Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Sterling Accident coordinates accident support, repair arrangements, replacement-vehicle assistance and related claims administration for drivers across the UK. We are not an insurer and we do not provide legal advice.

For the purposes of UK data protection law, Sterling Accident is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us about anything in this policy by email at claim@sterlingaccident.co.uk.

Some of the organisations we work with — insurers in particular — decide for themselves how they use your information. Where that is the case they act as controllers in their own right and their own privacy notices apply to what they do.

2. Information we collect

What we collect depends on how you deal with us. Everything below is a field this website actually asks for, or information you may choose to give us on the telephone.

When you report an accident

• Your name, mobile number and email address.
• Your contact preferences and the best time to reach you.
• The date, approximate time and location of the accident.
• Your description of what happened.
• Whether anyone was injured, and whether the police or emergency services attended.
• Whether your vehicle can be driven.
• Your vehicle registration.
• Your insurer and policy number, if you choose to provide them.
• Details of any other vehicle involved, and your view of who was at fault.
• Photographs you upload of the vehicles, the damage and the number plates.
• The consents you give, and the date and time you gave them.

When you contact us

• Your name, email address and telephone number.
• Your vehicle registration, if you provide it.
• The subject and content of your message.

When you apply to join our repair network

• Business details including name, trading name, company number, VAT number and website.
• Your name, role, email address and telephone number.
• The site address, postcode and the areas you cover.
• Repair capabilities, vehicle types, certifications, repair bay numbers, courtesy-vehicle and storage availability.
• Anything else you tell us in the free-text field.

Technical information

When you submit a form we record the page it was sent from and a one-way encrypted version of your IP address. We use that solely to limit how many submissions can come from one connection in a short period, which is how we keep the forms usable and free of automated spam. We do not store your IP address in a readable form and we do not use it to identify or profile you.

Our hosting provider keeps standard server access logs, which include IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting.

What we do not do

• This website uses no analytics, advertising, remarketing or session-recording tools. Nothing here tracks you across websites, and we do not build profiles of visitors.
• We do not record telephone calls.
• We do not buy, sell, rent or share personal data for marketing purposes.
• We do not send marketing emails. If you hear from us, it is about an accident report, a claim, an enquiry you made, or a network application.
• We do not ask for payment card details through this website, and we never ask for them by email.

3. How we use your information

• To assess and progress your accident report.
• To contact you about your report, claim or enquiry.
• To arrange recovery, storage, vehicle assessment and repair.
• To arrange replacement-vehicle assistance where you are eligible.
• To correspond with insurers, engineers, repairers and other parties involved in your claim.
• To assess and administer repair-network applications and partnerships.
• To keep records of what was agreed, authorised and carried out.
• To handle complaints and disputes, and to establish or defend legal claims.
• To protect this website from spam and abuse.
• To meet our legal, tax and accounting obligations.

4. Lawful bases for processing

UK data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for each purpose. Ours are set out below.

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Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered whether our interest is outweighed by your rights and freedoms. In each case above the processing is what you would reasonably expect from a business asked to handle an accident claim, and it is limited to what is needed for that purpose. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests — see section 12.

We do not rely on consent for the core service, because you need us to be able to act on your report for the service to work at all. The consents you tick on our forms record your permission to be contacted and your confirmation that you have read this policy; they are not the lawful basis for handling your claim.

5. Accident and claim data

Accident information is sensitive in practice even where it is not "special category" data in law. Our position is:

• Accident details are used to progress your report and are shared only with parties who need them for that purpose.
• Your view of who was at fault is recorded as your view. It does not determine liability, and it is not presented to anyone as a finding.
• Records of what was authorised and carried out are kept so that a claim can be reconciled, or a dispute resolved, after the event.
• We do not publish accident details, photographs or vehicle registrations, and we do not use them in marketing or case studies.

6. Photographs and file uploads

Photographs are the most sensitive thing most people send us, so this is how they are handled:

• Photographs submitted with an accident report are stored in a private location on the server. They are not added to the public media library on this website and are not accessible by URL to anyone on the internet.
• Each file is saved under a randomly generated name, so a filename cannot be guessed.
• File type is verified by inspecting the file itself rather than trusting its name, and size and count limits are enforced.
• Uploaded images are never attached to notification emails. Our team is told that files exist and where to find them; the images themselves do not travel by email.
• Private files are deleted automatically 90 days after upload.

7. Health information

We try to avoid collecting health information. The accident report form asks only whether anyone was injured, as a yes, no or not-sure answer, so that we understand the situation and can respond appropriately. It does not ask what the injury was.

You may nevertheless tell us something about an injury or a health condition — most often when explaining why you need an adapted vehicle, or why you cannot drive. Where that happens the information is special category data under UK GDPR Article 9, and we rely on Article 9(2)(f): processing necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. We record only what is necessary, we share it only where it is needed to arrange the right support, and we do not use it for any other purpose.

If you would rather not tell us about a health matter, you do not have to. It may limit what we can arrange, and we will tell you if that is the case.

8. Who we share your information with

We share information only where it is needed to progress your claim, to run our business, or to meet a legal obligation. Recipients can include:

• Repairers and bodyshops in our network carrying out the assessment or repair.
• Independent engineers and assessors.
• Recovery, storage and transport operators.
• Replacement-vehicle suppliers.
• Insurers, brokers and third-party claims handlers involved in the claim.
• Parts suppliers, where a part must be identified for your vehicle.
• Our professional advisers, including legal and accountancy advisers.
• Our IT, hosting and email providers, who process data on our behalf under written terms that restrict them to acting on our instructions.
• Law enforcement, regulators or courts, where we are legally required to disclose.

Repairers, engineers, recovery operators and vehicle suppliers are given only what they need for the job in front of them. A recovery operator does not need your insurer details; a parts supplier does not need your account of the accident.

Insurers and third-party claims handlers generally decide for themselves how they use information, so they act as controllers in their own right. Our repair-network partners are contractually required to use customer information only for the repair and the claim, to keep it securely, and not to add customers to marketing lists.

9. Where your data is held

Your information is held on servers in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area.

If we ever need to use a supplier that would involve transferring personal data outside the UK, we will only do so where the destination is covered by UK adequacy regulations, or under an International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, together with any additional safeguards a transfer risk assessment shows to be necessary.

10. How long we keep your information

We keep information for as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected, and then for any period required by law or reasonably necessary to resolve a later dispute.

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At the end of a retention period, records are deleted or anonymised. Where a claim or dispute is still live, we keep the file until it is concluded and then start the retention period from that point.

11. Security

Technical measures in place on this website:

• All form submissions travel over an encrypted connection.
• Every submitted field is validated and sanitised on the server, against a strict list of expected fields. Anything unexpected is discarded rather than stored.
• Uploaded files are verified by inspection, and size and count limits are enforced.
• Photographs are stored privately, outside the website's public files, under randomly generated filenames.
• Rate limiting and automated spam protection on all public forms.
• Automatic deletion of photographs after 90 days.
• IP addresses used for rate limiting are stored only as a one-way hash.

Organisational measures:

• Access to claim files is limited to the people who need it to do their job.
• Suppliers who handle personal data for us do so under written terms restricting them to our instructions.
• Repair-network partners are contractually required to handle customer information properly and to tell us promptly about any suspected breach.
• We assess and record any personal data breach, and notify the Information Commissioner's Office, and you, where the law requires it.

No system can be guaranteed completely secure. Please do not send payment card details or passwords through a website form or by email.

12. Your rights

Subject to the conditions and exemptions in the legislation, you have the right to:

• be told how your data is used — which is what this policy is for;
• ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• have inaccurate data corrected;
• ask us to erase data, where we no longer have a good reason to keep it;
• ask us to restrict how we use it while a concern is resolved;
• object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests;
• ask us to transfer data you gave us to another organisation, where that right applies;
• withdraw a consent you have given, at any time.

To exercise any of these, email claim@sterlingaccident.co.uk. Please tell us what you are asking for and give us enough information to find your records — your vehicle registration is usually the quickest way.

We will respond within one month. If a request is complex, or you have made several, we may extend that by up to two further months, and we will tell you if we do. There is no charge. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we release information, because releasing a claim file to the wrong person would be a breach in itself.

Some rights are qualified. We may not be able to erase records we are required to keep for accounting purposes, or that we need in order to defend a legal claim. If we cannot do what you have asked, we will explain why.

13. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us first — email claim@sterlingaccident.co.uk and we will look into it properly. Most concerns turn out to be something we can put right quickly.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection. You do not have to come to us first, although it usually helps.

14. Cookies

This website sets no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. What it does use is set out in our Cookie Policy, which also explains the browser storage we use to stop a half-finished accident report being lost.

15. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when how we operate changes, or when the law does. The version number and date at the top of this page show when it last changed. If a change materially affects how we use information about a live claim, we will tell the people affected rather than relying on them noticing.

16. Contact us