Privacy and Cookies Policy

Introduction

McCarthy Stone respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

1. Important information and who we are

Purpose of this privacy notice

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how McCarthy Stone collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you register your interest in a McCarthy Stone development, sign up to a McCarthy Stone newsletter or take part in a competition.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

Controller

McCarthy Stone is made up of different legal entities and this privacy policy is issued on behalf of the McCarthy Stone Group. When we mention "McCarthy Stone", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy policy, we are referring to the relevant company in the McCarthy Stone Group responsible for processing your data. McCarthy & Stone Retirement Lifestyles Limited is the controller and responsible for this website.

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy If you have any questions about this privacy policyplease contact the DPM using the details set out below.

Contact details

Email address: [email protected] 

Alternatively you can write to:

 FAO: Data Protection Manager – McCarthy Stone , 4th Floor 100 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth BH8 8AQ.

Complaints

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 (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance. 

Changes to the privacy notice

This version was last updated on 18^th June 2024.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

2. The data we collect 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).

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

Please note, calls to or from McCarthy Stone may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes.

Where relevant we may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together follows:

• Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
• Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Health Data includes medical history in relation to physical and mental state of an individual, provision of health care services
• Financial Data includes bank account, payment card details and personal financial information
• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website
• Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
• Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

We may collect the following Special Categories of Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union memberships information about your health and genetic and biometric data). We also may collect information about criminal convictions and offences.

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and if you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3. How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. 

This includes personal data you provide when you:

• register your interest in one of our developments via the website;
• register your interest in one of our developments via the phone;
• subscribe to marketing communications or publications;
• attend an event;
• enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
• give us some feedback.

Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy below for further details.

Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:

Technical Data from the following parties:

• analytics providers;
• advertising networks; and
• search information providers.
• Identity and Contact Data from data brokers or aggregators.
• Identity and Contact Data from publicly available sources.
• Identity and Contact Data via estate agent customer referrals and/or homeowner referrals

4. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Where you have provided us with your specific and informed consent;
• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you;
• 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; and
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

5. Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. If you wish to update the nature of your consent or your communication preferences please contact 0800 201 4499.

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have provided us with your specific and informed consent to receiving such marketing and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing..

Third-party marketing

We may occasionally share your personal data with companies outside the McCarthy Stone group of companies, such as Google and Facebook, for marketing purposes, however we shall always ensure that the necessary data processing agreements are in place between our businesses to ensure the security of any data processing.

6. Opting out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by visiting our website or by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you. Or by emailing [email protected] or calling 0800 201 4499.

7. Cookies

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our website.

8. Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data 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 you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data 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 data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

9. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 6above.

• External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions and the signed data processing agreement between us and them.

10. International transfers

Some of our external third parties are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is met:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission. For further details, see European Commission: Adequacy of the protection of personal data in non-EU countries.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe. For further details, see European Commission: Model contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries. 
• Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US. For further details, see European Commission: EU-US Privacy Shield.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.

11. Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

12. Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data 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.

By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

13. Glossary

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

14. Third Parties 

We will share your data with the property management company who provides the management service at your development.

This will be either Your Life Management Services Limited or McCarthy Stone Management Services Limited depending on your development. We also use third party data processors who provide certain aspects of the services at your development, for example catering contractors or personal alarm providers. We have contracts in place with all of our data processors which means that they can only process your personal data in accordance with our express instructions. They cannot share your personal data with any other organisation apart from us and must process any personal data securely and in accordance with data protection law.

Where you have entered into a contract for us to support your house move, we may share your personal data with third parties. Such third parties could include solicitors, estate agents, removals companies, and home exchange companies.

There are also some circumstances in which we are legally obliged to share information, for example with local authorities.

We may occasionally share your information with third parties, such as Google and Facebook, for marketing purposes.

15. Your Legal Rights

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data 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 data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data 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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

How to make a request

To request access to your records (Data Subject Access Request), correction, erasure, to object to processing, request restriction of processing, request transfer od data or withdraw consent to process your data, please contact [email protected]

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 your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Our cookie policy

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, your computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small text file that is downloaded onto ‘terminal equipment’ (e.g. a computer or smartphone) when the user accesses a website. It allows the website to recognise that user’s device and store some information about the user’s preferences or past actions.

How does a Cookie relate to your personal data?

The GDPR explicitly states that online identifiers, even if they are pseudonymous or if they do not directly identify an individual, will be considered personal data if there is potential for an individual to be identified or singled out. Therefore, any persistent cookie that is unique to the device by virtue of its attributes or stored values fits the criteria for personal data.

Because of this, we must ask for your consent to use cookies when you access our site whilst also making it just as easy for you to withdraw this consent at a later date should you wish to.

Which cookies do McCarthy Stone use?

The below accordion details the Cookies that we use and the purpose for which this Cookie is used.

Terms and Conditions

For our full terms and conditions, please click here.