Highland Fuels Electricity 

Privacy Policy V2

Last updated: 6 December 2024 

Highland Fuels Electricity really wants to connect with its customers and to do this we should get to know you better. This means collecting some personal data about you and we're committed to protecting your privacy.

When we refer to Highland Fuels Electricity, we, us or our in this privacy policy we mean our group businesses and products and services offered by those businesses, including supplying electricity under our brand. 

This privacy policy is for customers of Highland Fuels Electricity and supplements other privacy notices we might provide to you – it doesn’t replace them.

1. Our Contact Details

Our full name and address are set out in your terms and conditions. Our Data Protection Officer’s (DPO) contact email is enquiries@highlandelectricity.co.uk You can write to our DPO at Data Protection and Legal team, Highland Fuels Electricity, Affric House, Beechwood Park, Inverness IV2 3BW.

If you have any data protection complaints, you’re able to contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (www.ico.org.uk). We’d like to try and help with any concerns you may have before you contact the ICO, so please get in touch with us in the first instance.

2. Why do we have a privacy policy?

We’ll collect certain personal information from you when you use our website, when you get in touch with us about any of our products or services, and during any process to sign up, change or cancel your products and services.  

The purpose of our privacy policy is to let you know:

• how and why we collect your personal information;
• how we use and disclose your personal information (and to whom);
• how we protect your personal information; and
• your legal rights and how the law protects you.

3. Changes to our privacy policy

If we make any changes to our privacy policy, we’ll post changes on this page.  If they’re major changes, then we’ll also send you an email letting you know.

4. Dealing with your personal information

4.1 Collecting your personal information

What will we collect?

We collect certain personal information from you, which is any information which might identify you. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

The information we collect includes:

• Contact data (your name, email address, postal address, phone numbers, date of birth and any other relevant information we need in order to contact or identify you)
• Financial data (your bank account and payment details relating to products and services you receive from Highland Electricity)
• Technical data (internet protocol (IP) address, your login data (including https://www./#/login  username and password), browser type and version, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website. We track technical data by using cookies - see section 5 below for more details on cookies)
• Usage data (information about how you use our website, products and services).
• Marketing and communications data (your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences).
• Energy supply data (this is your supply start date, meter technical details, tariff and if you have a smart meter installed at your property we’ll also capture your energy consumption data; and
• Special categories of data (health and financial vulnerability data, if applicable, to include you on the Priority Services Register).

We also use aggregated data in order to improve our operations and ensure we are providing you with the best service possible. All aggregated data is anonymised and doesn’t reveal your identity.

It’s important that the personal data we hold about you is up to date so please let us know if your personal data changes at any time.

When will we collect it?

We (and our agents) collect certain personal information from and about you during your sign-up journey and when you get in contact with us or use our website or as part of providing our services to you.

We may also monitor and record any communications we have with you, including phone calls and emails, to make sure we are providing an excellent service to our customers.

4.2 Using your personal information

We’ll only use your personal information where we’re allowed to by law. Generally, this will be under one or more of the following circumstances:

• to discuss a contract, we have or will have with you;
• it’s necessary for us to run our business and give you the best possible service;
• where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation; and/or
• for marketing purposes where you have agreed to us using your personal data, see the “Marketing Information” section below for more information.

For more detail on how we use your personal information see the table at section 6 of this privacy policy.

Contacting you

We’ll contact you by the method we’ve agreed with you in our terms and conditions.

Marketing information

When you first provide your personal information to Highland Fuels Electricity, we’ll give you the chance to choose whether you’d be happy for the Highland Fuels Electricity group to contact you with marketing information. If you choose to be contacted, we may use your identity, contact, usage and profile data to tell you about exciting new products and services from Highland Fuels Electricity including for up to 12 months after you've left Highland Fuels Electricity.

If you decide you want to opt-out of receiving marketing communications after you have opted-in, or want to change how you receive them, you can always change your preferences by contacting us at enquiries@highlandelectricity.co.uk or telephoning us using the contact details shown on our website www.highlandelectricity.co.uk This won’t affect any marketing information we sent to you before you let us know.

We’ll occasionally remind you that you can update your preferences for receiving marketing information, or if you haven’t told us what your preferences are, we might get in touch to find out.

4.3 Disclosing your personal information

We may allow the following types of organisations to use personal information we hold about you for the purposes set out in section 6 below, including:

• service providers who provide engineering services, industry data collection and aggregation, IT and system administration services;
• marketing agencies to provide you with information about our products and services or other products and services which may be of interest to you (provided you’ve given your consent) and to help manage any reward or loyalty schemes;
• price comparison sites which might take your details where you decide to request a quote or switch to us through that site; and
• credit-reference and debt collection agencies.  For more information on how we conduct credit checks, please see section “CREDIT CHECKS AND SHARING OF INFORMATION”  of our Terms and conditions that are available from our website; and for more information about credit reference agencies and how they use personal information please see the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice
• professional advisers such as lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services;
• regulators and other authorities based in the UK who we need to report to about what we’re doing with your personal data in certain circumstances;
• Our third parties who only process data on our behalf won’t use your personal data for their own purposes and we only permit them to use it in accordance with our instructions and the law.

Disclosing information outside the EU

Sometimes the organisations listed above may be outside the European Economic Area (EEA), so we may pass your personal information to countries that do not have the same standards or protection for personal information as the UK. If we, our agents or our service providers do this, we’ll always make sure that these organisations adequately secure your personal information.

Switching

We may also ask your previous energy supplier for personal information about you that will allow us to take over your supply (for example, information about your meter readings, meter technical details etc.). Similarly, if you switch away from Highland Electricity, we may provide similar information to your new supplier so they can begin supplying your energy.

Priority Services Register or special needs

If we believe that you (or a member of your household) need extra care (for example, because of your age, health, disability or financial circumstances) and we have your explicit consent to do so, we may record and share this information with the following people to ensure your supply isn’t interrupted:

• other energy suppliers if we believe you are considering changing supplier
• an outsourced service company that manages a wide range of energy industry data interactions on our behalf
• the electricity distributor; 

• 4.4 Protecting your personal information

We follow strict security procedures to protect your personal information. This includes following certain guidelines (for example, checking your identity when you phone us).

We strongly recommend that you do not disclose any Highland Fuels Electricity login details to anyone. Please always remember to log out of your account when you have finished using any of Highland Electricity’s websites.

From time to time, our website may provide hypertext links to sites which are created by individuals and companies outside of Highland Electricity.  We do this if the site is relevant to the topic you’re reading about. Whilst we always try to check that the content of these sites is suitable, we cannot take any responsibility for the practices of the companies who publish the sites that we link to, or the accuracy or relevance of the content on them.

4.5 How long we'll use your personal information

We’ll only retain your personal information for as long as necessary for the reason we collected it, including for any legal requirements we have to comply with.

When deciding on how long to retain your personal information for, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and any applicable legal requirements.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our retention policy, which you can request by contacting us.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information (so that it can no longer be associated with you) and use this indefinitely, without further notice.

4.6 Your legal rights

You have various rights in relation to your personal information. These rights are as follows:

• request access to your personal information - you can request a copy of the personal information we hold on you
• request correction of your personal information - if any personal information we hold on you is incorrect, you can request to have it corrected
• request erasure of your personal information - you can ask us to delete your personal information in certain circumstances
• object to processing or restrict processing of your personal information - you may object to our processing of your personal data in certain circumstances
• request the transfer of your personal information - to provide you, or a third party you have chosen, with your personal information; and
• withdraw consent where we’re relying on consent to process your personal information - if you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We'll advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

To exercise your rights in relation to your personal information, please email enquiries@highlandelectricity.co.uk.

You are able to exercise your rights free of charge, but if you make unfounded, repetitive or excessive requests, we may charge you to carry these out or refuse to act on such requests.

We’ll try to respond to all requests within one month. If your request is complex or if you make lots of requests, we may extend our time to respond – if this is the case, we’ll let you know.

5. Highland Electricity’s use of cookies

5.1 What are cookies?

A cookie is a piece of information stored in a small file which is sent to and from web pages. They can be used to identify that you’ve visited websites before and some will be stored on your computer by your web browser.

5.2 How does Highland Electricity use cookies?

We use cookies to understand how people use our websites and to help us to make your experience of our websites better.

Highland Electricity’s websites.

We use short-term cookies to recognise your PC or other Web enabled device as you move around our site and to remember any information you have entered into search boxes for next time you visit us.

Measuring web traffic.

We use programs such as Google Analytics and help us find out:

• how many people visit our websites
• which pages are most popular
• how long people spend in each area and
• what information they’re searching for

These insights help us understand how to improve our websites.

Google Analytics uses cookies to collect non-personally identifiable information like:

• browser types
• operating systems
• referring sites that sent you to us; and
• the dates and times of a visit.

If you’d like to know more about Google Analytics, visit the following webpage https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2790010.

Advertising

We use other tools such as Value Click to place Highland Electricity ads on other websites you may visit. These tools may set cookies to track the performance of our advertising campaigns and allow us to tailor the advertising you might be interested in.  

We also use products like Google Analytics Advertising, including remarketing with Google Analytics, Google Display Network Impression Reporting and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting features. These products help us understand what ads work best so we can more effectively promote our products and services to you.

We may also from time to time use Google Adometry to track the way you interact with our ads before you come to our website. This lets us work out which ones are relevant to you and which ones aren’t.  

We use Google Adwords Customer Match to help exclude our existing customers from seeing our ads, and to reach similar web users who could also be interested in joining Highland Fuels Electricity.

5.3 How can you manage cookies and where can you find further information?

If you don’t want us to use cookies in your web browser, you can remove them from your computer or change your browser settings so that it either blocks cookies altogether or asks you if you’d like to accept them from some websites.

You can also stop us collecting data through the following sources:

• Google Analytics Advertising Features – visit www.google.com/setting/ads and adjust your personal settings as per their instructions
• Adometry – follow this link to opt-out of the Adometry cookie: https://js.dmtry.com/optout/status.html
• Google Doubleclick (for Google Adwords Customer Match) - follow the link to download a plugin so you can opt-out of Google's advertising cookie on Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer - https://www.google.com/settings/ads/plugin.  Please note this does not opt you out of being served advertising. You may continue to receive generic ads from Highland Fuels Electricity; and

However, it’s important to remember that

Some of our cookies are essential for our websites to work properly, particularly our ‘Quote & Switch’ functionality and our on-line account management website.

The internet industry body, the Internet Advertising Bureau, has set up a website to provide information and advice on cookies, tags and behavioral advertising, you can click here to find out more about behavioural advertising.  Another trusted source which gives information about how to delete and control cookies is https://www.aboutcookies.org/.

If you have any questions about the way we handle your personal information, or would like to contact our Data Protection Officer, please get in touch at enquiries@highlandelectricity.co.uk and we’ll do our best to help you.

6. Personal data processing activities we carry out

Here is some more information about how we process your data.

We (and our agents) may use your personal information to: