Privacy Policy

Last updated: 9 September 2026

This policy explains what personal information Highland Valeting Ltd collects about you, why we collect it, what we do with it, how long we keep it and what rights you have. It applies to our website, our enquiry and booking forms, our newsletter, and to the customers and enquirers we deal with by phone, by email, on social media and at our premises in Inverness.

We are committed to handling your information in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR).

1. Who we are

Highland Valeting Ltd is the “data controller” for the personal information described in this policy. That means we decide why and how your information is used, and we are responsible for looking after it.

• Company name: Highland Valeting Ltd
• Registered in Scotland, company number: SC559837
• Registered office and trading address: Unit 13, Highland House, 20 Longman Road, Inverness, IV1 1RY
• Email: info@highlandvaleting.co.uk
• Telephone: 01463 236866 or 07956 047871

We are not required to appoint a Data Protection Officer. If you have any question about this policy or about how we use your information, please contact us using the details above and mark your message for the attention of the person responsible for data protection.

2. The information we collect

2.1 Information you give us when you enquire

When you complete the enquiry form on our Contact page, we collect:

• your name, telephone number and email address;
• the location and postcode where you would like the work carried out;
• your vehicle make and model;
• the service and any add-ons you are interested in (for example maintenance wash, full valet, ceramic coating, odour neutraliser);
• whether pet hair removal is needed;
• anything else you choose to tell us in the free-text box; and
• whether you have ticked the box asking us to contact you in future about our services.

2.2 Information you give us when you book online

When you make a booking through the Book Now page, we collect:

• your first name and last name;
• your company name, if you give one;
• your email address and telephone number;
• your vehicle make, model and size category;
• the package you have chosen and the date and time slot you have selected; and
• any message you add to the booking.

2.3 Information we collect when we carry out work for you

When you use our hot hand car wash, valeting, detailing, winter protection or mobile services, we may also record:

• your vehicle registration and details of its condition, where this is relevant to the work;
• the work carried out, the date, the price and any notes about the job;
• the address we attended, for mobile bookings;
• your payment record. Card payments are taken through our card payment provider’s terminal or payment page. We receive confirmation that a payment succeeded, the amount and a partial card reference; we do not receive or store your full card number, expiry date or security code; and
• any complaint, damage claim or insurance correspondence relating to the work.

2.4 Newsletter sign-ups

If you use the sign-up form on our website, we collect your email address and the service you have indicated an interest in, so that we can send you our updates and offers.

2.5 Information we collect automatically from our website

Like most websites, ours collects some technical information automatically, including your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you visit, how you arrived at the site and how long you stay. This is described in the Cookies section below. Analytics and marketing cookies are only set if you agree to them through our cookie banner.

2.6 Social media

If you message us or comment on our Facebook or Instagram pages, we see the information your profile makes visible to us and the content of your message. Those platforms are run by Meta and their own privacy policies apply to the way they process your data.

2.7 Information we do not want

We do not need special category data (such as health information) or criminal offence data to provide our services, and we ask that you do not send it to us. If you include it in a message to us anyway, we will only use it so far as necessary to respond to you, and we will delete it when it is no longer needed.

3. Why we use your information, and our lawful basis

The UK GDPR requires us to have a “lawful basis” for every use of your personal information. Ours are set out below.

What we use your information for	Information used	Our lawful basis
Responding to your enquiry and giving you a quote	Contact details, location, vehicle and service details, your message	Taking steps at your request before entering into a contract (Article 6(1)(b)); and our legitimate interests in answering enquiries from people who are not booking for themselves (Article 6(1)(f))
Taking and managing your booking, confirming appointments and reminding you about them, and carrying out the work	Contact details, appointment details, vehicle details, job notes	Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b))
Taking payment and issuing receipts or invoices	Name, contact details, transaction records	Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b))
Keeping accounting and tax records	Transaction and invoice records	Compliance with our legal obligations (Article 6(1)(c)), principally under tax and company law
Sending you marketing emails, offers and news about our services	Email address, name, services you have used or shown interest in	Your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), or our legitimate interests in marketing similar services to existing customers (Article 6(1)(f)); in both cases we also comply with PECR
Handling complaints, damage claims, disputes and insurance matters	Job records, correspondence, photographs of the vehicle where relevant	Our legitimate interests in defending and resolving claims and keeping a proper record of the work we carried out (Article 6(1)(f)); and, where a legal claim arises, the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims
Understanding how our website is used and improving it	Cookie and analytics data, IP address, pages viewed	Your consent to non-essential cookies (PECR), and our legitimate interests in maintaining and improving our website (Article 6(1)(f))
Keeping our website and business secure and preventing fraud	IP address, technical logs, transaction records	Our legitimate interests in protecting our business, our customers and our systems (Article 6(1)(f))

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered whether our interests are overridden by your rights and freedoms, and we have concluded that they are not. You can object to this processing at any time — see “Your rights” below.

If you do not give us the information marked as required on our enquiry or booking forms, we will not be able to quote for the work or take your booking. You are never obliged to give us information for marketing purposes.

4. Marketing and how to opt out

We will only send you marketing emails if you have asked us to, or if you are an existing customer who bought a similar service from us and did not opt out at the time. Every marketing email we send includes an unsubscribe link, and you can also opt out at any time by emailing info@highlandvaleting.co.uk or telephoning us. Withdrawing consent is free and takes effect as soon as we can action it; it does not affect the lawfulness of anything we did beforehand.

Opting out of marketing does not stop us sending you messages we need to send about a booking you have made, such as a confirmation, a reminder or a change of appointment.

5. Who we share your information with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.

We do share it with organisations that provide services to us, which act as our processors and may only use it on our instructions:

• our website host and website developer, who maintain the site the forms sit on;
• the providers of our enquiry form, online booking system and email service, which store the messages and bookings you send us;
• our email marketing provider, if you have subscribed to our newsletter;
• our card payment provider, which processes payments for us and is itself a controller of the card data it handles;
• our accountant and bookkeeping software provider, for invoicing, accounts and tax; and
• Google, which provides Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager on our website, if you accept analytics cookies.

We may also disclose information to our insurers or legal advisers where a claim or dispute arises, and to the police, HMRC, a court or a regulator such as the Information Commissioner’s Office where we are required or permitted by law to do so.

If our business or part of it is sold or transferred, customer records may be transferred to the buyer, who would be required to use them in line with this policy.

6. Sending information outside the UK

Most of your information is held in the UK or the European Economic Area. Some of our suppliers — including Google and our email and marketing providers — may store or access data in the United States or elsewhere. Where information is transferred outside the UK, we rely on one of the safeguards permitted by data protection law: transfers to a country covered by UK adequacy regulations (including the EEA and, for certified US organisations, the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework), or the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, with additional safeguards where these are needed. You can ask us for details of the safeguards that apply to a particular transfer.

7. How long we keep your information

Information	How long we keep it
Enquiries that do not lead to a booking	12 months from your last contact with us, then deleted
Booking and customer records, including vehicle and job details	6 years after your most recent job, so that we can deal with any query, warranty issue or claim, then deleted
Invoices, payment records and accounting data	6 years after the end of the financial year they relate to, as required for tax purposes
Newsletter and marketing contact details	Until you unsubscribe or ask us to stop; we also review our list and remove contacts who have been inactive for 24 months. We keep a minimal record of your opt-out so that we do not contact you again
Complaints, damage claims and insurance correspondence	6 years after the matter is closed
Website analytics data	Up to 14 months
Cookies	See the Cookies section; most expire within 13 months or when you close your browser

Where we need to keep information for longer because of an ongoing dispute, claim or legal obligation, we keep only what is necessary for that purpose and delete it once it no longer applies.

8. How we keep your information safe

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including access controls and passwords on the accounts and devices that hold customer records, encrypted connections (HTTPS) on our website, keeping software up to date, limiting access to staff who need it, and choosing suppliers who are contractually required to keep your data secure. Paper records, where we keep any, are held securely at our premises. No system can be guaranteed completely secure, but we take these obligations seriously and will notify you and the ICO where the law requires us to do so after a personal data breach.

9. Cookies

Cookies are small files placed on your device when you visit a website. Our site uses:

• Strictly necessary cookies, which make the site work — for example remembering your cookie choices and keeping the booking form working. These do not need your consent.
• Analytics cookies, set through Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, which tell us how many people visit the site, which pages they use and how they found us. The information is used to improve the site and is reported to us in aggregate.
• Marketing and conversion cookies, which may be set by advertising or social media platforms to measure whether an advert led to an enquiry.

Analytics and marketing cookies are only set if you accept them in our cookie banner. You can change your mind at any time through the cookie settings on our site, and you can block or delete cookies through your browser settings — though some parts of the site may not work properly if you block strictly necessary cookies. You can also install Google’s opt-out browser add-on from <a href=”https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout</a>.

10. Automated decision-making

We do not make decisions about you by purely automated means, and we do not carry out profiling that produces legal effects for you or similarly significantly affects you.

11. Children

Our services are aimed at adults and we do not knowingly collect information about children. If you believe a child has given us their information, please contact us and we will delete it.

12. Your rights

Under data protection law you have the following rights, free of charge:

• To be informed about how we use your information — which is what this policy is for.
• Access — to ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Rectification — to have inaccurate information corrected or incomplete information completed.
• Erasure — to ask us to delete your information where there is no good reason for us to keep it.
• Restriction — to ask us to pause our use of your information, for example while you contest its accuracy.
• Objection — to object to processing based on our legitimate interests. You can object to direct marketing at any time and we will always stop.
• Portability — to receive the information you gave us in a commonly used electronic format, or have it sent to another provider, where we process it by automated means on the basis of your consent or a contract.
• To withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent, including for marketing and cookies.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@highlandvaleting.co.uk, telephone 01463 236866, or write to us at Unit 13, Highland House, 20 Longman Road, Inverness, IV1 1RY. We may ask you for information to confirm your identity. We will respond within one month; if your request is complex we may extend this by up to two further months and will tell you if we do. Some rights do not apply in every situation — if we cannot do what you have asked, we will explain why.

13. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please tell us first so that we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator:

• Website: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint 
• Helpline: 0303 123 1113
• Post: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

14. Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other sites, including our Facebook and Instagram pages. This policy applies only to our website and our own processing; we are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites, and we suggest you read their policies.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes to our services, our suppliers or the law. The date at the top shows when it was last changed. Where a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you directly where it is reasonable to do so. This version replaces all earlier versions of our privacy policy.