Legal
Design Partnership respects your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect when you use our website or engage us as a client, why we collect it, how we look after it, and the rights you have over it.
Design Partnership is an interior design and architecture studio with offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Dublin and Mauritius. Our head office is at 66 Wessel Road, Woodmead, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa. For any question about this policy or about your personal information, contact us at [email protected].
We are the responsible party for the personal information described here under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), and the data controller under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) where that legislation applies to you.
We only collect information that we need in order to respond to you and to run our business:
We do not knowingly collect special categories of personal information through this website, and we ask that you do not send them to us unsolicited.
We use personal information to reply to your enquiry, to provide and administer our design and build services, to send you material you have specifically asked for, to consider you for a role you have applied to, to understand how our website is used so that we can improve it, and to meet our legal, tax and regulatory obligations.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for automated decision-making that produces legal effects concerning you.
Where GDPR applies, we rely on your consent (for example, when you ask to receive a guide), on the performance of a contract with you, on our legitimate interests in operating and promoting our practice in a way that does not override your rights, and on compliance with a legal obligation. Under POPIA we process personal information on the corresponding grounds of consent, contractual necessity, legal obligation and legitimate interest.
Our website uses a small number of cookies that are necessary for the site to function, and may use analytics cookies that help us understand which pages are useful and where visitors encounter difficulty. Analytics data is used in aggregate and is not used to identify you personally. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings; the site will continue to work, though some preferences may not be remembered.
We share personal information only where it is necessary: with service providers who host our website, send our email and support our IT systems, and who act on our instructions; with professional advisers such as auditors and lawyers; with consultants and contractors working with us on a project, where that is needed to deliver it; and with a regulator, court or authority where we are legally required to do so. We require everyone who handles personal information on our behalf to protect it to the standard set out in this policy.
Because we operate across South Africa, Ireland and Mauritius, and because some of our service providers are based abroad, your personal information may be transferred outside the country in which you are located. Where we do this we take steps to ensure the receiving party is subject to laws or binding agreements that provide an adequate level of protection, as required by POPIA and GDPR.
We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it, and thereafter for as long as we are required to keep it by law. Enquiries that do not lead to an engagement are deleted once they are no longer of any use to us. Project records are retained for the period required by our professional, contractual and tax obligations.
We apply appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against loss, unauthorised access, alteration and disclosure, including access controls, encryption in transit and staff confidentiality obligations. No transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we take the security of your information seriously and will notify you and the relevant regulator of a breach where the law requires us to.
Subject to the applicable law, you have the right to ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, to have inaccurate information corrected, to have information deleted where we no longer have grounds to keep it, to object to or restrict our processing of it, to receive it in a portable format, and to withdraw consent at any time where our processing is based on consent.
To exercise any of these rights, write to us at [email protected]. We will respond within the period required by law. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa, or to the data protection authority in your country if you are in the EU or UK.
Our website and services are directed at businesses and professionals. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or in the law. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last revised, and any material change will be brought to your attention where the law requires it.
Design Partnership, 66 Wessel Road, Woodmead, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa. Email [email protected] or telephone +27 87 310 1762.