01Who we are
Essex Block Management manages blocks of flats and estates of houses in Essex. The company is Essex Block Management Limited, registered in England and Wales, number 16363555. We are the controller of the personal data described on this page. Write to us at info@essexblockmanagement.co.uk. By post: Essex Block Management, Unit 3, Kingsdale Business Centre, Regina Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 1PE.
Essex Block Management Limited (company number 16363555) is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office as a data controller, registration number ZC264179.
02What we collect, and why
When you ask for a quotation
The form on our site asks for your name, the role you hold, your email address, your telephone number, the name and address of the block or estate, the number of flats or homes, the current agent if there is one, what the building is like, and anything else you choose to tell us. We use it to prepare and send the quotation you asked for, to answer your questions, and to arrange a visit if you want one. The lawful basis is that you asked us to, which the law calls taking steps at your request before entering into a contract.
If you came from one of our adverts
When you arrive from a Google advert, the address of the page carries a click reference from Google, the words searched for and which advert was shown. If you send us a form, those details and the first page you landed on are sent with it, so that we know which adverts bring enquiries. We do not use a cookie or store anything on your device for this, and we use the details only to judge our advertising. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in knowing where enquiries come from.
If you register as a contractor
Registration runs on Servanda, the software we manage our buildings with. We hold the business and contact details you give and the documents you upload (insurance, accreditations and a reference) to decide whether to instruct you, to check that your cover is current and to contact you about work. We keep them while you are on our list, and remove them if you ask to come off it, unless we need them to account for work already done.
When you ask for a free pack
The switching pack form asks for your name, your email address, the name of your building and the number of homes. The right to manage pack form also asks for your telephone number if you choose to give it, the building's address, how many flats are on long leases and ready to take part, and the names of the freeholder and the managing agent if you know them. We use your answers to make the pack, to email it to you, and to follow up. The right to manage pack is put together by our own software from your answers, and no decision about you is made by it. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in answering your request, and you can tell us to stop writing at any time.
When you write to us
Your email address, your name and what you wrote, used to answer you. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in answering the people who write to us.
When we manage your building
If your block or estate appoints us, we hold the names, addresses, contact details and account records of the leaseholders and residents, because the lease, the law and the management agreement require us to demand, collect and account for the service charge and to keep the building safe. That processing is described in the privacy notice we give every resident when we take a building on, and it lives in our software, Servanda.
When you visit the site
Our hosting provider keeps short-lived server logs, including your IP address, for security. We count visits with Vercel Web Analytics, to see which pages are read. It sets no cookies and keeps no IP address or anything else that identifies you: a visit is counted from an anonymous value that changes every day. If you message us on WhatsApp, the message is carried by WhatsApp (Meta Platforms Ireland), under its own terms; we keep it only as long as the enquiry needs. The site has no login.
03How we use cookies
We use Google cookies, and only if you accept them: Google Ads cookies that tell us which of our adverts on Google led to an enquiry, and Google Analytics cookies that tell us how the site is used, such as which pages are read. They are loaded through Google Tag Manager. They are not used to show you adverts elsewhere or to build a profile of you. If you say no, or ignore the question, none of these Google tags is loaded and nothing is sent to Google. Your choice is remembered in your own browser, and you can change it at any time.
04How we use artificial intelligence
We use AI tools in the office to help us draft documents, read and sort correspondence and check records. Every letter, demand, notice and decision that affects you is read and approved by a named person before it goes out. We make no decision about you by automated means alone that has a legal or similarly significant effect. Your data is not used to train AI models, by us or by the providers we use, and the providers are bound by contract to process it only on our instructions.
05Who else sees it
We share personal data only with the providers who run the services behind this site and our office, each under a written contract, and only for the purpose named here.
| Provider | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Hosts this website and the function that sends your quotation, and counts visits anonymously | United Kingdom and European Union regions, with standard contractual clauses for any transfer |
| Shows our adverts on Google Search and, only if you accept the cookies, measures which adverts lead to an enquiry and how the site is used (Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager) | European Union and United States, with standard contractual clauses | |
| Add People Ltd | Runs our Google adverts for us and reads the results in our Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts. It does not receive the forms you send us | United Kingdom |
| Resend | Sends the quotation email to you and a copy to us | Sent from Resend's European Union region (Ireland). Resend is a United States company, so any transfer there is under the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework |
| Google Workspace | Our office email, calendar and documents, including the inbox your enquiry arrives in | United Kingdom and European Union data regions where offered, with standard contractual clauses for any transfer |
| Servanda Ltd | The software we manage buildings on, which Samuel Milne owns | United Kingdom |
| Anthropic | Helps us draft and sort letters and documents (Claude). It makes no decision about you; every letter, demand and notice is read and approved by a named person before it goes out | United States, with the UK addendum to the standard contractual clauses |
We do not sell personal data and we do not pass it to anyone for marketing. Where the law or a court requires us to disclose it, we will.
06How long we keep it
A quotation enquiry or pack request that does not lead to an appointment is deleted twelve months after our last contact with you. Correspondence about a building we manage is kept for the life of the appointment and for six years afterwards, because the accounts and the law require it. Server logs are kept for thirty days.
07Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it where we have no continuing reason to keep it, object to our processing of it, and ask us to restrict it while a question is resolved. Write to info@essexblockmanagement.co.uk. We answer within one month. If you are not satisfied with our answer you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.
08Changes
We will update this page when the way we handle personal data changes, and the date at the top will move.