Privacy policy

Most of the information we collect from you or about you is to help us manage your water account with us and to make account management decisions according to your needs. We’ll use this information to bill you for the water supply and waste water services.  We may process your information differently if you request other products or services from us (see below). See our policies here

To provide our services to you, we need to collect, process and store a variety of information about you that may be personal or sensitive in nature.  In most cases, the information we collect is provided by you directly. This is one of the ways we can ensure the information we collect is as accurate and up to date as possible. We’ll usually do this when you first contact us, and we may ask you to confirm your details on subsequent contacts from time to time.  We use your information to manage your account, administer support schemes, improve and develop our business generally, to provide statistical information to meet our regulatory requirements and to enforce our legal rights.  If we intend to use your information for a different purpose, we’ll do so in ways consistent with Privacy Law or, wherever possible, by notifying you in advance.

We’ll only use your information for the specific purpose(s) for which it has been provided to us or collected by us.

The type of information collected from you and obtained about you will vary depending on your relationship with us, the service you are requesting and your chosen method of contacting us.

If you contact us to report a leak, a problem with your water supply or your waste water service, we’ll need to investigate. This means that we may call you and discuss your concern. We’ll keep you informed of planned visits and of any results we find by letter or by telephone, unless you ask us not to.  We may need to share your data with our affiliated partners who may attend the location and will assist us to resolve the matter as soon as possible.

For billing and account management purposes we are likely to ask you to provide:

• name, address and date of birth – to verify your identity and help us prevent fraud;

• contact details (including phone number, e-mail address or social media identifiers) – to contact you about your account, update you about the services you’ve requested or receive from us, inform you about service interruptions, or contact you with other information related to our business;

• financial information (including method of payment and bank account details) – to bill you for the services you receive from us and manage your payment arrangements;

• household information (including for example address occupancy, employment status etc.) – to help us understand your potential water consumption and to apply the most appropriate tariff and payment plan for your water account.

• We also collect information about you from other sources.

If you need more help from us in relation to the services we provide, or with paying your bill, we may request additional information from you. This may include:

• National Insurance number – to assist with payment of your water bill directly through your benefit arrangement (Water Direct);

• household income and expenditure, receipt of benefits (value and type), number and age of children – to assess your suitability for support schemes you may have applied for or that may be available to you, including our Water Sure, Water Support and other support schemes;

• disability, medical conditions and prescriptions – if you wish to register for one of our support schemes, priority services (see below), and to assist in managing supply interruptions and emergency planning. We collect sensitive personal information from you under the legal basis of Public Task and Substantial Public Interest to allow access to the PSR but we will remind you of this at the point of telling us. Full details of this are in the below section. We will collect sensitive personal information from you under a consent basis to allow us to provide the right support scheme for you needs. This will be explained to you at the time.

Yorkshire Water use customer metering as a key tool in helping us to efficiently deliver and improve service across a number of legal obligations and regulated outcomes, including leakage, maintaining our pipes and other assets, water efficiency, supporting vulnerable customers and carbon emission.

• Water flow data from customer meters is collected by visual read, remote read and using Smart meters which utilise IOT networks. Our legal basis for processing personal data for the above activities is Article 6(1)(e), which allows us to process personal data to perform our “Public Tasks”.
• Our range of customer meters can record flows with an accuracy of 1L/hr, we use this flow data to understand how much demand/consumption our customers are using at regular time intervals.
• These intervals for measuring flow can be between every 15 minutes for Smart meters for parts of the day, to monthly for remotely read meters.
• The flow data from customers meters is uploaded for YW to utilise between every 3 hours and daily for Smart Meters, and every 6 months as standard for a Visual or Remotely Read meter.
• The flow data is collected and stored in accordance with YW information security policy.
• Yorkshire Water shares data with third parties to complete analytics to improve the service we provide to our customers, this data is shared in accordance with information security policies and the third parties can not use the flow data for purposes other than specified by Yorkshire Water.
• Yorkshire Water does not sell customer flow data to third parties.
• Flow data is stored against the property the meter supplies and historic data used to improve network management, hydraulic modelling, leakage management and billing.
  

We may ask you for documented evidence of the above and will keep digital copies for validation and audit purposes. 

More detailed information on what we collect in different circumstances and how it will be used is set out below.

The Priority Services is a free service for customers who may need additional assistance either in communicating with us or in the event of a water supply/sewerage disruption. Priority Service customers include people with physical or mental impairments, medical conditions, the elderly, or those who have a young family. These customers may not be able to easily leave their home to collect bottled water, have a significant need for water or may not comprehend safety information around water quality. We may contact you by telephone, e-mail, text or a physical visit to your home if there is a situation in which we could offer a service to support your circumstances.

If you identify yourself as a Priority Services customer, we may register you as such on our customer systems. This will enable us to provide you with the service that meets your needs, or where a situation requires us to identify vulnerable or at-risk customers (e.g. supply interruption or public health emergency).

We process your information in line with UK GDPR and The Data Protection Act 2018. We store and hold your personal information securely on our computer systems. We process special category data as part of the PSR.  Under data protection law, you have rights we need to make you aware of. The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information – Please see ‘Your Privacy Rights’ section.

Our lawful basis for processing this information regarding PSR information is:

Article 6(1)(e) of UK GDPR, for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest. and our processing of special category data, such as health information you give us, will be based on Article 9(2)(g), as being necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

Our lawful basis for sharing your data with e.g. Energy Sector for the purpose of safeguarding vulnerable individuals is:

Article 6(1)(f) of UK GDPR, for legitimate interest purposes and the substantial public interest requirements for processing under Article 9(2)(g) of UK GDPR and Schedule 1, Part 2, paragraph 18 (safeguarding of children and individuals at risk) of the DPA 2018.

We have an ‘appropriate policy document’ as required by the ICO which sets out our compliance measures and retention policies in relation to the processing of special category information. A physical copy can be provided on request.

You do not need to share full details of your condition to be added to the Priority Service Register however the minimal amount of information needed will be the type of circumstances you have (e.g. a chronic illness, home dialysis, etc). We record this need under a variety of descriptions which we will discuss with you and hold this description on your account for as long as it is required. This information is needed to ensure we can keep you safe and can provide the services you need. We may periodically contact you to confirm if the information we hold on the PSR is accurate and to ensure you still wish to remain on our PSR.

On joining the PSR we hold the information for as long as the service is required. We may keep the information for a specified period of time if you request that of us. This may be in circumstances where you require PSR support for a limited time such as post hospital recovery, temporary illness, etc.

To support customers we may also share information with external organisations, such as energy providers, to ensure customers gain access to equivalent services provided in other sectors.

You can be added to or removed from the register if your circumstances change or if you would like to come off the register.  You can do this at any time through any of our customer services channels where we will consider the impact of the request with you.

In order to understand where we need to improve the service we provide to you we use an external company to conduct market research. They use the information to contact you in a method most appropriate for your needs and to be able to ask you the relevant questions around how effective our services are for your needs. They do not retain any of your personal information following the survey being completed

We do not use or share your PSR information with any third parties for the purposes of direct marketing.

We have contracts in place with our data processors. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it or share with a sub-contractor without our permission. They will hold it securely and retain it for the period we instruct.  

We may process your data outside of the EEA. Whilst we do not send your data outside the EEA we use companies in those non-EEA areas to support our IT functions. They may be able to access and view your information in specific circumstances in providing the service that is required to complete their contractual obligations. we will make sure that it is protected in the same way as if it was being used in the UK. 

If you have queries or concerns about how we have processed your data in relation to the PSR, please contact us at dataprotectionofficer@yorkshirewater.co.uk and we’ll respond.  If you remain dissatisfied you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office, details are available on the ‘Contacting Us’ part of our Privacy Notice.

We have several support schemes to help customers who are in financial difficulty. These schemes are: WaterSure, WaterSupport, Water Direct and Resolve. We will ask for your consent to process your information through our scheme applications.

We also work with other organisations who may refer you to us, if you’ve contacted them first. This may include local authorities, debt charities including the Yorkshire Water Community Trust, Citizens’ Advice Bureaus and advice services such as Stepchange and Christians Against Poverty.

We may request evidence of one or more of the following to support an application and to check against scheme criteria (which may differ depending on the scheme you apply for):

• A medical condition resulting in increased water use

• Child Benefit to show three or more children living at the property under the age of 19.

• Income Support

• Jobseekers Allowance (JSA)

• Employment and support Allowance (ESA)

• Housing Benefit

• Child Tax Credit/Working Tax Credit

• Pension Credit

• Universal Credit

• Wage/Self-employed income

We’ll keep a copy of this evidence for the lifetime of your receipt of scheme benefits for auditing purposes. If your application is unsuccessful we’ll keep a record of your application to assist our business reporting.

You can withdraw from a support scheme at any time by contacting us. We’ll keep a record of your application for auditing purposes in line with our retention policy.

If you are falling behind in your water payments, you may be eligible for one of our financial support schemes (above) – see more here. Please get in touch as soon as possible through any of our contact channels so we can discuss your situation.

If you fail to pay your water bill in full, or fall into arrears, the information that we hold about you may be used to recover arrears in line with our regulatory obligations.  In doing so we may use third party debt collection / management companies and credit reference agencies to assist us.  This will involve sharing your information with them.

If you’re an e-billing customer, you can sign in online to see your bills and any outstanding payments and you’ll receive email notifications when you have a new bill. We take your email address, water account number, name and postal address when you sign up for e-billing - for more details please see our terms of use on this page.

Your email address or telephone number may be used to contact you about the water services that we provide. If we want to use your email address to send you direct marketing communications including those of our group companies, we’ll ask you to consent to this when you log onto e-billing. It’s your choice whether you consent and consent can be withdrawn at any time by contacting us using the details above or using the 'unsubscribe' function in any communication itself.

If you move out of our supply area, your account will be closed once any outstanding balance has been paid. The information relating to your water consumption, charges and payments will be kept in line with our data retention policy for financial auditing purposes. If you still have an outstanding balance we’ll keep information associated with your account until your account is closed.

As a landlord, Yorkshire Water will request tenant name, address and contact details (including phone number, mobile number, and email addresses) which will be used to register tenant land interests and update our records. This information is retained on corporate systems and access is limited to our Land & Property department internally.

From the 2 February 2022, your tenancy with Yorkshire Water will be managed by a third party, with whom we have a contract.

We won’t make your information public unless we’re requested or obliged to by an organisation with statutory powers e.g. the Police, Inland Revenue, Valuation Office or Land Registry.

We use cookies to make our services websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to collect information. We may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on your browser, your mobile device or the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive. They help us to improve our systems site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. Some of the cookies we use are essential for the services site to operate. We’ll not use the data to identify you personally or to make any decisions about you.

Please read our Cookie Policy for more information.

Our website may also contain links to and from other websites including our partner networks and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that we do not have control over these websites or their content. These websites have their own privacy policies and we’ll not accept any responsibility or liability for these. We recommend that you review the website terms and conditions that are applicable to the third-party website.

You’ll need your name, email address, and password to register each time you access your on-line billing account. Do not share your password with anyone else. Our customer service advisors may request your password to reset your on-line account.

We reserve the right to delete or remove online accounts where we deem them to have been misused, duplicated, dormant, unused or invalid for a period of time. Where possible we’ll contact you by email when we discontinue any accounts. We’ll continue to send your bills through the post.

We share your personal information with other members of the Kelda Group. We do this to ensure we offer you a comprehensive service across our departments. We share your personal information with Kelda Group employees and access is controlled in accordance with our Information Security Policies.

We have legal obligations to share data with our regulators.  We may also disclose your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal information to comply with any legal obligation. We do not require your consent to process your information in this way.

We are required to share your contact information with our water regulator Ofwat (and third parties working on their behalf) for the purposes of the water industry’s Customer Measure of Experience (“C-MeX”). C-MeX is a performance reporting framework designed to regulate customer experience in the water industry. It’s based on customers scoring their experience of the service received by water companies.  At Ofwat’s request, all customers who contact us may have their contact information passed to a third-party processor acting on their behalf. You may be contacted by this third party about the service you received from us and asked to score our performance. This isn’t for marketing purposes. As this is part of our Water Supply Licence Obligation we are required to share your data and are not permitted to remove any contact details. You can’t opt out of this sharing arrangement.

We must share any personal data related to a water quality incident with the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI). Occasionally if you are part of an incident investigation there is a chance that data may be shared with Health and Safety Executive or the Environment Agency if it’s part of the reporting requirements.

If you’ve escalated a complaint to The Consumer Council for Water, we have a regulatory obligation to provide information related to that complaint. This is likely to include your personal information.

For non-household customers, we must share customer data with the non-household customers’ retailer and MOSL. This includes water supply information, details of any contact between us and a non-household customer, and information relating to water supply incidents. What information we share and how it is shared is governed by the Wholesale-Retail Code. Under the GDPR, data controllers who jointly control personal data must make available to data subjects a summary of the arrangements and allocation of responsibilities between them. Therefore, MOSL has provided a Summary of Arrangements on their website - You can find out more under the GDPR section here

We have a legal requirement to share information with other water companies where other sewerage companies operate in our supply area (or where we operate sewerage services in another water company’s supply area). We have such an arrangement with United Utilities, Severn Trent Water and Northumbrian Water.

Sometimes we are contacted by HMRC, the Department for Work and Pensions, the police, local council authorities, fraud agencies or UK Visas and Immigration asking for information about individual customers. Under Privacy Law, we are permitted to share this data with them without your consent and you’ll not be notified that this has been done. This is in the support of the prevention and detection of crime.

We share:

• some of your personal information (name, address, residency status) with a Financial Conduct Authority regulated company called Homeserve for the purposes of offering you insurance products related to your water supply and waste water services. They’ll confirm to us whether you’ve taken out an insurance policy so we can assist you if you contact us in future (e.g. about a water leak in your property). You can opt out of receiving these communications at any time through any of our contact channels;

• your payment performance with Experian, Equifax and TransUnion as part of our credit reference agency membership (you can read more about how CRAs process your information at TransUnion, Experian and Equifax).

• your payment information (bank account; sort code; direct debit mandates etc) with banking institutions to process your payments;

• your arrears and contact information with selected debt collection agencies when you have not paid your water bill. The debt collection agencies may use your data to contact you or visit your home in fulfilment of their contract with us;

• your contact information with selected companies to conduct market research so that we can understand and improve our quality of service. You may receive a call from them following contact with us to ask about your experience and how you would score us. This isn’t a marketing call and your response is very important to us. If you would prefer not to participate in these surveys in future you can let our customer services team know at any time;

• (occasionally) your personal data with our legal advisers or our insurance company or other professional advisors to obtain legal advice or make/defend a claim

If we sell or buy any business or assets, or merge with another business entity or carry out internal corporate restructuring, your information may be disclosed to new or prospective business partners or owners or the new corporate entities.

In order to best respond and help coordinate the community response for COVID-19 it may be necessary to share basic details about you to NHS track and trace where necessary.

Where any of our colleagues receive a positive Covid test, NHS track and trace will contact the individual and ask them to provide information on instances where they’ve had close and recent contact with others and places they’ve been. Due to the nature of our work, this also includes our customers. We will only provide the minimum information required which is a name and a contact number. We do not store this information in our systems.