Privacy Policy & Cookies

At United Gas & Power Ltd (“we”, “us” or “our” for short) we are committed, not only to providing you with unbeatable value and an excellent service, but also to protecting your personal information.

Your personal information (also called ‘personal data’) is the information which identifies you as an individual that we get from you and others in various ways. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (the “Act”) specific obligations are placed on us in the way we handle this type of information and the aim of this privacy policy is to let you know what personal information we collect from you when you purchase products and services from us, when you use our website and when you contact us, how we store and use it, and how you can access and manage this information.

Your personal information may be stored online and therefore we take steps to ensure that our systems are well protected.

Please note that this privacy policy only covers www.ugp.co.uk. Other websites accessible via links are not covered by this policy. If you access this site, please check the privacy policy applicable to these sites (if any) before you submit any of your personal information to them.

 

Our company and your products and services

As our products and services may be provided to you by different partnering companies, it may be that your personal information needs to be passed to the relevant company or companies. Just so you know other than us, our partnering companies who may have access to your personal information under their own privacy policy.

 

So, what personal information do we collect about you?

We collect the personal information required in order to contract your supply together with billing information, credit checks and enquiry forms. We may also keep a record of references received from third parties (for example from credit reference or fraud prevention agencies) and of any other correspondence or communication between you and us, whether written, e-mailed, or because of visits, interviews or recorded telephone calls.

We will (unless it’s impractical) tell you, if we obtain and store information from any other source and how we intend to use it in accordance with this privacy policy.

Whilst we take steps to protect user privacy, no data transmission over the internet can be entirely secure. We therefore do not guarantee the security of personal information that you send to us, or your use of the site. Any personal information you do send is at your own risk but once we receive it we use strict procedures to safeguard it.

 

How do we use your personal information?

We will use the information you give us, or which we legally receive from another organisation or person, to set up and manage your gas or electricity account (or both) with us. We process this information in the performance of our contract with you, or as we have a legitimate interest to process your personal information. We may share it with all relevant industry organisations as required by agreed industry processes. We may use it and share it with any department within the company to:

  • help us identify you so we know who we are talking to;
  • supply you with gas or electricity (or both) or any other services that you request;
  • set up and otherwise manage your account, including collecting debts and improving our service to you;
  • work out your bills;
  • help prevent and detect fraud or loss;
  • assess risk, carry out marketing (unless you have opted out) or market research, statistical analysis, test systems, improve the way that we run your accounts (including quality assurance) and analyse your account history; and
  • train staff and monitor our services. This means that we record our conversations or our correspondence with you to make sure we are providing you with a good service and to make sure we keep to our legal and regulatory obligations. In addition, these files provide a record of our conversations and protect both parties.

If you have a meter installed at your property that can be connected to the wireless network (a ‘smart’ meter), we will gather information about the gas or electricity (or both) you use remotely and in real time (the equipment will automatically send us the information). We may use this information for the purposes set out above.

We may pass information about you to our agents and service providers for these purposes. This may involve passing your information outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) to countries that do not have the same data protection standards as we do in the UK. If we, or our agents and service providers, do this, we will make sure that it happens only with the relevant legal protection in place, such as standard EU contract clauses. If we are asked, we may pass your information on for regulatory purposes to Ofgem (or any organisation which takes over Ofgem’s role), or as part of a government data-sharing initiative.

We may search the files of credit-reference agencies who will record the search. We may share information about how you deal with your account with other financial institutions, with credit-reference agencies and with fraud-prevention agencies. We may use this information to prevent possible fraud, and to help us assess your ability to pay our bills and to make decisions about the products and services that we offer you.

If you have given us your mobile phone number or email address (or both), we may use the information to send you service messages or other similar information (by text message or email). The aim is to help us manage your account. We may use your contact details for marketing purposes however this will be marketing solely for the interest of UGP and no third party. However, you wish to opt out of our marketing please email GDPR@ugp.co.uk.

We will release your account details to any organisation we may transfer our rights or responsibilities to and we reserve the right to tell your future service provider of any debt you may have with us.

Please note that we reserve the right to access and disclose personal information to comply with any applicable laws and lawful government requests, to operate our systems properly, to protect both ourselves and our users, and where we are approached by a potential buyer of our business or assets, or in relation to any joint venture or business arrangement.

 

How can you find out what personal information we hold about you?

Just ask! You are entitled to see the personal information that we hold about you at any time. (If you write to, email or phone us and ask to see this information, it is known as a ‘subject access request’ or ‘SAR’ for short) You can do so by:

  • Telephoning us on: 0800 6696697
  • Writing to us at: Data Protection SARs, UGP, 16 Otley Road, Guiseley LS20 8AH
  • Email us at: GDPR@ugp.co.uk

Even if you don’t want a copy of your personal information, you can still contact us to check that the personal information that we hold is accurate, or to let us know of any changes to your personal information. We always try to ensure that the information that we hold is accurate, up to date and relevant. We’ll be more than happy to make changes or to correct any inaccuracies.

 

External links from our site

From time to time we may include hypertext links to sites which are created by individuals and companies outside of our company. We do this when there is a relevance to the topic you’re reading about. Whilst we endeavour to check that the content of these sites is suitable, we unfortunately cannot take any responsibility for the practices of the companies who publish the sites that we link to, nor the integrity of the content contained within them.

 

What if we update our privacy policy?

We do keep our privacy policies under regular review so please do check each time you use the site. You’ll be able to read about any updates on this page – as soon as they happen.

If you have any questions or if you feel that we are not complying with the terms of this privacy policy, please do contact us through GDPR@ugp.co.uk