Privacy & Ethical Policy
This privacy policy sets out how Tregothnan uses and protects any information that you give Tregothnan when you use our services to place on order, book an experience or book a holiday. This could be either by telephone, email or via our website.
Tregothnan is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using our services and our website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.
Tregothnan may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from 25TH May 2018.
Data protection principles
We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
4. Accurate and kept up to date.
5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
6. Kept securely.
The kind of information we hold about you
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect the following information:
• Name
• Contact information including email address
• Demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests
• Other information relevant to customer surveys and/or offers
How is your personal information collected?
We collect personal information about customers through account application forms, via telephone or by website orders, taken directly from customers. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.
How we will use information about you
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
1. Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you.
2. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
3. Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
1. Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
2. Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with a better service, and in particular for the following reasons:
• Processing and despatch of your order
• Internal record keeping
• We may use the information to improve our products and services
• We may periodically send promotional email about new products, special offers or other information which we think you may find interesting using the email address which you have provided.
• From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. We may contact you by email, phone, fax or mail. We will only do this if you have consented
to it. At any time you may restrict or remove your consent – see Controlling Your Personal Information.
• We may use the information to customise the website according to your interests.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose.
If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
When might you share my personal information with other entities in the group?
We will not share your personal information with other entities in our group.
Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from the Estate Director.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
Data retention
How long will you use my information for?
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer an employee, worker or contractor of the company we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction
Your duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.
Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the Estate Director in writing.
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Right to withdraw consent
In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Estate Director. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
Concerns regarding data privacy
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Estate Director (data privacy manager). You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.
Changes to this privacy notice
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
Environmental & Ethical Trading Policy
Tregothnan complies with ethical trading standards and all employees sign up to the anti- modern slavery regulations. Tregothnan has been protecting and sustaining the environment since 1334. Our lands are some of the most beautiful in UK and our practices all help preserve an unusually high level of biodiversity. The same family have lived at Tregothnan without a break since 1334. Tregothnan tenants are multi-generational with many families cultivating the land for four or five successions. Unusually, Tregothnan houses many of their employees and manages funds for the relief of individual or family hardship. It has developed the UK’s largest fundraising for charity from a garden opening and donates over £100,000. to charity and good causes annually.
Tregothnan supports sustainable agriculture by overseeing all aspects of land management on its Estate. We operate in partnership with Natural England on a number of our sites through the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme. We have many sites which are designated SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest), large areas are AONBs (Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and/or SACs (Special Areas of Conservation). A number of our coastal lands, some of the inland historic mine working areas and many of the miles of Cornish hedges we maintain have World Heritage designation. Many of our marine areas are MPAs (Marine Protected Areas).
Tregothnan gardens are a world safe house for some of the most endangered plant species on the planet including the Wollemi Pine (dinosaur tree). Some of the Camellias are over two hundred years old and include historic first introductions. The world’s leading botanical institutes, including The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, gift many threatened species for safekeeping at Tregothnan.
All our practices have a strong spine of environmental compliance running through them, from tea production which is usually harvested from April to October, is pioneering in Western Europe. This creates the most British tea in history. Most of the flowers for our floristry business are grown on site. Tregothnan is seeking to reinvent floristry to make it British, local and sustainable.
Our CO2 footprint is negative – we benefit from 2500 hectares of well managed woodland including ancient chestnut coppice in Kent. This is still practised as a viable source of land management and creates perfect habitat for rare species such as Nightjar. However, we vastly exceed such requirements.
We continue to dedicate land and resources to improving local community access to natural beauty – three woodland plantations at Gerrans, Chacewater and Eglos Merther were recently dedicated to the communities and the general public to enjoy.
The Estate has invested in and continues to invest in sustainable and renewable energy including biomass heat generation using waste woodchip from sustainable forestry operations, solar and wind energy and hydro.
Tregothnan is playing a leading role in increasing the honey bee population in Cornwall to encourage higher levels of pollination and ultimately greater yields in the production of food for human consumption. Our in house knowledge has been taken from 75 years of global study on managing bees and raising pollination rates. Our education programmes help us to translate this knowledge further afield.
Our policy is simply to leave our lands in a better, more bio diverse and sustainable condition than was handed to us by our previous generation. Given the beauty of the Estate, this is no small challenge.
This policy is driven from the top and cascades through our organisation.
Further details are online www.tregothnan.co.uk
September 2023