Privacy notice - Gillingham Storage Ltd

How Gillingham Storage Ltd collects and uses your personal information, and the rights you have over it. This is the Privacy Notice referred to in clause 36 of our storage agreement.

Start here — this is a summary, not the whole notice

We use your details to run your storage, take payment and keep the site secure. We do not sell your personal information.
We keep your storage records for six years after your agreement ends, because accounting and tax law needs us to.
If you fall behind on payment, we will contact the alternative person you named. Please read that section.
There is CCTV at the site, monitored for us by an outside company, day or night.
We only load Google’s advertising and analytics cookies if you accept them. See “Cookies and website tracking”.
To get a copy of your information, or to ask us to correct or delete it: admin@gillinghamstorage.co.uk or 01747 441244.

The rest of this notice covers what we collect, why, who we share it with, and your rights, in full.

Who we are

Gillingham Storage Ltd (we, us, our) of New Road, Brickfields Industrial Estate, Gillingham, Dorset SP8 4LT is the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us on 01747 441244 or at admin@gillinghamstorage.co.uk.

As our website says, Gillingham Storage is managed by Rhino Storage Salisbury Ltd, a separate company. They run our site administration and the customer, billing and records systems for us. That means their staff handle your details on our behalf, and the invoices, emails and texts about your unit come out of their systems. Gillingham Storage Ltd decides what your information is used for and remains responsible for it. If you contact either of us about your information, it will reach us.

What we collect

Your details — name, address, email address and mobile number. If you give us an alternative contact person, their name and contact details too.
Your storage — the unit or units you rent, your move-in date, your storage period, your invoices, and our emails, texts and notes of our dealings with you.
Payments — the amounts you pay, when, and by what method, and the record of each payment and refund. Card details are entered directly with our payment provider and are never held by us. We do keep the card type, the last four digits, the expiry date, and the name and billing address given with the payment. Direct debit details are held by GoCardless; we can see the account holder’s name, a partly hidden account number, and your mandate and payment schedule.
Identification — where we need to be sure who we are dealing with, we may ask to see photographic ID or proof of address.
Site access — the mobile number programmed to open the gate, and records of gate use.
CCTV — images of you and your vehicle while you are at the site.
Photographs — the pictures of your unit you send us through the vacate form when you move out, which may show anything left behind. The form takes up to eight.
Website forms — what you send us through the forms on our website: quote requests and enquiries, requests to pay an invoice, notice to leave, and the vacate form. Entries are stored in our website’s database and copied into the systems we use to run the site.
Website and device information — when you visit our website, the Google tags described under “Cookies and website tracking” collect your IP address, your device and browser, how you found us, and the pages you look at.

The person you name as your alternative contact

If you are naming someone — please tell them we hold their details, and send them this section. We hold their name and contact details because you gave them to us. We will contact them if we cannot reach you and something needs dealing with at your unit, and if your account falls into arrears, to ask them to get in touch with you. We will tell them there is money owing. We will not give them your unit contents, your payment details, or anything else about you. If you would rather we did not contact them about money, tell us and we will mark them emergency-only or remove them.

If someone has named you as their alternative contact — you did not give us your details; one of our customers did, so this may be the first you have heard of it. We hold only your name and contact details. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in being able to reach someone about a unit when we cannot reach the customer. We use your details to reach you about that customer’s unit, or if their account falls into arrears. We do not use them for anything else and we do not market to you. You can ask us at any time for a copy of what we hold, or to remove your details: admin@gillinghamstorage.co.uk or 01747 441244. If you ask us to remove them we will, and we will tell the customer so they can name someone else. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

To provide your storage — allocating a unit, giving you gate access, issuing your agreement and invoices, and dealing with your enquiries. Lawful basis: performance of our contract with you.
To check who we are dealing with — confirming your identity before we let a unit, and before we act on a request about your account. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in knowing who is storing goods on our site, and in not giving access or information to the wrong person.
To collect money you owe us — sending reminders and statements, contacting you, contacting your alternative contact person, instructing a debt recovery agent, and using our rights under clauses 6 to 10 of the agreement to sell or dispose of goods in a unit where a balance stays unpaid. Lawful basis: performance of our contract with you where what we are doing concerns your own agreement; and our legitimate interest in being paid for our services for everything else, including contacting your alternative contact person, instructing a debt recovery agent, and chasing a balance after your agreement has ended.
To reach you when we cannot get hold of you — by phone, text, email or post, through your alternative contact person, and, as clause 8 of the agreement allows, by direct message to you on social media. We do not post anything publicly. Lawful basis: performance of our contract with you, and our legitimate interest in being able to reach you about your unit.
To keep the site secure — controlling who can enter, CCTV, and investigating incidents. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in protecting the site, your goods and other customers.
To close your account properly — taking your notice to leave, checking from the vacate form and its photographs that the unit has been emptied and left clear, agreeing any cleaning or damage charge with you, and keeping a record if the condition is later disputed. Lawful basis: performance of our contract with you, and our legitimate interest in being able to show the state a unit was left in.
To meet our legal obligations — keeping accounting and tax records, and giving information where the law or a court order requires it. Lawful basis: legal obligation.
To tell you about our services — we only do this where you have asked us to or agreed to it. Lawful basis: consent, which you can withdraw at any time.

Where we rely on our legitimate interests, we have weighed what we need against your rights and your privacy. You can object — see “Your rights”. If you want to know how we weighed it up for a particular use, ask us.

Do you have to give us this information

Your name, address, email address, mobile number and payment details are needed to enter into and run a storage agreement. Without them we cannot let you a unit, invoice you, take payment, or give you gate access. Your mobile number is what opens the gate, so without one you will not be able to get in. The vacate form asks for photographs so we can confirm the unit was left clear.

Hearing about our services is optional, and saying no makes no difference to your storage.

Messages we send you

There are two kinds, and they work differently.

Messages about your storage — your agreement, your invoices, payment reminders, access changes, and anything urgent about your unit. We send these by email and text because we need to in order to run your storage, so you cannot opt out of them while you are a customer. Tell us if you would rather we used one channel than another and we will do what we can.

Marketing — we only send this where you have asked us to or agreed to it, and you can stop it at any time by telling us. Stopping marketing does not stop the messages about your storage.

Who we share it with

We share your information with the following, and only where we need to:

Rhino Storage Salisbury Ltd — which runs our site administration and the systems holding your customer record, as described above.
Payment providers — WooPayments, which uses Stripe, for card payments, and GoCardless for direct debits, to take payments and issue refunds.
Signable — our e-signature provider, to send your storage agreement for signature and to store the signed copy.
Our email and text message providers — to send you the messages about your storage.
Our website host and IT providers — who keep our website and systems running.
DSOC Ltd — the outside company that monitors our CCTV for us.
Google — if you accept the cookies described under “Cookies and website tracking”, the analytics, advertising and map features on our website send information about your visit, including your IP address, to Google.
Social media platforms — only where we message you there because we cannot reach you any other way.
Our professional advisers — accountants, insurers and solicitors, where necessary.
Debt recovery and disposal of goods — where a balance stays unpaid: anyone we instruct to recover the debt, and anyone we instruct to remove, store, value, sell or dispose of goods under clauses 6 to 10 of your storage agreement.
The Police and other authorities — the Police, the Fire Service, Trading Standards, HMRC, another competent authority, or anyone acting under a court order. Clause 17(d) of your agreement lets us allow them into a unit, and where they ask we may tell them who rents it.
A buyer, if the business changes hands — if the business or the site is sold or transferred, customer records would pass to the new owner so that your storage carries on, and they would have to look after your information in the same way.

We do not sell your personal information. Apart from the Google advertising and analytics services described under “Cookies and website tracking”, we do not share your information for anyone else’s marketing.

CCTV

There is CCTV at our Gillingham site. It is monitored for us by DSOC Ltd, an outside monitoring company, whose operators are alerted when the cameras pick up activity, day or night. It is there to protect the site, the goods stored in it and the people who use it, and to look into anything that happens on site. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the site, your goods and other customers safe.

The cameras cover the site itself and are not pointed inside your unit, although they may see inside it while your door is open.

Footage is seen by us and by DSOC’s operators. We may also share it with the Police, an insurer or our solicitors where there is a good reason to. You can ask us for a copy of footage of yourself — see “Your rights”. If you want to know how long footage is kept, or which areas the cameras cover, ask us and we will tell you.

If we think something unlawful is happening

If we have reason to believe something in a unit is unlawful, or that a crime has happened on site, we may write down what we know and pass it to the Police or another authority.

How long we keep it

We keep your storage records for as long as you are a customer, and then for six years after your agreement ends, which is the period we need them for accounting, tax and any legal claim. Signed agreements are kept for the same period. Any marketing consent is kept until you withdraw it.

If you want to know how long we keep a particular kind of information — for example CCTV footage, gate access records, the photographs from the vacate form, or an enquiry that never became a booking — ask us and we will tell you what we hold.

Where it is held

The systems holding your storage records, and our website, are on servers in the UK and the European Economic Area.

Some of the providers we use are based outside those areas, or send information to them. In particular, the Google analytics, advertising and map features on our website are provided by a US company, and information those features collect may be sent to the United States. Where information goes outside the UK, we rely on the safeguards allowed by UK data protection law. If you want to know which one applies to a particular provider, ask us.

Automated decisions

We do not make decisions about you by computer alone. Our systems produce invoices and payment reminders automatically, but a decision that actually affects you — turning down a booking, ending your agreement, or selling stored goods — is made by a person.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 you can ask us to: give you a copy of your information; correct it; delete it; limit how we use it; stop using it; give you a copy of the details you gave us in a form you can take elsewhere; stop sending you marketing; or withdraw a consent you have given.

Two things to know. We keep storage, invoicing and agreement records for six years after your agreement ends, so we cannot delete those before then. And where we rely on our legitimate interests, we will stop when you object unless we have strong reasons to carry on, which we would explain. Marketing is different — we always stop, and you do not have to give a reason.

When we cannot delete your information. If you ask us to delete your records after you leave, we will normally have to say no for six years, because we need them for accounting, tax and any legal claim. We will delete anything we no longer need, we will stop sending you marketing straight away, and the rest goes once the six years are up. If your records contain a mistake we will correct it whether or not we can delete them.

How to ask. Email admin@gillinghamstorage.co.uk or ring 01747 441244. There is no charge. We may ask you for enough information to be sure it is you, so that we do not hand your details to the wrong person. We will reply within one month. If your request is complicated, or you have made several, we may need up to two more months — and we will write and tell you why inside the first month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113, though we would ask you to come to us first so we can put it right.

Cookies and website tracking

Some cookies are needed for the website to work — keeping your basket, keeping your booking session, and the cookies our payment provider needs to process a payment securely. These are always on, and we do not need to ask you about them.

We would also like to use Google Analytics and Google Ads, which set cookies and send information about your visit to Google — your IP address, the pages you look at and how you found us — and Google may use it to measure how the site is used and to target advertising. Some pages also show a Google map, which shares your IP address with Google when it loads.

None of those load until you accept them. When you first visit you can accept them all or reject them all, and rejecting is exactly as easy as accepting. If you reject them, we still show you the map if you ask for it, and nothing else about the site changes. You can change your mind at any time using the “Cookies” link at the bottom of any page.

You can also clear or block cookies in your browser settings, though parts of the booking process may then not work. You can see and change what Google does with information about you at myadcentre.google.com and myactivity.google.com.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice. This version was published on 17 August 2026.