Last updated: 25 May 2018

Introduction

We are an estate agent specialising in the sale, letting and management of residential and commercial properties, businesses or land on behalf of our customers. Our customers being landlords, tenants, property sellers and property buyers.

On behalf of our customers we value and market properties involving frequent liaison with banks, building societies, mortgage brokers, surveyors, solicitors, reference/credit checking organisations, deposit protection schemes, local authorities and other estate agencies, during transactions.

Here, at Lakin & Co, we take the privacy of your personal information seriously; we will only use your personal information to administer payments, to provide the services you request from us and to comply with the law.

Most importantly, we have no intention of sharing your personal information with third-parties for marketing purposes and we are committed to ensuring your personal information is gathered securely and then stored securely on our UK based servers.

For applicants

We have a legitimate interest in gathering the personal information necessary to facilitate and to maintain contact with new applicants; customer name, postal address, email address and telephone number.

To stay in contact with you, we use the number one supplier of UK web-based estate agent software www.vebra.info This online system for estate agents allows us to facilitate ‘property matching’, a method designed to meet the specific property requirements detailed to us by prospective tenants and prospective property buyers.

As an estate agent we have a legal obligation under

  • the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 to gather identity related personal information for all property sellers and property buyers including photo id and to securely store the information for five years following the end of our business relationship.
  • the Right to Rent Regulations 2016 which require us, on behalf of our landlords, to gather identity related personal information for all tenants in the form of photo id and/or a combination of certified documents and to securely store the information for one year following the end of our business relationship.

For tenant referencing Lakin & Co use the independent referencing company, Goodlord www.goodlord.co ; providing fast, accurate and reliable tenant references. As a tenant you are responsible for completing the Goodlord webform. Be aware you may be asked to make preference choices on the Goodlord webform; for example, Goodlord will try and establish an ongoing business relationship with you, offering specialist insurance to cover personal possessions and tenant liability.

Lakin & Co have a legitimate interest in requesting photo id and carrying out land registry searches for tenants, buyers, landlords and property sellers.

Should we not enter into a business relationship we will erase from our database all the personal information we have gathered to date. We will do this 12 months following initial contact or act on your verbal request or on receipt of your email request, sent to [email protected] , whichever is the sooner.

We will erase your personal information within thirty days of such a request.

For customers

Tenancy and Agency Agreements confirm bank details which are added to the personal information already gathered and securely stored. We use the UK’s leading letting and property management software, CFPwinMan www.cfp-software.co.uk , to securely store tenant and landlord information.

On behalf of our landlords, for those tenants who rent their home on an assured shorthold tenancy (most of our tenants) we have a legal obligation to protect your damage deposit in a government-backed tenancy deposit scheme (TDP). Lakin & Co use the following TDP schemes:

See the following links for further information regarding the management of your personal information and your ‘right to erasure’ on these schemes:

At the end of a tenancy Lakin & Co has a legitimate interest to collect and to send meter readings to the utility companies and has a legal obligation under The Council Tax Regulations 1992 to advise the relevant local council of a tenant change. At the same time, we confirm the personal information of the current tenant(s), the new tenant(s) and the landlord. This action does not change or replace the responsibilities laid out in The Tenancy Agreement, it is taken to comply with the law and to protect all our customers from unnecessary disputes.

Where Lakin & Co do not manage the property on behalf of the landlord, we are not party to the tenancy agreement, and do not have an ongoing business relationship with the tenancy. Let-Only landlords employ our services to find tenants, complete contract paperwork, and monies taken paid over to them.

Retention of financial records

Lakin & Co have a legal obligation to comply with HMRC accounting regulations for the retention and secure storage of financial records. As a limited company we must keep detailed records for a minimum of six years from the end of the last company financial year they relate to, covering all transactions.

Contracting work orders

Where property repairs are necessary, on behalf of tenants or landlords, Lakin & Co will schedule and assign work orders to local contractors. Each work order clearly states that the personal information contained therein cannot be used by the contractor for any other marketing purpose.

Erasure – ‘the right to be forgotten’

If your business relationship with Lakin & Co ends and assuming our legal obligations for the timely retention and storage of your personal information have been met, Lakin & Co will erase the relevant personal information from their database, apart from the postal address of the property sold or rented.

Lakin & Co have a legitimate interest in retaining this information as it provides location details and sales history, invaluable for the development of our business strategy.

Contact forms

If you use a form on Lakin & Co’s website to make contact please note that Lakin & Co will only use the information submitted for customer service purposes, the information submitted is sent to Lakin & Co by email. Any information received will not be used for general marketing purposes.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Anti Money Laundering Regulations

The 2017 regulations require estate agents to complete multiple verification checks on both property Vendors and Purchasers. In order to comply with the regulations, we may use your details provided to carry out checks for anti-money laundering purposes and require photo ID, proof of address i.e. utility bill, which contains your full name and date of birth. We may use some of your details to run checks via ETSOS. http://www.etsos.co.uk.

In line with The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, as a regulated profession, we are duty bound to carry out due diligence on all of our clients to confirm their identity. We may use an electronic verification system to carryout the required checks. This system allows us to verify you from basic details using electronic data, however it is not a credit check of any kind so will have no effect on you or your credit history.

We will undertake a search with Experian for the purposes of verifying your identity. To do so Experian may check the details you supply against any particulars on any database (public or otherwise) to which they have access. They may also use your details in the future to assist other companies for verification purposes. A record of the search will be retained. Should you require more information on how we carry out ownership and money launder checks please contact us.

When making an offer to purchase a property we will undertake a search with Experian for the purposes of verifying my identity. To do so Experian may check the details you supply against any particulars on any database (public of otherwise) to which they have access. They may also use your details in the future to assist other companies for verification purposes. A record of the search will be retained.