Trust and privacy are embedded within Soil Benchmark’s business and services.

This Privacy Policy together with our Terms and Conditions and any other documents referred to in it sets out how Soil Benchmark collects, uses, maintains, and discloses Personal Data, including any information provided through our website(s) and/or our Services platform (the “Website”).

Your privacy is of the utmost importance to us. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Whenever you provide personal information, we are legally obliged to use it in accordance with the laws concerning the protection of personal information.

Who we are

Soil Benchmark Ltd, a company registered in England (Company No. 13897761) with its registered office at C/O Kenneth Easby Limited, Trinity House, Thurston Road, Northallerton, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom, DL6 2NA (“Soil Benchmark”)

For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018, the UK GDPR (Retained Regulation (EU) 2016/679)), the EU General Data Protection Regulations (to the extent that processing occurs outside of the EU) and any other applicable data protection and privacy laws and regulations (“Data Protection Legislation”), Soil Benchmark will be the ‘data controller’ for all personal information that we determine the means and purpose of processing. We are registered with the Information Commissioners Office under registration number ZB552566.

By “Personal Data” we refer to information collected or held by Soil Benchmark, that identifies and relates to you as an individual.

Information we may collect

We may collect personal information about you when you use our Website or register for our Services, including:

• your first and last name;
• your email address
• your telephone numbers (including mobile);
• your postal address;
• your invoicing details/address;
• your job title;
• your interests;
• information about the business that you work for;
• information regarding the services you request; and
• supplementary information you provide us about yourself when contacting us.

We may also receive your Personal Data from other individuals with registered accounts for our Services as part of the collaboration and team management features, e.g. any colleagues, employees, contractors and third parties (e.g. agronomists, land agents, farm cluster facilitators, etc) reasonably connected to you or an organisation that you act on behalf of (“Authorised Licensee”). If you are seeking to work with Authorised Licensees via the collaboration feature in the Soil Benchmark product, you must ensure that you firstly have obtained the express permission from each Authorised Licensee to upload their personal data (name and email address) into the Soil Benchmark software applications (“Services”) to facilitate their connection to your account.

For clarity, we may also process: information in relation to your sector / profession; your Single Business Identifier (SBI) number relating to the Rural Payments Agency’s platform integration with Soil Benchmark; and/or any geospatial data relating to land assets, but we do not consider this to be personally identifiable data. For clarity, any non-Personal Data (including user generated content) that is processed as part of our Services is protected pursuant to the Soil Benchmark Basic End User License Agreement.

We may also collect technical information about you when you visit the Website. This information may include the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your browser type and version, time zone setting, operating system and platform, browser plug-in types and version, the full URL clickstream to, through and from the Website, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction (such as scrolling, clicks and mouse-overs) and methods used to browse away from the page.

The collected information is used to provide an overview of how people are accessing and using the Website to enable us to make continual improvements to the Website.

What we don’t collect

Card payment details taken via the Website are processed and managed via third party payment providers and we do not have visibility of your payment card / bank details.

What we do with the information we collect

We will use your personal information for a number of purposes including:

• internal record keeping;
• to facilitate your access to the Soil Benchmark Services via the team management and/or collaboration tool;
• to carry out any obligations owed to you through the use of our Website and in respect of any contracts entered into between you and us;
• to give you information that you request from us and to improve our services;
• to develop new products and services;
• to provide you with a more personalised experience when using the Website and/or our products;
• to notify you about changes to our services;
• to allow us to operate the Website efficiently;
• to ensure that the content from our Website is presented in the most effective manner for you and your computer;
• any relevant troubleshooting, testing or statistical analysis as appropriate; and
• to keep the Website secure.

Where we have your permission to do so, we may also use the information collected to:

• provide you with information about our services that we offer via promotional communications; and
• keep you up to date with features on the Website,

however, you can opt-out of any of these data uses at any time within any marketing email by clicking ‘unsubscribe’ or by emailing tom@soilbenchmark.com.

Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Legal basis of processing

We will only process your information for as long as we have a relevant legal basis to do so. This is usually in order to provide you with the contractual services you have requested from Soil Benchmark or for our legitimate interests, which include:

• developing and running the algorithms and models upon which our Services depend;
• network and information security;
• generating agronomic, soil-related, or environmental insights from aggregated, anonymised data.

Where we choose to process your information under the legal basis of legitimate interests you have a right to object.

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us at tom@soilbenchmark.com.

Protecting your information

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure and we have procedures in place to try and prevent any unauthorised access or disclosures and to safeguard and keep secure the information that we collect online.

All the Personal Data directly stored by us electronically is held on secure servers. Where required, this information is encrypted for additional security. We use computer safeguards such as firewalls and data encryption, we enforce physical access controls to our buildings and files, and we authorise access to Personal Data only for those employees who require it to fulfil their job responsibilities.

However, you should be aware that providing information over the internet can never be guaranteed as being completely safe and if you choose to send such information to us via the internet, you do so at your own risk.

Transfer of data outside of the UK

We shall not transfer any personal data to any country outside of the UK.

Sharing your information with others

We will not share your information for any other reason unless we are required by law or permitted to do so under this Privacy Policy. The main circumstances in which we will be permitted or required to disclose this is by law will be by court order, to government bodies and law enforcement agencies. However, sometimes we may share your information with third parties in the following ways:

• we may use carefully selected sub-processors to help us collect, store or manage your information. This will always be managed under the terms of a written data processing agreement;
• analytics and search engine providers (Google Analytics – their privacy policy can be found at this link) to assist us in the improvement and optimisation of the Website; and
• if Soil Benchmark is acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets. We process your personal information for this purpose because we have a legitimate interest to ensure our business can be continued by the buyer. If you object to our use of your personal information in this way, the relevant seller or buyer of our business may not be able to provide services to you.

Access to your Personal Data

You have rights in relation to any Personal Data that we hold about you. If you wish to access your Personal Data you may make a formal subject access request by contacting Soil Benchmark.

The information you request must relate to you or another person that you have authority to act on their behalf. If there are concerns about your identity, Soil Benchmark may require a confirmation of your ID prior to providing any information about the data we hold. If you are unable to provide sufficient information to prove your ID, Soil Benchmark reserves the right to refuse your request for access to Personal Data. The rights you have in relation to the Personal Data we hold regarding you are:

• the right to rectify any inaccuracies in the information we hold;
• the right to erasure of information in specific circumstances;
• the right to request transfer of your information to another controller; and
• the right to object to processing in certain circumstances.

If you have provided us with consent to process your information, you always reserve the right to withdraw this consent via the method detailed in the paragraph below. We are committed to ensuring that your wishes are respected and upon notification that you wish to withdraw your consent, Soil Benchmark will promptly cease processing the information in question.

Please send your request to Soil Benchmark by emailing tom@soilbenchmark.com. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy at any time to ensure it always accurately reflects the way we collect, use and safeguard your Personal Data.

Please check this notice from time to time to ensure you are aware of any updates we may have made to our Personal Data handling practices. The date of the changes will be listed in the 'Last updated' section below. We will endeavour to notify all of our current clients of any updates to this notice via email and we will post the relevant announcement on our website homepage.

We recommend that you print a copy of this page for your reference.

How can you make a complaint?

Please note that if you are not satisfied with the processing of your personal data as set out in this Privacy Policy, please contact us at tom@soilbenchmark.com.

You have the right to issue a complaint directly with the Information Commissioners Office, the data protection supervisory authority for England and Wales (https://ico.org.uk/concerns/).

Contacting us

Please contact us at tom@soilbenchmark.com if you have any questions, comments, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy.

Last updated May 2025

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