Privacy Notice

This privacy notice explains our approach to any information about yourself that you might supply to us (or that might be collected from you) in your interactions with Smart Energy GB which contains personal data and sets out your rights in respect of our processing of your personal data.

This privacy notice is intended to help you make informed decisions when using our website and resources and in your other interactions with Smart Energy GB. Please take a moment to read and understand it. Use of our website is also subject to our terms of use and cookie notice, which should be read in conjunction with this privacy notice.

Please also note that this privacy notice only applies to the use of personal data collected by Smart Energy GB during your communications with us. It also applies to any communications with our carefully selected service providers that we rely on to carry out some of our activity, but it does not apply to personal data collected during your communications with third parties.

Smart Energy GB, the voice of the national smart meter rollout (for more information about the rollout, see About Smart Energy GB), is the data controller responsible for your personal data.

References to ("we" "us" or "our") in this privacy notice are references to Smart Energy GB.

Smart Energy GB is the trading name of Smart Metering Communications Body Limited, which is an English company.

Our company registration number is 8455995.

Our registered office is at the Crane Building, 22 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.

Our VAT registration number is 162 3606 26.

When we refer to our "campaign activity"; in this privacy notice, we are referring to our activity as the voice of the national smart meter rollout.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or want to exercise your rights (see How to access your information and your other rights?), please contact us by:

• sending an email to [email protected] 
• writing to us at Director of Finance and Operations, Smart Energy GB, Crane Building, 22 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ

We collect personal data about you in many different circumstances, most of which involve direct interaction between you and us, but some of which do not.

We collect personal data about you:

• when you create an online account with us to use our resources
• when you engage with us, or about us or smart meters more generally, on social media
• when you contact us by any means with queries, complaints etc, or you apply for a job with us
• when you ask us to send you information or resources
• when you enter prize draws or competitions
• when you choose to complete any surveys
• when you participate in any of our campaign activity, forums focus or other groups, or agree to provide any service to us
• when you comment on or review our information, resources and campaign activity
• any individual may access personal data related to them, including opinions. So if your comment or review includes information about a member of our staff that you dealt with, it may be passed on to them if requested
• when you fill in any forms. For example, if you take part in any campaign activity and we ask you for permission to feature your image in our publicity materials
• when you’ve given a third-party permission to share with us the information they hold about you
• when you apply for a job through the website
• from publicly-available sources (such as Companies House, the Electoral Register or the Land Registry) when you have given your consent to share information or where the information is made public as a matter of law.If you visit our offices which have CCTV systems operated for the security of both our visitors and staff. These systems may record your image during your visit

Personal information may be collected from you in the following ways:

5.1 Information you voluntarily provide to us

5.2 We collect and maintain personal data that you voluntarily submit to us during your use of our website and your other interactions with us (e.g. when registering to receive information from us,  during the course of correspondence and conversations with us, as part of any user support interactions, or if you participate in our campaign activity, communicate with us via social media or apply for a job with us).

5.3 In particular, in order to sign up and create an account on our website we request the following personal information from you:

• name
• company name
• title
• office location
• email address
• phone number

Or if you apply for a career through our careers page, we request the following information:

• name
• title
• email address
• phone number
• a CV
• a covering letter
• how you found out about the vacancy
• your age
• your gender
• your nationality
• your ethnic group
• your religion
• any health conditions you may have
• your sexual orientation
• whether you have any caring responsibilities

5.4 Other than the information which is definitely required to set up your account or apply for a role, you have the flexibility to provide us with as little or as much of this requested information as you like. However, the more information you provide, the more you will get out of your interactions with us.

5.5 If you contact us, we may collect additional personal data from you such as your opinion on our resources and our campaign activity:

• information we collect through your use of our website

5.6 Through our use of cookies, log files and other technologies, we may collect personal data regarding your mobile device or the computer hardware and software used to access our website. This may include the following:

• IP address of device(s) used
• browser type
• operating system and device type
• approximate location (e.g London)
• access times and dates
• referring website addresses

5.7 We also collect personal data regarding your use of and activity on our website. This personal data allows us to deliver more helpful information, services and tools. Please see our cookie policy for further information.

• your image may be recorded on CCTV if you visit our offices

• information we collect from third parties 

5.8 We may also combine personal data that we collect through your interactions with us with personal data that: a) you have provided to third parties and in respect of which you have given the third-party permission to share with us; and/or b) we have obtained from a public record.

We will only use your personal data where the law allows us to. Under data protection law, there are various grounds (also referred to as lawful basis or legal basis) on which we can rely when processing your personal data.  In some contexts more than one ground applies. We have summarised these grounds as Contract, Legal Obligation, Legitimate Interests and Consent and outline what those terms mean in the following table:

We have set out below a description of the ways we use your personal data, and which of the lawful grounds for processing we rely on to do so.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us (see How to contact us) if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around communications that we may send to you that you have not specifically asked for.

We may use your personal 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 information may be relevant for you.

You will receive communications from us about our campaign activity if you have requested information from us when you provided us with your details when you registered to use our resources or entered a competition and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving those communications.

Third party marketing

We do not sell personal data to anyone for marketing or any other purposes.

Personal data we collect automatically

When you visit Smart Energy GB website, we may also collect certain data through the use of “cookies”, tracking technologies and other automated means. See our cookie notice.

Data we collect through such means may comprise the following information relating to your interaction with our website:

• date and time of your interaction;
• originating IP address;
• domain name;
• type of browser and operating system you use (if provided by the browser);
• URL of the referring page (if provided by the browser);
• completion status of the request;
• geographic location of your device (in general not specific terms); or
• language preferences.

Sharing personal data

The data collected about you above may be shared with third parties who are facilitating the delivery of Smart Meters (e.g. Energy Companies) and who wish to contact you with information about their services as well as agencies involved in delivering services on our behalf. We will only share this data about you with energy companies where you have consented. So, if you do not want us to share your data with energy companies, you should not consent to our use of advertising cookies.

We may share personal data where it is otherwise allowed under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), where necessary to protect our or a third party’s legitimate interests, where required to comply with our obligations to regulators or law enforcement agencies or where we have obtained your prior consent to do so.

Where we engage third party providers to deliver services on our behalf, these providers are obliged to keep your details securely. In some of these arrangements, we may become joint controllers with the other organisation(s) and, where this is the case, we will inform you.

Smart Energy GB will seek to ensure that the third party we share your personal data with has sufficient systems and procedures in place to prevent the loss or misuse of personal data.

Opting out

You can ask us to stop sending you communications about our campaign activity at any time by contacting us at [email protected].

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 would like an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us (see How to contact us)

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal ground 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.

Our website may use certain cookies, pixels, beacons, log files and other technologies of which you should be aware. 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 our website may become inaccessible or not function properly. Please see our cookie notice to find out more about the cookies we use and how to manage and delete cookies.

Our website may contain links to third party websites and services. Please remember that when you use a link to go from our website to another website or you request a service from a third party, this privacy notice no longer applies.

Your browsing and interaction on any other website, or your dealings with any other third party service provider, is subject to that website or third party service provider’s own rules and policies.

We do not monitor, control, or endorse the privacy practices of any third parties.

We encourage you to become familiar with the privacy practices of every website you visit or third party service provider that you deal with and to contact them if you have any questions about their respective privacy policies and practices.

This privacy notice applies solely to personal data collected by us through our website and does not apply to these third party websites and third party service providers.

The remit of our campaign activity is Great Britain, and so there is generally no need for us to transfer your personal data outside the EEA. However, a small number of our external third party technology providers (such as the database that we use to keep track of our communications with members of the public, which is hosted by a US-based company) 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 implemented:

• 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
• we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe
• 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

If you want more information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA, please contact us (see How to contact us).

We will only keep your personal data for as long as is necessary for our purposes.  In considering how long to keep personal data, we will take into account its relevance to our business and our legal and regulatory obligations.

The smart meter rollout is due to be completed by the end of 2025, and we do not plan to keep any personal data after 2026.

Contact us (see How to contact us?) if you would like to see a copy of our retention policy, which contains more information.

We may need to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 7. How and why do we use your personal data? above.

• Service providers who provide IT and system administration services
• Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers
• Other members of the forums, focus and other groups that we facilitate for members of the energy industry and other parties concerned with the national smart meter rollout to the extent necessary to administer those forums / groups

We are committed to keeping the personal information you provide us secure and we will take reasonable precautions to protect your personal information from loss, misuse or alteration.

We have implemented information security policies, rules and technical measures to protect the personal information that we have under our control from:

• unauthorised access
• improper use or disclosure
• unauthorised modification
• unlawful destruction or accidental loss

All our employees and data processors (i.e. those who process your personal data on our behalf, for the purposes listed above), who have access to, and are associated with the processing of personal data, are obliged to respect the confidentiality of the personal data of all users of our website and anyone else we may hold personal data about.

You have the following rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you:

14.1 Your right of access

If you ask us, we’ll confirm whether we’re processing your personal data and, if so, provide you with a copy of that personal data (along with certain other details). If you require additional copies, we may need to charge a reasonable fee.

14.2 Your right to rectification

If the personal data we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, you’re entitled to have it rectified. If we've shared your personal data with others, we'll let them know about the rectification where possible. If you ask us, where possible and lawful to do so, we’ll also tell you who we’ve shared your personal data with so that you can contact them directly.

14.3 Your right to erasure

You can ask us to delete or remove your personal data in some circumstances such as where we no longer need it or you withdraw your consent (where applicable). If we've shared your personal data with others, we'll let them know about the erasure where possible. If you ask us, where possible and lawful to do so, we’ll also tell you who we’ve shared your personal data with so that you can contact them directly.

14.4 Your right to restrict processing

You can ask us to 'block' or suppress the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances such as where you contest the accuracy of that personal data or object to us processing it. It won't stop us from storing your personal data though. We'll tell you before we lift any restriction. If we've shared your personal data with others, we'll let them know about the restriction where possible. If you ask us, where possible and lawful to do so, we'll also tell you who we've shared your personal data with so that you can contact them directly.

14.5 Your right to object

You can ask us to stop processing your personal data, and we will do so, if we're:

• relying on our own or someone else’s legitimate interests to process your personal information except if we can demonstrate compelling legal grounds for the processing
• processing your personal data for direct marketing
• processing your personal data for research unless such processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest

• your rights in relation to automated decision-making and profiling

You have the right not to be subject to a decision when it’s based on automatic processing, including profiling, and it produces a legal effect or similarly significantly affects you unless such profiling is necessary for entering into, or the performance of, a contract between you and us.

14.6 Your right to withdraw consent

If we rely on your consent as our legal basis for processing your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time (see How to contact us?)

14.7 Your right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority

If you have a concern about any aspect of our privacy practices, including the way we’ve handled your personal data, you can report it to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can find details about how to do this on the ICO website at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or by calling their helpline on 0303 123 1113.

We may make changes to this privacy notice from time to time and you should tell us if your information changes.

To ensure that you are always aware of how we use your personal data we will update this privacy notice from time to time to reflect any changes to our use of your personal data. We may also make changes as required to comply with changes in applicable law or regulatory requirements. We may notify you by email of any significant changes.  However, we encourage you to review this privacy notice periodically so that you are aware of how we use your personal data.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please tell us of your personal data changes during your relationship with us (see How to contact us?)

When you use the Smart Energy GB website you are asked to provide your consent to the storing and accessing of cookies, pixels and tags on your device in accordance with the terms of our Cookie Policy. If you don't click "Accept" then we won't track your use of our website or advertising in any way, but we will keep a record of the fact that you didn't consent to our use of cookies so that we know not to track your activity.

We use YouTube to provide videos on some pages of the site. YouTube sets cookies when you visit one of these pages.

You may refuse to accept any of these cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. For a guide to disabling cookies, see www.allaboutcookies.org. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you visit the website.