About us
We are committed to ensuring your privacy is protected. This Privacy Notice explains how we use the personal data we collect about you, as discussed below.
For the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, the Data Controller is SSE PLC (SC117119) having its registered address and trading address at Inveralmond House, 200 Dunkeld Road, Perth, Perthshire, PH1 3AQ. Our site may link to other websites, and we are not responsible for their data policies, procedures or their content.
It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice we may provide you. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.
In addition to SSE plc, for the specific business areas outlined below, other SSE companies will also be controllers of your personal information:
SSE Energy Markets Companies
Company Name | Company Number | Address |
SSE Energy Supply Limited | 03757502 | No.1 Forbury Place, 43 Forbury Road, Reading, United Kingdom, RG1 3JH |
SSE Energy Markets Limited | 9442646 | |
SSE Trading Limited | 04336842 |
Personal information we collect about you
The personal information we collect, store and use about you have been grouped together as:
Category | Types of Personal Data included within the Category
|
Identity Data | Information which can identify an individual, including but not limited to first name, last name, any previous names, username, customer id, account number or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth, gender, photographs, voice recordings, images, video footage, CCTV footage, vehicle registration numbers, or where you are a politician, the party and constituency you represent |
Contact Data | address, phone number, email address, billing address, social media handle and profile |
Financial Data | bank account, credit history, grant application details, payment card details (where applicable), payment identifiers, voucher codes |
Transaction Data | details about payments to and from you, details of products and services you have purchased or use, information about other third-party supplier’s electricity and/or gas accounts held by you |
Technical Data | internet protocol (IP) address, login data (username and passwords), browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device ID and other technology on the devices used to access websites and/or apps, approximate geolocation |
Usage Data | information about how a data subject interacts with and uses our websites, products and services |
What we do with your personal information
Receiving your personal information
Most of the personal data we receive will be collected directly from you, including when you interact with our websites and/or our social media networks. From time to time, we may also receive your personal data from:
- Your employer;
- Our Joint Venture Partners;
- Council and Local Authorities;
- Other SSE group companies;
- Other energy suppliers;
- Credit reference or fraud prevention agencies;
- Debt collection agencies, and
- Through our use of cookies. Cookies are small text files stored in the web browser that can identify you when you visit our website, as explained in our cookies policy. For more information, see our cookies policy via the link below.
Sharing your personal information
We may have to share your personal data with:
- Other SSE group companies for account administration, payment management and strategy development, and where they provide a service to us;
- External third parties such as third party suppliers where these carry out work on our behalf or provide services to us (including but not limited to payment providers, payment system companies, technology providers), banks and debt collection agencies, professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers, including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers;
- Our Joint Venture partners;
- Regulatory authorities (including Ofgem and the Planning Inspectorate/other relevant planning authorities) to whom we may be subject for the purposes of demonstrating compliance with applicable law, financial and regulatory frameworks;
- “Competent Authorities”, e.g., including but not limited to, Police, Government Authorities and/or the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), as part of an investigation being carried out;
- Our Corporate Auditors for the purposes of demonstrating compliance with financial and regulatory frameworks; and
- Any potential or actual purchaser of our business(es).
Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach.
International Data Transfers outside of the European Economic Area (EEA)/UK
We, or a third party with whom we share personal information, may transfer, host, store and/or handle your personal information outside of the EEA. For example, where we and/or our service providers (including servers) are based outside of the EEA.
The EEA consists of countries in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway, and they are all considered to have equivalent laws in data protection and privacy. The UK, including Northern Ireland, are also considered to have equivalent laws in data protection and privacy.
We will only permit the transfer of your personal data to a country outside of the EEA/UK to happen if adequate safeguards have been put in place to protect your personal information. For countries outside the UK, this means that we will:
- ensure that the country in which your personal information will be handled has been deemed “adequate” by the European Commission under Article 45 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); or
- include standard data protection clauses approved by the European Commission for transferring personal information outside the EEA and the UK into our contracts with those third parties (these are the clauses approved under Article 46.2 of the GDPR); or
- where an appropriate derogation as set out in Article 49 of the GDPR applies; or
- where the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and/or the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework arrangements apply.
How long we hold your personal information
We will keep your information only for as long as necessary, depending on the purpose for which it was provided.
When determining the relevant retention periods, we will take into account factors including:
- legal obligation(s) under applicable law to retain data for a certain period of time;
- (potential) disputes, and
- guidelines issued by relevant data protection authorities.
Otherwise, we securely erase your information once it is no longer needed.
Your rights
You have the following rights regarding your information:
Rights | What does this mean? |
1. Right to be informed | You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent, and easily understandable information about how we use your personal data and your rights. This is why we are providing you with the information in this Privacy Notice. |
2. Right of access | You have the right to obtain access to your personal data (if we are processing it) and certain other information (similar to that provided in this Privacy Notice). This is so you are aware and can check that we are using your personal data in accordance with data protection law. |
3. Right to rectification | You are entitled to have your personal data corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete. |
4. Right to erasure | This is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ and, in simple terms, enables you to request the deletion or removal of your personal data where there is no compelling reason for us to keep it. This is not a general right to erasure; there are exceptions. |
5. Right to restrict processing | You have rights to ‘block’ or suppress further use of your personal data in certain circumstances. When processing is restricted, we can still store your personal data but may not use it further. |
6. Right to data portability | You have the right to obtain and reuse your personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format in certain circumstances. In addition, where certain conditions apply, you have the right to have such information transferred directly to a third party. |
7. Right to object to processing | You have the right to object to certain types of processing in certain circumstances. In particular, the right to object to the processing of your personal data based on our legitimate interests or on public interest grounds; the right to object to processing for direct marketing purposes (including profiling); the right to object to the use of your personal data for scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in certain circumstances. |
8. Right to withdraw consent | If you have given your consent to anything we do with your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although if you do so, it does not mean that anything we have done with your personal data with your consent up to that point is unlawful). This includes your right to withdraw consent to us using your personal data for direct marketing. |
For more information on your rights or if you would like to exercise any of your rights, you are welcome to get in touch using the details in the “Contacting Us” section below.
Contacting us
If you would like to contact our Data Protection Officer, you may do so using the following details:
Email: GroupDPO@sse.com
Address: Data Protection Officer, No. 1 Forbury Place, 43 Forbury Road, Reading, RG1 3JH
We sold our retail business to OVO Energy in January 2020. If you are a domestic energy customer and have a data protection enquiry, please contact OVO Energy directly.
If you are not satisfied with our response to any complaint or believe our processing of your information does not comply with data protection law, you can make a complaint to:
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Related links
Cookie policy
