This Privacy Notice relates to Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks Distribution only.

If you would like to view the Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks Transmission Privacy Notice, please visit https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/privacy

About Us

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. This Privacy Notice is only applicable to SHEPD and SEPD who are collectively referred to as SSEN Distribution.

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, 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:

What Information Do We Need?

As a distribution network provider, SSEN Distribution 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”).

We collect your personal data when you use our website, communicate with us by phone, letter, email, social media or in person or when you receive our services. We may also receive personal data about you from third parties including your electricity supplier, contractors and Software as a Service providers acting on behalf of SSEN. We may collect the following personal data, and we refer to this as “personal data” throughout this notice:

• Contact data (such as first name, last name, any previous names, username or
similar signifier, email address, telephone number(s));
• Address;
• Details of secondary contact (e.g. name and phone number);
• Financial information (such as bank account details (e.g. sort code, account number,
name, account type) and payment card details);
• Payment data (such as payment IDs and voucher codes);
• Transaction data (such as details about payments to you and from you and other
details of products and services you have purchased from or provided to us)
• Meter Point Administration Number (MPAN);
• Smart Meter consumption data;
• Off supply notifications;
• Application details for new connection requests;
• Report from investigations into illegal activity;
• Call recordings;
• CCTV footage when you visit our offices, or any sites operated by us;
• Photographs, video footage and voice recordings when conducting remote processes;

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

Why Do We Need It?

We need to know your basic personal data to be able to maintain and operate the electricity 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 Distribution team, to allow our engineers to visit you onsite where required and to provide assistance to you in the case of an emergency.

We may need your bank or card details to allow us to process charges if you are required to make a payment to SSEN (e.g., for a new Connection, or a Wayleave payment) or if you are owed a refund or other monetary payment.

We process photographs, video footage and voice recordings in order to conduct remote load check assessments prior to the installation of a Low Carbon Technology in your property, where requested to do so.

We collect CCTV footage in order to ensure the health and safety of our staff, visitors and members of the public and prevent crime.

When we have reason to believe there may be illegal activity regarding electricity consumption or an electricity connection, we have a legal obligation and substantial public interest to visit the site to investigate. A third party (e.g. Seeka) may conduct these site visits on behalf of SSEN Distribution. After the visit, a summary report will be produced including the address of the site and the associated MPAN(s), as well as the name and contact details of the occupant if possible. Where the output of these investigations results in prosecution by the police, the information within the summary report may become criminal offence data.

Legal Basis for Processing

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 such a contract;
  • to comply with our legal obligations;
  • for our substantial public interests such as investigating potential electricity theft;
  • 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. 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.

What Do We Do With It?

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;
  • train our staff and improve our products and services, which may mean we that we monitor and record communications that we have with you including phone conversations, e-mails, SMSs and web chats;
  • 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;
  • allow us to process payments to SSEN (e.g., for new Connections or Wayleave payments);
  • to enable us to make payments, issue refunds and /or return credit balances to you;
  • to check and verify your bank account details;
  • comply with legal or regulatory requirements;
  • carry out investigations into suspected electricity theft;
  • carry out checks on customers, suppliers and other third parties, which relate to activities such as anti-money laundering, countering terrorist financing and other unlawful acts (for example, illegal trafficking and environmental crime) and anti-bribery and corruption requirements;
  • to provide you with priority services (where you are on our Priority Services Register); and
  • for analysis and during testing of new systems or system updates

For additional information on what we do with your personal data for Priority Services, Connections, Innovations, Wayleaves, Stakeholder Engagement, or Smart Meter specifically, please see below.

Who We Share Your Personal Data With

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;
   • councils, local authorities, emergency services and response units in the event of a storm, or any other event affecting the network; and
   • external third parties – such as our suppliers and service providers for the purposes of providing services to us including:
    o IT support and software as service providers;
    o third parties conducting investigations into suspected electricity theft on our behalf such as Seeka and the police;
    o third party survey providers in order to carry out surveys on our behalf; and to payment processors and card acquirers when processing a card payment to SSEN.
    o to payment processors and card acquirers when processing a card payment to SSEN Distribution.
   • banks;

For more information about who we share your data with for processing for Priority Services specifically, please click on the link.

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.

Marketing

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@sse.co.uk

How Long Will We Keep It?

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.

International Data Transfers

Your personal data may be transferred to or processed in a country which is outside your resident country (this includes outside of the United Kingdom and European Economic Area (“EEA”)). This may include transfers to other companies within the SSE group, and to third parties.

We take organisational, contractual, and legal measures to ensure that adequate levels of protection have been implemented to safeguard your personal data such as:

• Where the country has been granted an adequacy decision by the European Commission and/or the Information Commissioner in the UK. This means that the destination country provides an adequate level of protection which is equivalent to that applied in the UK, and the EEA;

• Put in place a contract with the third party receiving the personal data, which incorporates the Standard Contractual Clauses (“SCCs”) which has been issued by the European Commission (in relation to transfers of European residents’ personal data) and the UK addendum to the SCCs which has been issued by the ICO (in relation to transfers of UK residents’ personal data), that means the third party who receives the personal data must protect it to the same standards set out in the GDPR;

• 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

Your Rights

You have the following rights regarding your information:

Rights What does this mean?
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’re providing you with the information in this Privacy Notice.
Right of Access You have the right to obtain access to your personal data (if we’re processing it) and certain other information (similar to that provided in this Privacy Notice). This is so you’re aware and can check that we’re using your personal data in accordance with data protection law.
Right to Rectification You are entitled to have your personal data corrected if it’s inaccurate or
incomplete.
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’s no compelling reason for us to keep it. This is not a general right to erasure; there are exceptions.
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.
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.
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.
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 contact us at the contact details set out below under “Contacting Us”.

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:

Email: distributiondataprotection@sse.com

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

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.

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

If you send us a request for information (e.g. request for environmental information under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR)) and ask for us to respond via the post, you may be charged a fee to cover the printing and postage. See the schedule of charges for printing documents by clicking the button below.

Schedule of Charges for Printing

Links to Supplemental Information

Priority Services

Special Categories of Personal Data

In addition to collecting your basic personal data (name, address, telephone number and email address), if you are registered for our Priority Services we process special categories or “sensitive” data about you (e.g. personal data concerning health conditions, equipment requirements which would indicate a health condition where this is necessary:

  • to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another person, if you or they are incapable of providing consent;
  • for the performance of a task carried out that has a substantial public interest, for the purpose of providing a priority service to children and adults at risk; and
  • for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims.

We will only ask for your consent in very specific situations. Where your explicit consent is required (such as sharing your details with specific organisations), we will ask you for it at the relevant time. You may withdraw your consent at any time.

You can object to being on the Priority Services Register and request that we remove your details from the Priority Services Register at any time by contacting us on 0800 294 3259.

What Do We Do With Your Personal Information?

We use your information to:

  • register you for our Priority Service;
  • ensure that you are provided with the ongoing support you need in an emergency, bad weather and for planned supply interruptions (including providing you with updates and alerts) both onsite and through our customer contact centre;
  • liaise with your nominated contact (where provided);
  • periodically contact you to confirm that the details we hold for you are up to date;
  • provide you with information in Braille, via an audio CD or language other than English if you require it; and
  • provide you with a security password.
  • to provide you with useful information to help you prepare for the event of a power outage.

We may also receive personal information about you from electricity suppliers, gas transporters, water companies, welfare organisations and NHS organisations to include you on our Priority Services register so that you will benefit from this service. We will send you a letter to notify you when you have been added to the register.

We may share your information with:

  • welfare organisations, electricity suppliers, gas transporters, water companies, local authorities, and emergency services for those organisations to provide support and assistance to you in special circumstances or emergencies;
  • our sub-contractors to provide onsite support during, planned supply interruptions, bad weather or emergencies; and
  • Home Energy Scotland/Yes Energy Solutions with your consent.
  • Third party survey providers in order to carry out surveys on our behalf.

Connections

What Do We Do With Your Personal Information?

We use your information to:

  • process your application and provide you with designs and quotations for a new connection to our electricity network;
  • provide feasibility and budget estimates;
  • move or divert your existing supply of electricity to a new location as requested by you;
  • manage applications for disconnection from our electricity network;
  • manage generation applications, which is reportable to our regulator Ofgem;
  • provide our operational teams with the necessary information to carry out the connection works onsite;
  • share your contact details where you are the primary generator with a flexible connection to assist other applicants who are interested in shared capacity connections;
  • contact you to invite you to take part in connections engagement activities, provide comment/feedback on changes in policy and improvements to systems;
  • comply with legislation associated with the provision of electrical connections;
  • carry out inspections to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
  • investigate reports of potential cases of electricity theft; and
  • process payments to SSEN relating to Connection works.

Innovations

What Do We Do With Your Personal Information?

If you register an interest in being kept up to date with any new innovation projects undertaken by SSEN, a particular project or sign-up to be part of a particular project, we use your information to:

  • send you newsletter communications with updates about our ongoing or new innovations projects; this may also include information on wider industry events such as those organised by other Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) or the Energy Networks Association;
  • design projects to trial innovative technologies to help manage the SSEN network;
  • effectively deliver innovations projects; and
  • verify any analysis carried out on those projects (which could include monitoring devices installed in customer homes);

We may receive your information from third parties working in association or partnership with a particular project e.g., local housing associations.

In many cases, we deliver innovation projects with external partners such as local housing associations, and we may need to share your information with them to ensure that we can deliver the project successfully.

Wayleaves

What Do We Do With Your Personal Information?

We use your information to:

  • agree rights in land;
  • manage existing land rights;
  • carry out administrative duties relating to rights agreed inclusive of payments;
  • carry out other land liaison duties such as notification of project work, operations and maintenance;
  • process Wayleaves payments; and
  • facilitate access to install, monitor, maintain and remove apparatus lawfully situated on your land.

We may also share your information with any legal representative you have appointed to liaise with us on your behalf and with contractors undertaking development projects and maintenance.

Stakeholder Engagement

What Do We Do With Your Personal Information?

We use your information to:

  • fulfill and evidence regulatory stakeholder engagement targets and obligations;
  • record your consent and marketing preferences;
  • invite you to future stakeholder activities and events that may be of interest to you;
  • record your attendance at events and any feedback you have provided; and
  • provide you with updates and relevant information on SSEN activities, including progress of initiatives, forthcoming developments and opportunities to engage and consult.
  • Photography Privacy Notice: for any photography captured during SSEN stakeholder events, please refer to our Media Privacy Notice to ensure compliance with data protection and privacy guidelines.

We may share your information with our third party service providers who carry out engagement activities, surveys and/or research on our behalf.

Smart Meter

What Do We Do With Your Personal Information?

SSEN will access and utilise personal data from Smart Meters installed in customers’ homes, including aggregated half hourly electricity consumption data to:

  • fulfill our Regulated Duties;
  • to develop and maintain an efficient, co-ordinated, and economical system of electricity distribution;
  • to ensure that new low-carbon technologies are connected efficiently and economically without affecting supply to existing customers and where possible avoid the need to reinforce the network.