Privacy notice

Last updated 30 September 2026.

This notice explains how we use personal information about people who visit our website, contact us, join our waiting list, apply to rent a home, or otherwise deal with us, such as commercial tenants, allotment holders, leaseholders and neighbours. Our tenants, guarantors and contractors have their own notices, which we give them, and which are published at rlancaster.co.uk/privacy/tenants/ and rlancaster.co.uk/privacy/contractors/.

1. Who we are

R. Lancaster & Sons (Cleveleys) Limited is the controller of your information. We are registered with the UK data protection regulator, the Information Commission (known as the ICO), registration number ZA356388.

2. When you contact us

If you email, phone, write or message us, we keep your name, contact details and what you tell us, so that we can reply and keep a record. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in answering you and running our business (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)), or taking steps you ask for before a contract, such as arranging a viewing (Article 6(1)(b)). We keep general enquiries for at least 2 years, and longer where they become part of a tenancy or another record.

If you choose to message us through a messaging app, the app's provider handles those messages under its own terms.

Commercial property enquiries in the Bournemouth area are handled by our agents, Nettleship Sawyer, who have their own privacy notice.

3. Our waiting list

If you join our waiting list on this website, we collect your name, email address, the areas and type of home you are interested in, when you would like to move, the answers you tick in "What we look for", and a record of your consent (the wording you agreed to and when).

We use these details only to email you when one of our homes becomes available in an area you chose, and to see how well it might suit you. Our lawful basis is your consent (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(a)), which is also what regulation 22 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 requires before we email you. Joining is optional.

You can withdraw your consent at any time: use the unsubscribe link in any of our emails or our leave the list page, or email admin@rlancaster.co.uk. After you leave, we keep only your email address and the date you left, so that we never email you again by mistake.

We keep your details until you leave the list, which you can do whenever you like. Only our own team sees your details, and we send the emails from our own systems.

4. Applying to rent a home

When you enquire about or book a viewing of one of our homes, often through an online letting platform, we receive your name, contact details and what you tell us about yourself and your plans. If you apply, we reference you through our tenant referencing company and check your right to rent, as the law requires.

Our privacy notice for tenants, guarantors and people who live with them explains this in full, including our lawful bases, who we share information with and how long we keep it. We keep applications that do not lead to a tenancy for 12 months after our decision.

5. How we measure use of this website

To improve this website, we record how it is used: which pages and sections are viewed and for how long, what is clicked, which homes and photos are looked at, how far people get through the waiting list form (not what they type), which website they came from, whether they are on a phone, tablet or computer, and roughly where they are (town or city and country), worked out from their internet address.

This is collected by our own server only. We use no cookies for it and share it with no one else. We do not store your IP address or your browser's full identifying details with these statistics. A random number that links the pages of a single visit is deleted from your browser when you close the tab, so we cannot follow you from one visit to the next. Your approximate location is looked up on our own server at the moment of your visit, using the DB-IP City Lite database (licensed under CC BY 4.0), and only the town or city and country are kept. This location is often your internet provider's rather than your own.

Separately, our server keeps its own access records for security and to count visitors. These hold a shortened form of your IP address, which cannot identify your connection on its own.

We rely on the exception for statistics about how a website is used in paragraph 5 of Schedule A1 to the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, and on our legitimate interest in improving our service (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). We keep these records for up to 12 months.

You can object at any time, free of charge. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, we collect nothing. You can also use the button below, which stores your choice in this browser only.

6. Commercial tenants, allotment holders, leaseholders, neighbours and others

If you rent commercial premises, a workshop or an allotment from us, or guarantee a business lease, we keep your contact details, the lease or agreement, rent and payment records, and any identity, credit and financial checks made before letting, including identity checks our agents must carry out by law. If you are a leaseholder of one of our properties, a neighbour, or someone else we deal with about our properties, we keep your contact details and our correspondence, and records such as ground rent, consents and notices. We get these details from you, from leases and title records, from our agents, or from people who contact us about the property. We use them to manage the property and our legal relationship with you (Article 6(1)(b) or (c)), and in our legitimate interest in letting to businesses that can meet the rent, looking after our properties and resolving disputes (Article 6(1)(f)). We keep them while the matter or relationship continues and for at least 6 years afterwards, and longer where a lease, deed or property record needs it.

7. Who we share information with

We share information only where needed: with the organisations named above, our professional advisers (such as solicitors, accountants and surveyors), our insurers, councils and other public bodies where the law requires or where they ask for information they need for their public tasks, and the police to prevent or detect crime. For those last two we rely on recognised legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(ea) and paragraphs 1 and 5 of Annex 1).

Our records are kept on systems run for us by IT and software providers acting only on our instructions. Our own server, which also runs this website, is hosted in the UK.

We use an AI assistant, which runs on our own server, to help our team read and organise emails and records and prepare drafts. It sends the minimum text needed to an AI service provider acting only on our instructions under a data processing agreement, which keeps it for a limited time and does not use it to train its models. People make every decision. We do not make decisions about you by automated means alone.

8. Transfers outside the UK

Some of our providers may handle information outside the UK, for example in the United States. Where information leaves the UK, it is protected as UK law requires, either because the UK has approved the protection in that country or by contract terms approved in the UK, such as the International Data Transfer Addendum. You can ask us for details.

9. Your rights

You have the right to ask for a copy of your information, to have it corrected, to have it deleted where we no longer need it, to restrict how we use it, to object to uses based on legitimate interests, to receive information you gave us in a reusable format, to withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it, and to complain to us and to the regulator. Some rights have limits, which we will explain if they apply. Asking is free. We will reply within one month. For a complex request we may extend this by up to two further months and will tell you why, and the time pauses if we need to ask you which information you are looking for.

10. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first, at admin@rlancaster.co.uk or by phone or post. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and deal with it without undue delay. You can also complain to the UK data protection regulator, the Information Commission (known as the ICO), at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113. You can go to them at any time, but we would welcome the chance to put things right first.

11. Security and changes

Access is limited to the people who need it for their work. If something goes wrong, we will tell you and the regulator where the law requires. We will update this page if anything changes; the date at the top shows the latest version.