Privacy Policy

Introduction

This is the privacy notice for Somerset Care. It explains what personal information we collect about you and how we will use it, including when you access https://www.somersetcare.co.uk.

This website (the “Somerset Care website”) is operated by Somerset Care Ltd (“Somerset Care”, “we”, or “us”). Somerset Care complies with its obligations – under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), Data Protection Act 2018, Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, and relevant data protection laws – by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; and by protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure.

We are committed to ensuring the personal information we hold about you is kept safe and that you understand how this information will be used. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact us using the details at the end of this notice.

We may change our privacy notice so please check this page from time to time.

What kind of information we collect and why

Somerset Care will collect information that identifies you or relates to you as an individual (“Personal Information”). This includes when you visit our site as it helps us to improve your user experience. The types of information we collect include: Name, Postal address, Telephone number, Email address.

Information required when making an application for a job offered by Somerset Care. This includes; date of birth, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, gender re-assignment, faith, disability, education and work history, criminal declaration and the photograph you upload as part of your application. Please see the Employee Privacy Notice for detailed information.

Information required to onboard successful applicants as employees, including right to work, background screening, medical information, next of kin details, bank details.

We also collect aggregate information about you and your use of our site whenever you visit us online. For instance, we may collect various forms of “click stream” information such as entry and exit points for our site (i.e. referring URLs or domains), site traffic statistics, page views, impressions, and operating system and browser type.

In addition, when users request pages on our site, our servers automatically log their IP addresses (the number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are accessing the internet).

We use third-party software that tracks traffic directed to our site from affiliate sites and the purchases that result from this traffic. This information is aggregated and is not tied to an individual application or inquiry. This aggregated information will not be used to identify you or be correlated to you individually for external purposes. We will only collect, store, and share aggregate information that does not personally identify you. We will only share information with other companies in limited circumstances and only for specific purposes (for example, for our analysis of use of our website). When we share such information with other companies, it is not traceable to any particular user, and will not be used to contact you.

Why we collect this information

We will only collect and use your personal information in accordance with relevant data protection laws. Our legal basis for processing your personal information are as follows:

Consent: you have consented to us using your data for specific purposes; when this is required we will ask you to opt-in to provide your consent.

Contract fulfilment: your personal information is required for us to fulfil a contract that we hold with you; the types of data we will collect and the ways we will use it will be outlined in the contract between you and Somerset Care.

Legitimate interest: we have a business reason to use your information, which does not unfairly affect your interests, rights or freedom; we will explain our legitimate interest for using your data where this is the case. You have the right to object to us using your personal information on this basis.

How we use the personal information collected

Somerset Care may use personal information about you for purposes described in this notice or disclosed to you on our site. We collect personal information from visitors of the Somerset Care website using online forms, information from phone calls, when you email us your details, or apply for a job. This personal information will only be used for the following purposes:

Dealing, responding, and following up your enquiries and requests;
Processing of your job application;
Assist in the assessment of pre-assessment form completion.
Sending you our newsletter, if you request this; and
Informing you of additional products or services which may be of interest to you.

We will only look to request and collect necessary information from you in line with the above. If you are an employee or customer of Somerset Care, further detail of how we process your personal information can be found in our Employee Privacy Notice, Customer Privacy Notice or Easy Read Customer Privacy Notice, which can be provided to you upon request.

The information we hold will be, to the best of our knowledge, accurate and up to date. If, however, you find errors or inaccuracies in your personal information, please let us know and we will erase, complete, or amend that information as far as it is possible to do so, upon request.

When you visit the Somerset Care website and provide personal information, you will be sharing this information with the Somerset Care Group alone, unless stated and you are informed otherwise.

At this time, we do not share any data for planning or research purposes for which the national data opt-out would apply. We review this on an annual basis and for any new processing.

How we keep you updated on our products and services

If you opt-in to receive our newsletter, or for updates on our products and services, we may communicate with you occasionally about other Somerset Care opportunities. If you consented to receive this additional information, we want you to know that we will always do our best to provide information to you that is up-to-date and relevant, whether that is by email, post, text or phone. All our newsletter communications include the option to unsubscribe at any time. We are also currently developing an online preference centre to allow all our contacts to manage how they are contacted. In the meantime, if you wish to change how we contact you, please email us at: [email protected].

How we may disclose personal information

Your privacy is very important to us. In some circumstances, we may need to share your information with other organisations to deliver our work. This includes sharing information with partners, such as Local Authorities who may need to respond to your requests or enquiries or help us operate and improve our site or any services offered by Somerset Care.

We won’t sell your personal information or share it with anyone outside of Somerset Care for the purposes of marketing.

Somerset Care will process or disclose any personal information as needed to satisfy any law, regulation or legal request, to protect the integrity of the site, to fulfil your requests, or to cooperate in any law enforcement investigation or an investigation on a matter of public safety.

How long we keep your information for

We retain a record of your Personal Data to provide you with a high quality and consistent service. We will always retain your Personal Data in accordance with the relevant data protection laws and never retain your information for longer than is necessary. Somerset Care follows a retention schedule which outlines how long we will retain your Personal Data. Unless otherwise required by law, your data will be retained for the period specified in our retention schedule and then securely deleted in accordance with our internal policies and procedures.

Your right to access and correct your personal information

Under the UK GDPR, you have the following rights:

The right to rectification: the right to ask us to update any of your personal information that is incorrect or incomplete
The right to erasure: the right to ask us to delete your personal information from our systems. This is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’
The right to access: the right to see what information we hold about you
The right to restrict processing: the right to ask us to stop using your personal data
The right to data portability: the right to request a copy of your personal information so that you can reuse it for your own purposes
The right to object: the right to object to use processing certain types of information

If you would like to contact us about any of these rights, please email us at [email protected] or write to us at: Data Protection Officer, Somerset Care Limited, Acacia House, Blackbrook Park Avenue, Taunton, Somerset, TA1 2PX.

Please provide us with your name, postal address, and email address along with the details of your requirement. We will then take reasonable steps to confirm your identity before providing you with details of any personal information we may hold about you. Therefore, please provide us with two forms of identification such as a copy of your valid passport or driving license, and a copy of a recent utility bill to confirm your address.

We will respond to you without undue delay and within 1 calendar month of receiving your request and you will not be charged for this service. We may extend this response period by up to a further 2 months if the request is complex, or if you we have received multiple requests from the same individual.

Further detail is provided in our Rights of Access to Information Policy and Data Protection Policy, both of which are available on request.

For more information about your privacy rights

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates data protection and privacy matters in the UK. They make a lot of information available on their website, and they ensure that the registered details of all data controllers are available publicly. You can access them here https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public.

Complaints and concerns

If you have concerns about how we use your personal data, you have the right to make a complaint directly to us. Under data protection law, you must normally raise your complaint with us first before the ICO will consider it. You can raise a data protection complaint by:

Emailing: [email protected]

By Post: Data Protection Officer, Somerset Care Limited, Acacia House, Blackbrook Park Avenue, Taunton, Somerset, TA1 2PX

We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, and investigate and respond to it without undue delay. We will keep you informed of progress and tell you the outcome once our review is complete.

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your complaint, you have the right to raise the matter with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Website: https://www.ico.org.uk

Helpline: 0303 123 1113

Use of cookies by this website

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. Any cookies that may be used by this website are used either solely on a per session basis or to maintain user preferences. Cookies are not shared with any third parties. You can update your cookie preferences by clicking the ‘Cookie Settings’ link in the left hand corner of this page.

Social networking and third-party sites

When you link to our pages on or through any social networking or third-party sites, please remember that you are bound by the privacy policy of the social network or third-party site and we do not control and are not responsible for the privacy practices of such sites. You should consult the privacy policy of such sites to determine the information practices of those sites.

Children’s online privacy

Somerset Care recognises the importance of protecting the privacy of children. We will not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen years. When a user discloses personal information on our site, the user is representing to us that he or she is an adult. If a child has provided Somerset Care with personally identifiable information, we ask that a parent or guardian e-mail us using the details in the Contact Us section below and we will delete the child’s information from our records.

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. Platforms, systems, and facilities in which personal data are processed are protected by secure network architectures that contain firewalls, access control and authentication protocols.

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.