General Use

• How we make General use of personal information
• Other disclosures we may make
• Use of your personal information for General business purposes
• Any Sensitive data we may collect and use

General use of personal information

• We will use the personal information you provide to process your enquiry/application, to contact you where necessary, to set up and administer your account, for general business purposes, marketing and research.

• Unless you have indicated that you do not want to be contacted for marketing purposes, we will assume that we may use any of the contact details which you have given us to communicate with you.

• We will keep your personal information only for as long as necessary. If you are merely making an enquiry and do not open an account with us, we will only keep your details for 36 months.

• We do not normally provide account details by ordinary e-mail since this is not sufficiently secure to protect your confidential information. We will use your e-mail address to respond to your Internet enquiry and notify you of the progress of an application. Once you have an Internet account with us we will use email to notify you that confidential information such as statements, is available ready for you to collect by secure methods.

• If you are making an enquiry or application on behalf of another person, you must have their authority to act on their behalf, to give us their personal information, to authorise a credit search if necessary and to consent to the use of their personal information by us.

• If we use an automated system to make a decision about you, such as credit scoring, we will tell you if your application is rejected and give you the opportunity to discuss the matter with us. The decision will be reviewed and may be changed, if appropriate.

• In the course of managing your account(s), we may also disclose personal information to our external auditors and relevant regulatory bodies, associate companies' agents, and service providers. Check the other disclosures section for more details.

• For certain applications we pass your personal information to licensed credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies. More details are provided for each application.

• If you supply false or inaccurate information or we have reason to suspect you of fraud or money laundering, we may contact and disclose information to the police or the National Criminal Intelligence Service.

• To improve the quality of our service, all communications with us may be monitored or recorded for staff training and for your protection and security.

• CCTV is in operation in some of our offices. The images are used for crime prevention and public safety.

Other disclosures

• We may disclose personal information to
  • Our external auditors and regulatory bodies including the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Authority, and
  • Associate companies, agents and service providers, including solicitors and valuers acting for the Society, debt recovery agents, letting agents, market research agencies and providers of information technology services.
• We may disclose information you have supplied to us, to our agents and service providers. A full list cannot be given, since actual disclosures will depend on circumstances. However, examples include:
  • Introducers or agents who send us applications
  • Solicitors and valuers acting for the Society
  • Debt counsellors, dept recovery agents
  • Letting agents
  • Mailing house and market research agencies
  • Contractors and consultants who help develop and test computer systems
  • Providers of information technology services
• Such disclosures will only be made for a specific purpose to which you have consented and under a contract which includes appropriate safeguards for the security and confidentiality of your data
• If we sell or transfer all or part of our business, we will transfer our customer records as part of the sale. However, we will only do so under a contract which protects the confidentiality and security of your information

General business purposes

General business purposes for which we process personal information include verifying your identity, updating customer records, handling customer queries and complaints, statistical analysis, including analysis of customer preferences, devising new products and computer system testing.

Sensitive data

Sensitive Personal Data is defined in the Data Protection Act as information relating to:

• Racial and ethnic origin
• Political opinions
• Religious or similar beliefs
• Trade union membership
• Physical or mental health
• Sexual life
• Commission or alleged commission of offences and related proceeding and sentences

We only use sensitive information where it is necessary for the service you have requested or for our other business activities, for example health details for life insurance and criminal offences for fraud prevention.

We do hold details such as your title, gender and country of origin from which such things as religion, sex and race may be inferred, but we will always treat it with care.

Barnsley Building Society and the Barnsley are trading names of Yorkshire Building Society. Principal office: Yorkshire House, Yorkshire Drive, Bradford BD5 8LJ.
Yorkshire Building Society is a member of the Building Societies Association and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. It is entered in the FSA register and its FSA registration number is 106085.

This site is intended for UK Residents unless otherwise stated. All communications with us may be monitored/recorded to improve the quality of our service and for your protection and security.

* Charges to 0845 numbers may vary. Prices can be checked with your phone provider. Mobiles calls usually cost more.