We are Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (“SSEN”), which is the trading name of Scottish Hydro Electric
Transmission Plc (“SHET”), Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution Plc (“SHEPD”) (of Inveralmond House, 200
Dunkeld Road, Perth, Perthshire PH1 3AQ) and Southern Electric Power Distribution Plc (“SEPD”) (of No.1 Forbury
Place, 43 Forbury Road, Reading, United Kingdom, RG1 3JH). SHET and SHEPD are subject to the laws of Scotland.
SEPD is subject to the laws of England and Wales.

We use your information as further explained in this Privacy Notice. We’ll be the “controller” of the information you provide to us. If you live in Scotland, SHET and SHEPD will be the controller of the information you provide to us.  If you live in England, SEPD will be the controller of the information you provide to us.  “We”, “we’ll”, “our”, “us” etc. when used in this Privacy Notice will be interpreted as relating to the relevant data controller.

This Privacy Notice covers the following processing activities of SSEN:

• Customer Operations and Complaints;
• Connections;
• Wayleaves (land rights);
• Innovations;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Priority Services; and
• Smart Meter.

We collect basic personal data about you specifically, name, address, telephone number and email address. We may also collect your bank details in certain circumstances. If you contact us, or we contact you, by telephone, we may also record the call for training and service improvement purposes and make notes in relation to your call.

We may also receive personal data about you from third parties, including your electricity supplier, such as up-to-date contact details, off supply notifications and application details for new connection requests. As a transmission and distribution network provider, SSEN works closely with third parties, including your electricity supplier, sub-contractors, National Grid, Members of Parliament, local authorities, housing authorities, charities and the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (“Ofgem”).

For more information on personal data collected for Priority Services specifically, please click on the link.

We need to know your basic personal data to be able to maintain and operate the electricity transmission and distribution networks for which we are responsible. In particular, we need to know your basic personal data to direct your enquiries to the correct SSEN team, to allow our engineers to visit you onsite where required and to provide assistance to you in the case of an emergency.

In order to process and use your personal information lawfully, we rely on the following legal bases:

• for the performance of a contract with you for provision of our products and/or services or to take steps at your request prior to entering into such a contract;
• to comply with our legal obligations;
• for our legitimate interests in ensuring effective operational management and internal administration, document retention/storage, compliance with regulatory guidance, exercise or defence of legal claims, product/service improvement and communicating with you; and
• with your consent, to maintain and develop our relationship with you, including marketing our products and services and market research. You may withdraw your consent at any time.

For more information on the legal grounds for processing for Priority Services specifically, please click on the link.

The personal data we process is processed by our staff to:

• enable our customer contact centre to help you with any enquiries or complaints;
• communicate with you by telephone, mail, email or other electronic means;
• enable us to provide you with assistance in order to ensure the distribution of electricity to you and to contact you in an emergency;
• monitor our work and maintain our records;
• obtain feedback on how we can improve our services;
• allow us to process charges in the event of damage to our equipment; provide compensation to customers in certain circumstances; and
• comply with legal or regulatory requirements. 

For additional information on what we do with your personal data for Priority Services, Connections, Innovations, Stakeholder Engagement or Wayleaves specifically, please click on the relevant link

For the purposes of IT support and maintenance, we, or a third party who we share personal information with, may host, store and handle that personal information outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).  

We may share your information with:

• your electricity supplier;
• Ofgem, the Energy Ombudsman and any other regulatory authority we may be subject to for the purposes of demonstrating compliance with applicable law and regulations;
• our sub-contractors for the purposes of carrying out work on our electricity distribution networks; and
• our service providers for the purposes of providing services to us (including third party survey providers in order to carry out surveys on our behalf).

We may also use aggregate information and statistics in order to help us develop our services and may provide such aggregate information to third parties. These statistics will not include information that can be used to identify any individual.

If you have provided consent, or we otherwise have the right to do so, we may send to you direct marketing and promotional materials relating to our services, engagement activities or related products, for example sending you communications (including by email) for these purposes. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link in any of our emails or by emailing unsubscribe@ssen.co.uk.

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:  

• our contractual obligations and rights in relation to the information involved;
• 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 this is no longer needed.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our retention policy which you can request by contacting us using the details below in the ‘Contacting us’ section.

We, or a third party who we share personal information with, 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 are all considered to have equivalent laws in data protection and privacy. During the Brexit transition phase (until 31 December 2020), the UK including Northern Ireland, are also considered to have equivalent laws in data protection and privacy.  


We will only permit this 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:

a) 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

b) 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).

For more information on your rights or if you would like to exercise any of your rights, you are welcome to contact us at the contact details set out below under “Contacting us”. 

If you would like to contact us in relation to your rights, or if you are unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, you may contact us as follows: 

Address: Networks Data Protection Team, 2^nd Floor, SSEN, Inveralmond House, 200 Dunkeld Road, Perth PH1 3AQ 

Email: networksdataprotection@sse.com

If you would like to contact our data protection officer, you may do so by contacting them at 

Address:  Data Protection Officer, c/o Executive Complaints Team, Grampian House, 200 Dunkeld Road, Perth, PH1 3GH

Telephone number: 0345 070 7378 

Email: GroupDPO@sse.com

If you’re 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 the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) using the following details:

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

Telephone number: 0303 123 1113 

Website: www.ico.org.uk