Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Charter Machinery, part of Charter Commercial Group, collects, uses, stores and protects personal data when you use our website at chartermachinery.co.uk.

Charter Machinery is a business-to-business website for buying, selling, sourcing and valuing industrial machinery. We collect personal data only where you choose to contact us, make an enquiry about a machine, or request a valuation.

We do not currently use marketing cookies, advertising pixels, analytics tracking, user accounts, public-site logins or online payment processing on this website.

1. Who we are

For the purposes of UK data protection law, Charter Commercial Group is the controller of the personal data collected through chartermachinery.co.uk.

This means we decide how and why personal data is collected and used.

You can contact us about this policy or your data protection rights using:

• Email: info@chartermachinery.co.uk
• Post: Charter Commercial Group, Bromsgrove, United Kingdom

We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer because our current processing activities do not require one. We will review this position if our services, data usage or legal obligations change.

2. Personal data we collect

We collect personal data through the following areas of the website.

General contact form

When you use the contact form, we may collect:

• First name
• Last name
• Email address
• Phone number, if provided
• Message content
• IP address, derived from request headers
• Approximate country, derived from edge request data

We use this information to respond to your enquiry.

Machine enquiry form

When you use a machine enquiry form, including the “Speak to [Name]” enquiry modal on a machine listing page, we may collect:

• First name
• Last name
• Email address
• Phone number, if provided
• Message content
• The relevant machine listing
• The team member key linked to the enquiry, for example the person you asked to speak to
• IP address, derived from request headers
• Approximate country, derived from edge request data

We use this information to respond to your enquiry and route it to the relevant person or sales inbox.

Valuation request form

When you request a machinery valuation, we may collect:

• Name
• Email address
• Phone number, if provided
• Company name, if provided
• City
• Postcode, if provided
• Free-text message
• Machine category
• Machine brand
• Machine model
• Machine year
• Machine hours, if provided
• Machine condition
• Additional machine notes
• Up to 10 uploaded photos
• Confirmation that you agree to Charter contacting you about the valuation
• IP address, derived from request headers
• Approximate country, derived from edge request data

We use this information to review your machinery, prepare an initial valuation response, contact you about the valuation, and assess whether we can assist with buying, selling, sourcing or disposing of the asset.

Please avoid uploading photos that include people, private documents, personal information or sensitive information unless it is necessary for your valuation request.

3. Personal data we do not currently collect

The public website does not currently collect:

• Payment card or bank details
• User account details or passwords
• Public-site login credentials
• Marketing cookie data
• Advertising pixel data
• Google Analytics data
• Meta Pixel data
• Special category personal data, such as health, religion or political opinions

If this changes in future, we will update this Privacy Policy.

4. How we use your personal data

We use personal data for the following purposes:

• To respond to enquiries you send to us
• To contact you about a machine you have enquired about
• To provide information about buying, selling, sourcing or valuing machinery
• To assess valuation requests and uploaded machine information
• To route enquiries to the relevant Charter team member
• To protect our forms and website from spam, abuse and automated bot activity
• To maintain internal records of enquiries and valuation requests
• To improve our internal sales and enquiry handling processes
• To comply with legal, regulatory or business record-keeping obligations
• To establish, exercise or defend legal claims where necessary

We do not sell your personal data.

5. Lawful basis for using your personal data

Under UK data protection law, we must have a lawful basis for using your personal data.

We rely on the following lawful bases.

Legitimate interests

We rely on legitimate interests when we use your personal data to respond to a contact form or machine enquiry that you have sent to us.

Our legitimate interests include:

• Responding to business enquiries
• Providing information about our machinery and services
• Managing customer and prospective customer communications
• Protecting our website and forms from abuse
• Keeping appropriate business records

We only rely on legitimate interests where we consider that our interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms.

Contract or steps before entering into a contract

Where you ask us to provide information, discuss a potential purchase, assess a sale opportunity, source machinery, or prepare a valuation, we may process your personal data because it is necessary to take steps at your request before entering into a contract.

Consent

Where you tick a box confirming that you agree to Charter contacting you about a valuation, we use that consent to contact you about the valuation request you submitted.

You can withdraw consent at any time by contacting us at info@chartermachinery.co.uk. Withdrawing consent will not affect any processing that took place before withdrawal.

Legal obligation

We may process personal data where necessary to comply with a legal obligation.

Legal claims

We may process personal data where necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

6. Who we share personal data with

We only share personal data where necessary for the operation of the website, the handling of enquiries, the provision of our services, or compliance with legal obligations.

We may share personal data with the following categories of recipient.

Internal Charter systems and staff

Form submissions may be received and stored in SyncIt, Charter Commercial Group's internal administration platform.

Relevant Charter staff may access enquiry or valuation information where needed to respond to you, assess the opportunity, or manage the matter internally.

Website, database and storage providers

We use Supabase to host submission records and storage buckets for uploaded valuation photos. Supabase may process submitted form fields and uploaded files on our behalf.

Transactional email providers

We use Resend to send notification emails from website forms to Charter's inbox. Resend may process the submission summary and sender email address as part of that process.

Website security and bot protection providers

We use Cloudflare Turnstile to help protect our forms from spam and automated submissions. Cloudflare may process technical data such as IP address, user-agent and browser signals to assess bot risk.

Website hosting providers

Our website is hosted on Netlify. Netlify may process IP addresses, request metadata and standard server log information when visitors use the site.

Professional advisers and authorities

We may share personal data with accountants, legal advisers, insurers, regulators, law enforcement bodies, courts or other authorities where necessary.

7. International transfers

Some of our service providers are based outside the United Kingdom or may process data outside the United Kingdom.

Where personal data is transferred internationally, we take steps to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place. This may include using:

• UK adequacy regulations, where the destination country is recognised as providing adequate protection
• Standard contractual clauses
• The UK International Data Transfer Addendum
• Other transfer safeguards permitted under UK data protection law

Supabase is intended to be configured in a UK or EU data region. This should be verified before publication. Resend and Cloudflare are US-headquartered providers and may process data through infrastructure outside the UK. We rely on their data processing terms and appropriate transfer safeguards where required.

8. How long we keep personal data

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this policy.

Our standard retention periods are:

We may keep limited records for longer where required for legal, accounting, tax, insurance, dispute resolution or legitimate business record-keeping purposes.

9. How we protect personal data

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data.

These may include:

• Access controls
• Secure hosting infrastructure
• Form bot protection
• Restricted access to internal systems
• Secure storage for uploaded files
• Internal controls around enquiry and valuation handling
• Use of reputable service providers

No website or online service can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect the personal data we process.

10. Your data protection rights

Under UK data protection law, you have rights in relation to your personal data.

These may include:

Right of access

You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.

Right to rectification

You can ask us to correct personal data that is inaccurate or incomplete.

Right to erasure

You can ask us to delete your personal data in certain circumstances.

Right to restriction

You can ask us to restrict how we use your personal data in certain circumstances.

Right to data portability

You can ask us to provide certain personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, where this right applies.

Right to object

You can object to our use of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests.

Right to withdraw consent

Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at:

info@chartermachinery.co.uk

We may need to verify your identity before responding to a request.

11. Complaints

If you have concerns about how we use your personal data, please contact us first so we can try to resolve the issue.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK regulator for data protection matters.

12. Cookies and similar technologies

We do not currently use analytics cookies, marketing cookies or advertising pixels on chartermachinery.co.uk.

The website may use strictly necessary or functional technologies, including:

• Local storage to remember a visitor's preferred machine unit system, such as Imperial or Metric
• Cloudflare Turnstile cookies or similar technologies for bot protection on forms
• Future session cookies if login-based features are introduced

More detail is provided in our separate Cookies Policy.

13. Direct marketing

We do not currently use the website forms to add users to a marketing mailing list automatically.

If we introduce email marketing in future, we will update this policy and provide appropriate choices and unsubscribe options.

14. Automated decision-making

We do not use your personal data for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

15. Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to third-party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those websites. You should read the privacy policy of any third-party website you visit.

16. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time.

The latest version will be published on this page with an updated “last updated” date.