1. Who are we and what do we do?
HESTIA GUARANTOR LTD ("HESTIA") provides rental guarantee services and related support services for international students seeking residential accommodation in the United Kingdom.
We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal data about you. When we do so we must comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).
Our services and website are not aimed specifically at children. If you are a child and you want further information about how we might use your data, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ at section 16 below).
2. Terminology
It would be helpful to explain some key terms used in this policy:
| We, us, our | HESTIA GUARANTOR LTD (Company Number 17346419), whose registered office is at 167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London, W1W 5PF, trading as HESTIA. |
|---|---|
| Personal data | Any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual |
| Special category personal data | Personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership Genetic data Biometric data (where used for identification purposes) Data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation |
| Data subject | The individual who the personal data relates to |
| You, your | As the context dictates, our customers and individuals associated with them, contacts, suppliers and any individuals whose personal data we receive in the course of providing our services |
3. Personal data we collect
The personal data we collect about our customers depends on the particular services we provide to you. We will collect or use the following personal data in relation to our customers:
- your name and contact information, including email address and telephone number and company details;
- your address;
- information to enable us to check and verify your identity, eg your date of birth or passport details, visa or immigration status;
- your gender and pronoun preferences, if you choose to give these to us;
- location data, if you choose to give this to us;
- occupation, employer and employment details, where relevant;
- marital status;
- your billing information, transaction and payment details (including card or bank information for transfers and direct debits);
- information from accounts you link to us;
- information to enable us to undertake credit or other financial checks on you;
- information about how you interact with and use our website, products and services;
- audio recordings, eg calls;
- video recordings, eg of virtual meetings;
- your responses to surveys and promotions;
- information relating to your tenancy, educational institution, referees, sponsors or emergency contacts where you provide such information in connection with your application or our services.
The main purpose of collecting and using this information is to provide products and services to our customers. However, we may also collect and use the above information for the purposes set out in section 5.
If you do not provide personal data we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you.
4. How your personal data is collected
We collect most of the above information from you.
However, we may also collect information:
- from publicly accessible sources, eg Companies House or HM Land Registry;
- directly from a third party, for example credit reference agencies, identity verification providers, fraud prevention agencies, landlords, letting or managing agents, referees, employers or educational institutions;
- from a third party with your consent, eg your bank or building society, another financial institution or advisor;
- via our website—we use cookies and similar technologies on our website (our website collects information automatically via cookies, analytics and similar tracking tools; we use this to monitor site usage, improve user experience and for security. You have the option to disable cookies via your browser settings). See our Cookie Policy;
- via our security, information technology (IT) systems, for example:
- through automated monitoring of our websites and other technical systems, such as our computer networks and connections, and access control systems, communications systems, email and instant messaging systems;
- through website analytics and security monitoring tools.
5. How and why we use personal data
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, eg:
- you have given consent—where we need your consent, we will ask for it separately of this privacy policy and you can withdraw consent at any time;
- to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
- to fulfil our contract with you or take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
- for the purposes of a recognised legitimate interest under UK data protection law; or
- for our legitimate interests or those of a third party.
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your personal data, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We will carry out an assessment when relying on legitimate interests, to balance our interests against your own. You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests. We must then stop the processing unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds which override your interests, rights and freedoms or the processing is required to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
The table below explains what we use your personal data for and why.
| What we use your personal data for | Our reasons |
|---|---|
| Providing rental guarantee services, assessing applications and administering Rental Guarantees. | To fulfil our contract with customers or to take steps at their request before entering into a contract |
| Preventing and detecting fraud against you or us | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| To check whether there is any conflict of interest between us and you and/or between you and another customer | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations |
Conducting checks to identify our customers and verify their identity Screening for financial and other sanctions or embargoes Other activities necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, eg under health and safety law | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| To enforce legal rights or defend or take legal proceedings | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| Ensuring internal business policies are complied with, eg policies covering security and internet use | For our legitimate interests, ie to make sure we are following our own internal procedures so we can deliver the best service to our customers |
| Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control | For our legitimate interests, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to our customers at the best price |
| Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, eg in relation to our financial performance, customer base, services range or other efficiency measures | For our legitimate interests, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to our customers at the best price |
| Protecting the security of systems and data used to provide services, prevent unauthorised access and changes to our systems | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| Updating and enhancing customer records | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| Statutory returns | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations |
| Ensuring safe working practices, staff administration and assessments | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| Providing information updates and/or marketing our services to existing and former customers and third parties | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| Credit reference checks via external credit reference agencies | For our legitimate interests, ie to ensure our customers are likely to be able to pay for our services |
| Dealing with complaints or claims | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| External audits and quality checks, eg for ISO or Investors in People accreditation and the audit of our accounts to the extent not covered by ‘activities necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations’ above | Depending on the circumstances:
|
Sharing your personal data with members of our group and third parties that will or may take control or ownership of some or all of our business (and professional advisors acting on our or their behalf) in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale or in the event of our insolvency In such cases information will be anonymised where possible and only shared where necessary | Depending on the circumstances:
|
| Voluntarily sharing relevant personal data with public authorities, regulators or other bodies exercising official functions in response to written requests where we consider disclosure is necessary and appropriate | For a recognised legitimate interest, namely to respond to a request from another organisation that needs the personal data for the purposes of carrying out its task in the public interest or exercising its official authority |
| Recovering outstanding sums and enforcing our contractual and legal rights. | Legitimate interests |
Where we process special category personal data (see section 2 ‘Terminology’), we will also ensure we are permitted to do so under data protection laws, eg:
- we have your explicit consent;
- the processing is necessary to protect your (or someone else’s) vital interests where you are physically or legally incapable of giving consent;
- the processing is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
- the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.
6. Marketing
We may use your personal data to send you updates (eg by email, text message, telephone, post or social media channels) about our services, including exclusive offers, promotions or new services.
We have a legitimate interest in using your personal data for marketing purposes (see section 5 ‘How and why we use your personal data’). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you marketing information. Where this is not the case, we will always ask for your consent.
In all cases, you have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by:
- contacting us at contact@hestiaguarantor.com; or
- using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails or ‘STOP’ number in texts.
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you ask us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell it to other organisations for marketing purposes.
7. Who we share your personal data with
We routinely share personal data with:
- third parties we use to help deliver our services, eg providers of our finance system, IT service providers including cloud service providers such as data storage platforms, shared service centres and financial institutions in connection with invoicing and payments;
- companies providing services for money laundering checks and other crime prevention purposes and companies providing similar services, including financial institutions and credit reference agencies;
- other third parties we use to help promote our business, eg marketing agencies;
- landlords, letting or managing agents, referees, educational institutions, employers, sponsors or emergency contacts, where reasonably necessary to assess applications, administer Rental Guarantees or provide our services;
- third parties approved by you, eg social media sites you choose to link your account to or third party payment providers;
- our banks;
- our professional advisers, including solicitors, accountants, insurers, auditors, and debt recovery agencies, where necessary.
We only allow those organisations to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data. We ensure all outsourcing providers operate under service agreements that are consistent with our legal obligations.
We or the third parties mentioned above may occasionally also share personal data with:
- our and their external auditors, eg in relation to the audit of our or their accounts, in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations;
- our and their professional advisors (such as lawyers and other advisors), in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations;
- law enforcement agencies, courts, tribunals and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
- public authorities, regulators and other bodies exercising official functions, where they make a written request for personal data they need for their public task or official functions and we decide it is necessary and appropriate to disclose it;
- other parties that have or may acquire control or ownership of our business (and our or their professional advisers) in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition or asset sale or in the event of our insolvency—usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible and the recipient of any of your personal data will be bound by confidentiality obligations;
- landlords, letting or managing agents, educational institutions, employers, sponsors, emergency contacts, debt recovery agencies, tracing agents and professional advisers, where reasonably necessary to recover outstanding sums or establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
If you would like more information about who we share our data with and why, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ at section 16).
8. Where your personal data is held
Personal data may be held at our premises and those of our third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described in section 7 ‘Who we share your personal data with’.
Some of these third parties may be based outside the UK. For more information, including on how we safeguard your personal data when this occurs, see section 10 ‘Transferring your personal data abroad’.
9. How long your personal data will be kept
We will not keep your personal data for longer than we need it for the purpose for which it was collected or as required by law.
Following the end of the relevant retention period, we will delete or anonymise your personal data.
If you would like further information about how long we keep your personal data, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ at section 16).
10. Transferring your personal data abroad
It is sometimes necessary for us to transfer your personal data to countries outside the UK. This may include countries which do not provide the same level of protection of personal data as the UK. Such transfers may be necessary, for example, in connection with the provision of our services, the administration of a Rental Guarantee, the recovery of outstanding sums, or the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
We will transfer your personal data outside the UK only where:
- the UK government has decided the recipient country ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an adequacy regulation); or
- there are appropriate safeguards in place (eg standard contractual data protection clauses published or approved by the relevant data protection regulator), together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for you; or
- a specific exception applies under data protection law, including where the transfer is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
For more information please contact us (using the ‘How to contact us’ information at section 16).
11. Your rights
You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:
| Access | You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal data. You can request other information such as where we get personal data from and who we share personal data with. There are some exemptions which means you may not receive all the information you ask for |
|---|---|
| Rectification | You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal data you think is inaccurate or incomplete |
| Erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten) | You have the right to ask us to delete your personal data—in certain situations |
| Restriction of processing | You have the right to ask us to limit how we use your personal data—in certain situations, eg if you contest the accuracy of the data |
| Data portability | You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal data you gave us to another organisation or to you—in certain situations |
| To object | You have the right to object:
|
| Rights in respect of automated decision-making | Where significant decisions (those which produce a legal or similarly significant effect on you) are made using your personal data and based on solely automated processing with no meaningful human involvement, you have the right to have certain safeguards in place to protect your data subject rights, freedoms and legitimate interests. These safeguards include giving you information about the decision and enabling you to make representations, obtain human intervention, and contest the decision In addition to also requiring the above safeguards, significant decisions made using special category personal data and based on solely automated processing are only permissible in certain specified scenarios (eg where you have given your explicit consent for the decision to be made using such data) |
| The right to withdraw consent | When we use your consent as our lawful basis, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time You may withdraw consent by contacting us at contact@hestiaguarantor.com Withdrawing consent will not affect the lawfulness of our use of your personal data in reliance on that consent before it was withdrawn |
| To complain | See the section on How to complain below |
If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:
- email, call or write to us—see section 16: ‘How to contact us’; and
- provide enough information to identify yourself eg your full name, address and customer or matter reference number and any additional identity information we may reasonably request from you;
- let us know what right you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.
12. Keeping your personal data secure
We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational measures to keep your personal data confidential and secure from unauthorised access, use and disclosure. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your personal data will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We require our business partners, suppliers and other third parties to implement appropriate security measures to protect personal data from unauthorised access, use and disclosure.
We also have procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are required to do so.
13. How to complain
We acknowledge that we may not always get things right, so if something has gone wrong, we need you to tell us. You have the right to make a complaint to us by contacting us using the details set out in section 16. We hope we will be able to resolve any issues you may have.
If we are unable to resolve your complaint, you may also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (the UK data protection regulator, also known as the ICO).
The contact details for the ICO are:
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
Website: www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
14. Changes to this privacy policy
This privacy policy was published on 12 August 2026 and last updated on 12 August 2026.
We may change this privacy policy from time to time. When we do, we will publish the updated version on our website and ask for your consent to the changes if legally required.
15. Updating your personal data
We take reasonable steps to ensure your personal data remains accurate and up to date. To help us with this, please let us know if any of the personal data you have provided to us has changed, eg your surname or address—see below ‘How to contact us’.
16. How to contact us
You can contact us by post, email or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you, to exercise a right under data protection law or to make a complaint.
Our contact details are shown below:
167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London, W1W 5PF
contact@hestiaguarantor.com
+44 2030107392
17. Do you need extra help?
If you would like this policy in another format (for example audio, large print, braille) please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ above).