whom we work on association;

We may pass information to our third-party product providers, agents subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services on our behalf (for example for Installation works). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep all information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will never release any information to third parties beyond the emergency services or approved sub-contractors for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes in any circumstance unless we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prosecution or prevention of crime.

Third Party Product Providers we work in association with:

Due to the nature of our business, we work closely with the emergency services. The emergency services will only use such details to provide information and carry out their obligations arising from any contract entered into with us. However, we take steps to ensure that everyone’s privacy rights continue to be protected.

How will we share your personal information with Third parties?

Information that we share is detailed above and we will share this either by registered post, internet online secure services or encrypted email so that the information is as secure as we can make it.

How do we make sure that hand written notes are secure?

Notes that we make when meeting with clients and Third parties will be scanned into our secure servers when complete following the visit and then will be shredded to conform to NSI & BS Standards & codes of practice.

Our IT System

All of our company users work with either a desktop or laptop computer to access information relating to our business and customers. Our servers are secure against virus attacks and we have a very secure hardware-based firewall for additional security against cyber-attack.

All data on our IT System is Encrypted using Eset software which is protected by individual secure passwords.

Emails are encrypted using Microsoft Outlook 365.

Our telephone system

We record telephone calls into and out of our offices. If you wish to discuss any details that are held on the system you will need to write to us or provide your password which we have setup for you when you initially became a customer.

If you are paying a bill by credit/debit card through our online Worldpay system, we will pause or switch off the telephone recording system so as not to record your card details.

Your choices

You will always have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. However, the Company does not undertake any direct marketing. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text. Should this change then this Policy will be updated to reflect this change.

How you can access and update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please write to us at Ace Fire & Security Systems Limited, 1, St Martins Business Centre, Cambridge Road, Bedford, MK42 0LF.

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information the Company holds about you (we may charge £10 for information requests to cover our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you).

In certain circumstances, such as where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, you have a right to require us to erase all personal data held about you. Note: There are a number of exemptions to this right, for example in relation to freedom of expression and compliance with legal obligations.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s kept securely.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our IT Systems (soft copy information) or held securely in our offices (hard copy information).

System users.

Where we have given you a password or passcode for identifying you as an authorised system user, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Profiling

We do not analyse your personal information to create a profile of your usage or any other such as interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information relevant to you.

We may make use of the information about you in order to provide you with information that directly affects you or in the case of system users, their system.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, the Company website does use cookies. We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, Operating system and browser type, for system administration. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. They help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us:

– To estimate our audience size and usage pattern.

– To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our site according to your individual interests.

– To speed up your searches.

– To recognise you when you return to our site.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site.

Links to other websites:

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. However, these are limited to our Certifications/Accreditations namely, NSI, BAFE and the like. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access these using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

18 or Under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 18 or under (although under the GDPR this is currently the under 16’s). If you are aged 18 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Transferring your information outside of UK

As part of any application for employment or the services offered to you, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the UK.

These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the UK in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this Policy.

If you access our services while you are outside the UK, your information may be transferred outside the UK in order to provide you with those services.

Website recording

At the time of publication of this Policy, our web site does not use the any web site recording service. Should this change then this Policy will be updated to reflect this change.

Your Rights Under Data Protection Legislation

You have various rights under data protection legislation:

(a) Your right to access information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act. Any access request may be subject to a fee of £10 to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.

(b) Your right to correct any errors in the information we hold about you, and to change and correct any details you have already given us. Please inform us about any changes to your details so that we can keep our records accurate and up to date.

(c) Your right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can also exercise the right at any time by writing to us at Ace Fire & Security Systems Limited, 1, St Martins Business Centre, Cambridge Road, Bedford, MK42 0LF.

Review of this Policy

We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in February 2018.

Issue status (Authorised): K J Burraway

Review date: 5th March 2020 (Authorised): K J Burraway