Privacy Policy

This privacy policy tells you how we treat your personal information. We want you to understand how we keep your personal information private and secure. The primary reasons for holding your personal data are to ensure that we can respond quickly in an emergency and so that we are aware of customers who have particular needs because they are ill or in critical care. We maintain a priority services register of high-risk customers so that we can provide a quick response when necessary.

Contact Details

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal data, you can make a complaint to us using the contact details below.

Post
Data Protection Officer
Advanced Water Infrastructure Networks Limited
Nexus Park, Avenue East,
Skyline 120,
Great Notley,
Braintree, Essex,
CM77 7AL

Leaf Water is a trading name of Advanced Water Infrastructure Networks Limited, please use the above address if you are a Leaf Water customer.

DPO@advanced-utility.co.uk

What personal information we collect and use, and why

We collect or use some or all of the following information:

Names and contact details
Addresses
Date of birth
Purchase or account history
Payment details (including card or bank information for transfers and direct debits)
Health and safety information
Website user information (including user journeys and cookie tracking)
Account information, including registration details
Information used for security purposes
Customer or client accounts and records
Priority Services information

For the following purposes:

Providing services and, where applicable, goods including delivery
Contacting you about our services
Operating customer accounts
Providing service updates (such as during interruptions to service) and information to help you plan
Providing information about events that may interrupt the service to you, including advance notice of planned interruptions to your service (for example, when we are carrying out essential maintenance)
Contacting you in an emergency
Carrying out our statutory obligations
Marketing and carrying out surveys
Compliance with legal requirements
Dealing with queries, complaints or claims

Lawful bases and data protection rights

Under UK data protection law, we must have a “lawful basis” for collecting and using your personal information. There is a list of possible lawful bases in the UK GDPR. You can find out more about lawful bases on the ICO’s website.

Which lawful basis we rely on may affect your data protection rights which are set out in brief below. You can find out more about your data protection rights and the exemptions which may apply on the ICO’s website:

Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. You can request other information such as details about where we get personal information from and who we share personal information with. There are some exemptions which means you may not receive all the information you ask for. Read more about the right of access.
Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal information you think is inaccurate or incomplete. Read more about the right to rectification.
Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information. Read more about the right to erasure.
Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to limit how we can use your personal information. Read more about the right to restriction of processing.
Your right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. Read more about the right to object to processing.
Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you. Read more about the right to data portability.
Your right to withdraw consent – When we use consent as our lawful basis you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Read more about the right to withdraw consent.

If you make a request, we must respond to you without undue delay and in any event within one month.

To make a data protection rights request, please contact us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.

Our lawful bases for collecting or using personal information are:

Consent – we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
Contract – we have to collect or use the information so we can enter into or carry out a contract with you. All of your data protection rights may apply except the right to object.
Legal obligation – we have to collect or use your information so we can comply with the law. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to erasure, the right to object and the right to data portability.

Where do we get personal information from

Directly from you and also indirectly from you via our customer service partner (South East Water) where you are a Leaf Water customer.

How long do we keep information for

We will keep your personal data for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it was obtained. The criteria for determining the duration for which we will retain your personal data are as follows:

We will retain your personal data in a form that permits identification only for as long as:

we maintain an ongoing relationship with you; or
your personal data is necessary in connection with the lawful purposes set out in this privacy notice for which we have a valid legal basis.

Plus, for the duration of:

any applicable limitation period under applicable law (i.e. any period during which any person could bring a legal claim against us in connection with your personal data, or to which your personal data may be relevant); or
an additional reasonable period following the end of such applicable limitation period.

In addition to the above:

if any relevant legal claims are brought, we may continue to process your personal data for such additional periods as are necessary in connection with that claim.

Where your personal data is retained for claim limitation purposes or for a reasonable period thereafter, we will restrict our processing of your personal data to the storage of, and maintaining the security of, those personal data, except to the extent that those personal data needs to be reviewed in connection with any legal claim or obligation under applicable law.

After this period your personal data will be anonymised so that you are no longer identified or identifiable from such information, or securely deleted/destroyed.

Any third parties that we engage will keep your personal data stored on their systems for as long as is necessary to provide the relevant services to you or us. If we end our relationship with any third-party providers, we will make sure that they securely delete or return your personal data to us.

We may retain personal data about you for statistical purposes. Where personal data is retained for statistical purposes, it will always be anonymised, meaning that you will not be identifiable from that data.

We sometimes share information with other organisations, and we set out details of those below

Joint controllers

South East Water if you are a Leaf Water customer. The priority services register is shared with South East Water and Leaf Water customer.

Others:

Other relevant third parties: Our employees, officers and agents;
Our group companies,
Our third-party business partners, suppliers, subcontractors and service providers including credit reference agencies
Other providers of essential services, such as gas transporters, electricity distributors or water companies, local authorities and the emergency services;
Analytics providers that assist us with improvement of our Website;
Government agencies and independent regulatory bodies, such as the Water Service Regulation Authority (Ofwat), Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI); and
Other third parties as might be required by law, including compliance with any court order or legal obligation. We may also provide third parties with aggregate information about our users. You will not be personally identifiable from this aggregate information.

If our business enters into a joint venture with, purchases or is sold to or merges with another business entity, your personal information may be disclosed or transferred to the target company, our new business partners or owners or their advisors.

We may use your personal information if we are under a duty to disclose or share your information in order to comply with (and/or where we believe we are under a duty to comply with) any legal obligation; or in order to enforce our contracts; or to protect our rights, property, or safety or the rights, property, or safety of our customers, employees or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and other organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and prevention.

Anti-Spam Policy

We enforce a strict ‘Anti-Spam’ policy that means we do not intend to sell, rent, or otherwise give your e-mail address to a third-party without your consent.

In addition, our Group will not send you emails that you have not agreed to receive. If you are a member of our mailing list, you may be contacted with announcements, news, portfolio additions, and new products or services. With each email sent, you have the option of ‘unsubscribing’ from our mailing list at any time, thereby disabling any further such email communication from being sent.

If you wish to have specific communications with a member of the Group’s staff, you will be required to provide specific information that will be routed to the appropriate contact within the Group.

Security

The Group uses all reasonable precautions to keep the information disclosed to us secure. We will only keep your personal data for as long as we reasonably require it. Please note that unfortunately the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we have measures in place to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal data transmitted over the internet, including to the Website, and any transmission is at your own risk. The Group reserves the right to transfer information in connection with the sale of all or part of the Group’s or any Group company’s capital stock or assets to any third party. Furthermore, we are not responsible for or any breach of security or for any actions of any third parties that receive the information.

For the purposes of our Privacy Policy and in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (“GDPR”) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”), the terms “Group”, “we”, “us”, or “our” refer collectively to ADVANCED UTILITY ASSET NETWORKS LIMITED, a company registered in England, and/or any of its subsidiaries and affiliated entities (together, the “Group”), including but not limited to:

LEAFWATER LIMITED, registered in England
ADVANCED WATER INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORKS LIMITED, registered in England
ADVANCED UTILITY NETWORKS LIMITED, registered in England

Each entity within the Group may act as a data controller or processor of personal data, depending on the nature of the services provided and the context in which your personal data is collected. The entity responsible for your personal data (i.e., the “data controller”) will be identified at the time of collection, in your contract with us or in your water bill.

This Privacy Policy applies to the processing of personal data carried out by any Group entity, as relevant, and outlines our approach to data protection, your rights as a data subject, and how you can exercise those rights under the GDPR and UK GDPR.

If you have questions about which entity is the controller of your data, or if you wish to exercise any of your data subject rights, you can contact us using the details provided above.

Any changes to this Privacy Policy will be published on our websites so that you are always aware of the information that we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.

Keeping your data private

If you wish to exercise any of your rights in relation to the personal data we hold or if you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal data, you can make a complaint to us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.

If you remain unhappy with how we’ve used your data after contacting us, you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The ICO’s Address:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Website: https://www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

Last updated 31^st July 2025