1. Who we are

This policy explains how Britannia Bearsbys collects and uses personal information when you visit bearsbys.com, ask us for a quote, move or store your belongings with us, or use our shredding and hard drive destruction service.

Britannia Bearsbys is the trading name of PIA Trading Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 02118212). Our registered office is Units A & B, Larkfield Mill, Bellingham Way, Aylesford, Kent ME20 6SQ. We are the data controller for the personal information described here, which means we decide how and why it is used. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration number ZA801416.

We are an independent, family-run member of the Britannia Movers International network. The network's other members are separate businesses with their own privacy policies.

Contact us about your data

• Email: [email protected]
• Post: Data Protection, Britannia Bearsbys, Units A & B, Larkfield Mill, Bellingham Way, Aylesford, Kent ME20 6SQ
• Phone: 01622 870540 (Monday to Friday, 08:30–17:00)

We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer because the law does not require one for a business of our type. Paul Bearsby, Owner, is responsible for data protection and handles all privacy enquiries.

2. The information we collect

We collect only what we need to quote for, plan and carry out your move, storage or shredding, and to run our website.

When you ask for a quote or contact us — online, by phone or by email:

• your name, email address and phone number
• the addresses or towns you are moving from and to
• property type, number of bedrooms and access details at each property
• your preferred moving date
• anything else you choose to tell us in a message

When we survey your home (in person or by video call): an inventory of the items to be moved, notes on access, parking and any special handling, and photographs or video of items where they help us quote accurately. Video surveys are not recorded. We use a live face to face style call using the WhatsApp Video service. WhatsApp do not store any information on their servers and we do not record the call. 

When you book with us: your contract details, billing address, payment records, any insurance or valuation declarations, and records of the move itself, such as delivery notes, damage reports and claims.

For storage: your storage contract, an inventory of stored items, and records of access and collection.

For shredding: our shredding service is Simply Shredding Maidstone, our local branch of the national Simply Shredding network, run from our Aylesford depot. If you request a quote through simply-shredding.co.uk, that website's own privacy policy covers how your request is collected and passed to us; once it reaches us, this policy applies. When you buy shredding bags we collect your name and contact details, your business name if you are ordering for a business, the collection address if you would like us to collect (you can also drop bags off at our depot), the number of bags, payment records, and the Certificate of Destruction we issue.

The documents you put in our shredding bags often contain personal information about you or other people. We do not open, read or copy them. Sealed bags are kept secure until they are cross-cut shredded at our Aylesford depot, and the shredded material is then sent for recycling. Every job receives a Certificate of Destruction showing the date, quantity and method of disposal. If you use the service for a business, we destroy the documents on your behalf and only on your instructions — you remain responsible for the information in them, and our terms for business shredding set out how we handle it.

For hard drive destruction: we also destroy hard drives for homes and businesses. We never connect, power up or access them. They are kept in secure storage until they are physically destroyed by our specialist partner, Simply Shredding. If you use the service for a business, we destroy the drives on your behalf and only on your instructions.

For international moves: the information customs and destination authorities require. Depending on the country, this can include a copy of your passport or other ID, proof of address, visa or residence documents, and a detailed packing inventory. We ask only for what the destination country requires.

When you visit our website: your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you view and how you reached us. Some of this is collected through cookies, explained in section 4. Our spam protection on the contact and quote forms also checks your browser and device to confirm you are not an automated program.

Session recordings and heatmaps. If you accept analytics cookies, we use Microsoft Clarity to record how visitors move through our pages — clicks, scrolling, mouse movements and which parts of a page are viewed. We use this to find pages and forms that are confusing or broken. Clarity is set to mask all text you type and the text on the page before anything is recorded, so recordings do not show the details you enter into our forms.

When you phone or visit us: Calls to our office are not recorded. Our Aylesford depot is covered by CCTV for security.

Information from other people. Sometimes we receive your details from someone else: a relative or employer arranging a move for you, an estate agent or solicitor, a comparison or referral website such as reallymoving.com, or another member of the Britannia network. When this happens we use your details only to respond to that enquiry.

We do not ask for special category information, such as health details. If you tell us something like this because it affects your move — for example, mobility needs on the day — we use it only to plan the move and keep it no longer than the rest of your move records.

3. How we use your information, and our legal basis

Data protection law requires a legal basis for every use of personal information. Ours are set out below.

What we do	Legal basis
Respond to your enquiry, survey your home and prepare a quote	Contract — steps you ask us to take before entering a contract
Carry out your move or storage, manage payment and handle any claim	Contract
Supply shredding bags, collect and securely destroy your documents and hard drives, and issue a certificate of destruction	Contract
Follow up a quote you have not yet accepted, once or twice	Legitimate interests — giving you the chance to book, which you can ask us to stop at any time
Arrange customs clearance and paperwork for international moves	Contract, and legal obligation where customs law requires it
Keep accounting and tax records	Legal obligation
Ask for feedback or a review after your move	Legitimate interests — learning how we did. You can opt out
Send you news or offers by email	Consent, or for past customers our legitimate interests under the "similar services" rule. See section 10
Protect our forms from spam and our website from attack	Legitimate interests — security and fraud prevention
Measure how our website is used (including session recordings and heatmaps), and show our adverts to people who have visited it	Consent, given through our cookie banner
Operate CCTV	Legitimate interests — protecting our premises and your stored goods
Defend or bring legal claims, or meet a regulator's request	Legitimate interests, or legal obligation

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your rights and are satisfied ours do not override yours. You can ask us for details of that assessment, and you can object at any time (section 9).

If you do not give us the information we need to quote or carry out a move, we may not be able to provide the service. We do not make decisions about you by purely automated means.

4. Cookies and similar technologies

We only set analytics and advertising cookies if you agree to them in our cookie banner. Essential cookies, which the website needs to work securely, are always on.

Cookies are small files stored on your device. Similar technologies, such as tracking pixels and local storage, work in the same way and are covered by this section too.

Your choices. When you first visit, our banner lets you accept all cookies, reject all non-essential cookies, or choose by category. Rejecting is as easy as accepting. You can change your mind at any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer of every page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings.

Category	Provider	Purpose	Examples	Lasts	Needs consent?
Essential	Bearsbys	Remembers your cookie choices	[consent plugin cookie]	12 months	No
Essential	Cloudflare	Protects the site and forms from bots and attacks	__cf_bm, cf_clearance	30 minutes to 1 year	No
Analytics	Google Analytics 4	Counts visits and shows how people use the site	_ga, _ga_<ID>	Up to 2 years	Yes
Analytics	Microsoft Clarity	Session recordings and heatmaps showing how pages are used, with typed text masked	_clck, _clsk, CLID, and Microsoft cookies such as MUID set on clarity.ms and bing.com	1 day to 13 months	Yes
Advertising	Google Ads	Measures enquiries from our adverts and shows our adverts to past visitors	_gcl_au, and Google cookies set on google.com and doubleclick.net	Up to 13 months	Yes
Third-party content	Google Maps	Displays our location map	Google cookies set on google.com	Up to 13 months	Yes — the map loads only after you accept

Google uses data collected through its tags under its own privacy policy: policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. We have turned off Google signals [confirm] and do not share analytics data with Google for its own advertising beyond the Google Ads features described above.

Microsoft processes Clarity data under its own privacy statement: privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement. Clarity runs only after you accept analytics cookies, and withdrawing consent stops any further recording.

5. Who we share your information with

We never sell your personal information. We share it only where needed to provide our service, run our business or meet the law.

Service providers who act on our instructions. They may use your information only to provide their service to us, under a written contract:

• our website host [name] and Cloudflare, which secures and delivers the website
• Google, for website analytics and advertising, and Microsoft, for Clarity session recordings and heatmaps (both only with your cookie consent)
• our Moveman System
• our email and office software provider Microsoft 365
• Our card payment provider, NYL through NatWest
• our IT support and website developer, who may see data while maintaining our systems

Others who are part of delivering your move:

• The Britannia Movers International network. If your move starts or ends outside our area, or needs a partner overseas, we share the details needed with the Britannia member or partner mover carrying out that part.
• Overseas removal agents, shipping lines, freight forwarders and customs brokers for international moves.
• Insurers and loss adjusters, if you take insurance through us or make a claim.
• The British Association of Removers and its approved dispute resolution scheme, if you ask them to help resolve a complaint.
• Trustpilot, if we invite you to review us.

Where the law requires it. We may share information with HMRC, customs authorities, the police or a court where we are legally obliged to, or to protect our legal rights.

If the business changes hands. If PIA Trading Ltd is sold or restructured, customer records may pass to the new owner, who must use them in line with this policy.

6. Sending information outside the UK

International moves mean sending some of your information abroad. We only send what the receiving agent or authority needs to complete your move.

• To the EU and EEA, and other countries the UK recognises as adequate (such as New Zealand), information can flow as it would within the UK.
• To other countries (such as Australia, South Africa or the United States, where the receiving business is not certified under the UK–US data bridge), we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum where we can put one in place. Where we cannot, the transfer is made because it is necessary to perform the contract you have asked us to carry out — your move.

Some of our service providers, including Google, Microsoft and Cloudflare, also process data outside the UK. They do so under UK adequacy regulations, the UK–US data bridge, or the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.

You can ask us for more detail on the safeguards used for a particular transfer.

7. How long we keep your information

We keep information only as long as we need it, then delete or securely destroy it. As a shredding provider, we apply the same standard to our own paper records.

Information	How long we keep it
Enquiries and quotes that do not lead to a booking	12 months from the quote
Customer records for completed moves, including contracts and payments	6 years after the move, to meet tax law and the time limit for legal claims
Storage contracts and inventories	For as long as your goods are stored, then 6 years
Shredding orders and certificates of destruction	6 years after the order. The documents themselves are destroyed within 2 days of reaching our depot.
Customs and international move documents, including ID copies	Until customs clearance is complete, then 6 months — ID copies are not kept longer than needed
Survey photos and video	30 days after the video/images are sent to us
CCTV footage	30 days, unless needed to investigate an incident
Google Analytics data	14 months
Microsoft Clarity session recordings and heatmaps	Recordings 30 days; heatmap data up to 13 months

If a claim or dispute is open, we keep the relevant records until it is resolved.

8. Keeping your information secure

We protect personal information with measures suited to the risk. These include:

• encrypted connections (HTTPS) across the whole website, and spam and bot protection on our forms
• access to customer records limited to staff who need it, with individual logins
• paper records kept in locked storage at our depot, and confidential waste shredded on site
• written contracts with every service provider that handles personal information for us
• staff awareness of data protection and how to spot phishing

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your rights at high risk, we will tell you without undue delay, and we will report qualifying breaches to the ICO within 72 hours.

9. Your rights

You have the following rights over your personal information. Exercising them is free, and we will respond within one month. For complex requests we may extend this by up to two further months, and will tell you why.

• Access — ask for a copy of the information we hold about you. We will carry out a reasonable and proportionate search.
• Correction — ask us to fix anything inaccurate or incomplete.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your information where we no longer need it or have no legal basis to keep it. We may need to keep some records, such as invoices, to meet the law.
• Restriction — ask us to pause using your information while a concern is looked into.
• Objection — object to anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests, including follow-ups and review requests. You can always object to direct marketing, and we will stop.
• Portability — ask for information you gave us in a common electronic format, or for us to send it to another organisation.
• Withdraw consent — where we rely on consent, such as for cookies or marketing emails, withdraw it at any time. This does not affect what happened before.

To use any of these rights, contact us using the details in section 1. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we act, and the one-month period starts once we have what we need.

10. Marketing and review requests

We will only send you marketing emails if you have agreed to them, or if you are a past customer and we are telling you about similar services of our own. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link, and you can also opt out by contacting us. We do not pass your details to other companies for their marketing.

After your move we may ask you to leave a review or tell us how we did. These requests are part of our service, not marketing, and we will send no more than one request. Just tell us if you would rather not receive them.

11. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. Email [email protected] or write to the address in section 1. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and tell you what we are doing about it, then let you know the outcome without undue delay.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK data protection regulator:

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

12. Children, other websites and changes to this policy

Children. Our services are for adults arranging a move. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, other than names of household members where a move requires it.

Other websites. Our website links to other sites, including Trustpilot, Facebook, X and britannia-movers.co.uk. Those sites have their own privacy policies, and we are not responsible for how they use your information.

Changes. We review this policy at least once a year and whenever the way we use information changes. The latest version is always on this page, with the date it was last updated. If a change significantly affects you, we will tell you directly.