Privacy Policy

Rettie is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected, and our use of your personal information is governed by this Privacy Policy.

In this policy where we say “we” or “us” or “Rettie” we are referring to Rettie & Company Limited and/or such of its subsidiaries and affiliates as the context may require. These include:

Rettie & Company Limited

Rettie West End LLP

Rettie Bearsden LLP

Rettie Berwick LLP

Rettie Borders LLP

Rettie Short Lets Limited

Altivo Media Limited

Rettie Financial Services Limited

Rettie is a controller for the personal information that it collects and uses about you. We will treat your personal information as confidential and in accordance with applicable data protection legislation and your personal information will only be shared with others in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Our use of your personal information is subject to the Data Protection Act 2018, the UK General Data Protection Regulation and other relevant UK legislation.

Changes to this policy

We retain the right to update this policy at any time and we will provide you with a new policy when we make substantial updates.

What Personal Information is

Personal information is any information that tells us something about you. This could include information such as name, contact details, date of birth, bank account details or any information about your needs or circumstances which would allow us to identify you.

What Personal Information do we collect?

We will collect your full name and contact details (such as phone number, email address and postal address) from you whenever you engage with us. Together with any financial data, status, and history to enable us to fulfil our obligations to you.

Some personal information is classified as "special category" data under data protection legislation. This includes information relating to health, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or political opinions, and sexual orientation. It also includes biometric data in the form of facial imagery and identity document images collected by a trusted third party provider on our behalf. This information is more sensitive, and we need to have further justifications for collecting, storing, and using this type of personal information.

In addition, if we are providing a service to you, or on your behalf, where we are required to do so by law, we will collect information relating to your identity, in the form of photographic identification (such as a passport, a driving licence, or an identification card) and other documentation with proof of your place of residence (such as a recent utility bill). This is to meet anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing requirements.

How we use your personal information

What is the legal basis of our data processing?

Under data protection legislation we are only permitted to use your personal information if we have a legal basis for doing so. We rely on the following legal bases to use your information.

  • For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, for example because processing is necessary for the performance of an instruction
  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
  • Where we have a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) to do so and provided that your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • For the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or proceedings.
  • You can remove your consent at any time.

We use your personal information:

  • To provide services to you/our clients.
  • To manage and administer your relationship with Rettie, including use for the purposes of processing payments, accounting, auditing, billing and collection and other support services.
  • To record telephone calls for training, compliance, and record-keeping purposes.
  • To conduct checks to identify our clients and verify their identity.
  • To screen for financial and other sanctions or embargoes.
  • To comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations and guidance that applies to our business.
  • To update our client records.
  • Where necessary to gather and provide information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by enforcement authorities, regulatory bodies, courts, tribunals and government agencies.
  • To deal with any complaints received.
  • For insurance purposes.
  • For marketing our services to you (further information about the use of your personal information in connection with marketing is given below in the section Marketing).

How long do we keep your personal information?

The period for which we will keep your personal information will depend on the type of service you have requested from us. The retention period may be longer than the period for which we are providing services to you where we have statutory or regulatory obligations to retain personal information for a longer period, or where we may need to retain the information in case of a legal claim.

Your rights in relation to your personal information

Under data protection law you have a number of rights in relation to your personal information, including the right to:

  • Be informed about how we use your personal information.

  • Provide you with a copy of your personal information.

  • Request that your personal information is corrected if you believe it is incorrect, incomplete, or inaccurate.

  • Request that we erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

  • Ask us to restrict our data processing activities where you consider that:
  • personal information is inaccurate.
  • our processing of your personal information is unlawful.
  • where we no longer need the personal information, but you require us to keep it to enable you to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.
  • where you have raised an objection to our use of your personal information.
  • Object to our processing of your personal information:
  • At any time to your personal information being processed for direct marketing purposes;
  • In certain circumstances where we are relying on legitimate interests for continued processing.

Money Laundering and Economic Crime

We are aware that the real estate industry is a target for organised criminals seeking to launder the proceeds of criminal activity. Anti-money laundering compliance is a core responsibility of Rettie. We are committed to ensuring that our business is not used to facilitate money laundering, terrorist financing, or proliferation financing.

As part of this commitment, we adopt a strict compliance with all Anti-Money Laundering regulations. The principal regulation is the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLR 2017) and also includes Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, , the Bribery Act 2010, Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018,the Terrorism Act 2000 and Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022.

We are registered and supervised by HM Revenue & Customs for compliance with the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, who require us to verify the identities of individuals and complete due diligence on all our customers to ensure we are complying with the international fight against terrorism and other criminal activities. We are legally bound to disclose this information to government bodies, if requested.

If you would like to speak to us about Anti-Money Laundering, please email compliance@rettie.co.uk.

Disclosures of your Personal Data

We may have to share your personal information with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the section titled "How we use your personal information data" above. We have agreements in place with our third party data processors that restrict their use of your personal information. We only allow third parties to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

  • External Third parties acting as processors in the United Kingdom who provide IT and system services, marketing services administration services, anti-money laundering service providers, ID checking agencies, credit agencies, credit referencing agencies tenancy deposit administrators and services to enable us to perform out contract with you.
  • Professional advisors acting as processors or controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors, and insurers based in the United Kingdom who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accountancy services.
  • HMRC, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or controllers based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
  • If you are obtaining mortgage services, we will disclose personal information that needs to be submitted to lenders in order to fulfil our obligations to seek funding options for you.
  • If you are an insurance customer, we will disclose information to be sent to a selected panel of insurance providers in order to obtain suitable options for insurance products for your requirements.
  • Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this Privacy Policy.

Visitors to our website

Rettie is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and we always pledge to handle your data fairly and legally.

Use of Cookies by Rettie

We use cookies in line with the Information Commissioners Office guidelines, to read about our Cookie Policy, follow this link.

Live Chat

We collect information about you when you engage with us on our website via our online live chat service which is provided by CommVersion (privacy policy). Personal Data we collect for these purposes usually include your name and contact information. This shall be used strictly to reply to enquiries or provide you with the information of the service requested.

Marketing

We use your marketing information for marketing purposes, this includes contacting you with relevant newsletters, bulletins, and other information about our services, and inviting you to events. We review our communications to ensure that the content that we create is relevant and useful. Our lawful basis for this is your consent. You have the right to withdraw this consent or amend your marketing preferences at any time by contacting compliance@rettie.co.uk

We hold your social media information while operating our social media accounts on X, Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google. Our lawful basis for this is that it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interest in maintaining a visible, engaging, and relevant social media presence.

Web Banner Advertising

If you visit our website, you may receive personalised banner advertisements whilst browsing other websites. Any banner advertisements you see will relate to products you have viewed whilst browsing our website on your computer or other devices.

These advertisements are provided by Rettie via market leading specialist providers using ‘cookies’ placed on your computer or other devices (see further information on the use of cookies in our Cookie Policy). You can remove or disable cookies at any time.

Complaints

When we receive a complaint from a person, we make up a file containing the details of the complaint. This normally contains the identity of the complainant and any other individuals involved in the complaint. We will keep personal information contained in complaint files in line with our retention policy. This means that information relating to a complaint will be retained for two years from closure. It will be retained in a secure environment and access to it will be restricted according to the ‘need to know’ principle.

If you have any complaints about the way we use your personal information please contact the Data Protection Officer at compliance@rettie.co.uk who will try to resolve the issue in the first instance. If we cannot resolve any issue, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner Office (“ICO”) https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Other websites

Our website may contain links to enable you to visit other websites of interest easily. However, once you have used these links to leave our site you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. We cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Security and Performance

We have put in place technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of, and prevention of unauthorised access to, your personal information. For example, we limit who can access your personal information to those individuals and third parties who need to know it and who are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We also systematically monitor outbound emails for the purposes of protecting confidential and personal information and assisting in our ability to identify potential data breaches. If we become aware of a data breach we will, where we are legally required to, notify the Information Commissioner's Office. If we believe that the data breach is serious, we may notify you as well.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

We keep our Privacy Policy under regular review. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 13 August 2026.

How to Contact Us

If you want to request further information about our privacy policy, how we maintain the security of your personal information and your rights to access your information you can email us at compliance@rettie.co.uk or write to:

Data Protection Officer, Rettie, 11 Wemyss Place, Edinburgh EH3 6DH.