Privacy policy
20 January 2025
J D Wetherspoon plc – privacy policy
Contents
____________________________________________________________
Clause
1. Important information and who we are…………………………………….. 1
2. The data which we collect about you………………………………………… 2
3. How is your personal data collected?………………………………………… 3
4. How we use your personal data……………………………………………….. 3
5. Disclosures of your personal data…………………………………………….. 6
6. Data retention………………………………………………………………………… 7
7. Your legal rights……………………………………………………………………… 7
1. Important information and who we are
Purpose of this privacy policy
Wetherspoon (collectively referred to as ‘Wetherspoon’, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data.
This privacy policy provides information about how Wetherspoon collects and processes your personal data when you visit our pubs, use our corporate website (www.jdwetherspoon.com) (‘the website’) (including any data which you may provide through the website when you contact us to provide feedback or to make a complaint), book a hotel room or when you use the Wetherspoon app/QR code web app (‘the apps’).
It is important that you read this privacy policy, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data.
Controller
Wetherspoon is the data controller of, and responsible for, your personal data processed through the use of our website or apps and any data processed when visiting our pubs or hotels.
Contact details
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, contact our legal department via e-mail or post:
Full name of legal entity: J D Wetherspoon plc
E-mail address: [email protected]
Postal address: Wetherspoon House, Reeds Crescent, Watford, WD24 4QL
At any time, you have the right to make a data protection complaint to the relevant supervisory authority. However, before doing so, we do request that you contact us in the first instance to provide us with an opportunity to resolve the matter.
If we have been unable to resolve your concerns and you wish to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, these are:
- Information Commissioner’s Office (www.ico.org.uk) – for the UK
- Data Protection Commission (www.dataprotection.ie) – for the Republic of Ireland
Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes
This policy was last updated in January 2025 – and we aim to keep our privacy policy under regular review.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you be accurate and current. If any of the details we hold about you change, please update us, so that we can ensure that our records reflect these changes.
Third parties
Our website and apps may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications, e.g. links to third-party sites such as Booking.com, with which we work to provide certain services. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website or apps, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website plug-in and/or application which you visit.
J D Wetherspoon is not the data controller for table-service payments made via contactless devices. Contactless payments are processed in the UK via Zettle by PayPal devices and in the Republic of Ireland via SumUp devices. Please see their respective websites for more information about the way these companies process your
personal data.
2. The data which we collect about you
Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you;
we have grouped these together as follows:
- Identity data includes first and last names, occupation (for potential franchisees), vehicle registration number and images captured on CCTV (including body camera) footage.
- Contact data includes postal address, e-mail address and telephone number(s).
- Financial data includes (when booking a hotel room), the card-holder’s name,
card type, card number, issue date (not mandatory), expiry date, issue number and CVV number.- In accordance with the payment card industry data security standard, financial data is not held or stored by Wetherspoon or Guestline (our hotel-booking partner); it is passed straight to Braintree, our merchant payment provider.
- Transaction data includes details about payments for our products or services.
- Technical data includes Internet protocol addresses, location data (the Wetherspoon app, to order and pay for products, uses GPS technology to determine your current location and requires location data for certain features to work), browser plug-in types and versions, operating system/platform and other technology on the devices you use to access our website or to use, install or uninstall our apps. See our cookie policy for further details.
- Usage data includes information about how you use our website, apps and
other services.
We do not collect any special categories of personal data about you
(this includes details about your race, ethnicity, religious/philosophical beliefs,
sexual orientation, political opinions, health and genetic/biometric data).
If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and, when requested, you fail to provide that data, we may be unable to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (e.g. to complete a booking for a hotel room via our website). As a result, we may have to cancel a product or service which you have with us; if this is the case, we will notify you.
3. How is your personal data collected?
We use different methods to collect data from and about you, including through:
- direct interactions – including any information you provide to us when booking a hotel room, visiting our pubs and hotels, purchasing food and drinks in our pubs or lodging a complaint.
- automated technologies or interactions – as you interact with our website or apps, we will automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this data using cookies and other similar technologies. See our cookie policy for further details.
- third parties or publicly available sources – we receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources, as set out below:
- technical data from analytics providers, such as Google, based outside of the European Economic Area (EEA)
- contact, financial and transaction data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services, such as PayPal/Braintree
4. How we use your personal data
We will use your personal data only when the law permits it.
Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the circumstances where:
- we need to perform the contract into which we are about to enter/have entered with you (e.g. to place an order via our apps or to book a hotel room via our website).
- it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
- we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data.
We do not send third-party direct marketing communications to our customers.
Purposes for which we use your personal data
The table below describes the purposes for which we may use your personal data and the legal basis for data-processing.
| Purpose/activity | Type of data | Lawful basis for processing, including basis of legitimate interest |
| To register you as a new customer | (a) identity (b) contact | (a) Performance of a contract with you |
| To process and deliver your food and drinks order or hotel booking, including: (a) managing payments, fees and charges (b) collecting/recovering money owed to us (c) sending receipts to you | (a) identity (b) contact (c) financial (d) transaction | (a) performance of a contract with you (b) necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us) |
| To enable you to: a) correspond with us via post, phone, e-mail or otherwise b) provide feedback, submit a subject access request or lodge a complaint c) complete a survey | (a) identity (b) contact | (a) performance of a contract with you (b) necessary for our legitimate interests (to obtain feedback from our customers, process complaints and grow our business around our customers’ needs) |
| To use application improvement analytics to improve our website, products/services | (a) technical (b) usage | (a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our website updated/relevant and to develop our business) |
| Log information – for order history and troubleshooting | (a) identity(b) technical(c) usage | (a) performance of a contract with you (b) necessary for our legitimate interests (to help to resolve problems) |
| When using the Wetherspoon app – to access your location information for GPS tracking, to locate the nearest venue and for route-planning | (a) technical | necessary for our legitimate interests and the legitimate interests of customers |
| When using the Wetherspoon app – in order to create unique application numbers Apple and Google assign a non-identifiable unique ID when the app is downloaded – this is used to create order history/repeat orders and to personalise the app | (a) technical(b) usage | performance of a contract with younecessary for our legitimate interests (to make future orders quicker, simpler and more user-friendly) |
| Enforce or apply an end-user licence agreement/our ‘terms of use’ or to investigate potential breaches/to protect the rights, property or safety of Wetherspoon, our customers and/or others | identitytechnicalusage | necessary for our legitimate interests compliance with legal or regulatory requirements |
| Checking COVID-19 vaccination status. When you visit a pub/hotel, you may be required by law to show proof of vaccination status to gain entry | identity | (a) compliance with legal and regulatory requirements |
| Checking and verifying your identification using an ID scan machine for the prevention of crime and disorder | (a) identify | compliance with legal and regulatory requirements |
| CCTV recording (including body-worn cameras) in the communal areas of our pubs and hotels (including some toilets) to ensure the safety of our employees and customers | identify | (a) compliance with our legal and regulatory obligations and for the prevention and crime and disorder |
| Recording and sharing your vehicle registration details with our external parking management company to maintain our car parks | identify | necessary for our legitimate interests |
| Sharing your name and image taken from our CCTV footage (including body-worn cameras) with responsible authorities, the police and third parties, such as Pubwatch/DISC or receiving the same information from the aforementioned parties, to record and enforce a barring. | identity | necessary for our legitimate interestscompliance with our legal and regulatory obligations for the prevention of crime and disorder |
| Exploring potential franchise opportunities with you | (a) identity (b) contact (c) financial | necessary for our legitimate interests |
Cookies
You can set your browser to refuse some or all browser cookies or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of our website or apps may become inaccessible or may not function properly.
For further details about the cookies we use, see our cookie policy.
Change of purpose
We will use your personal information only for those purposes for which we collect it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another purpose which is compatible with the original one.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where required or permitted by law.
5. Disclosures of your personal data
We may share your personal data with the parties listed below for the purposes
set out in the above table.
- External third parties:
- Guestline (RoomLynx/Rezlynx) – third party which administers hotel bookings
- Secure Trading – online payment gateway
- Braintree – merchant payment provider
- Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal – payment methods available to customers when using the apps
- IT service providers acting as processors, based in the EEA, which manage, maintain, update and/or provide system administration services for the website or the app – e.g. Filter Digital Ltd and Zonal Retail Data Systems Ltd
- professional advisers acting as processors, including bankers, auditors and insurers, based in the EEA
- GB Group plc – ID scan provider: software to enable us to check and verify customers’ identification; data is not stored by us
- CCTV providers of systems in our pubs and hotels
- Health and safety consultants which provide services for incident-reporting and -investigating
- The Health and Safety Executive, local authorities, HMRC, law-enforcement agencies and any other central or local government bodies (in certain circumstances), where we are required to provide personal data to comply with our legal obligations or where it is requested and we may lawfully disclose it – e.g. for the prevention and detection of crime or to report serious health and safety incidents
- To keep our pubs/hotels safe and when customers/hotel guests are barred, images taken from our CCTV footage may be shared with, or received from, pubwatch members (a national scheme set up with other operators), the police and council and secure third-party apps
- Prospective seller(s)/buyer(s) of the business (whether in whole or in part), if we decide to expand or reduce all or part of our business
We do not allow our third-party processors to use your personal data for their own purposes. We permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes only and in accordance with our instructions.
Any payment transactions carried out by us or our chosen third-party provider of payment-processing services will be encrypted.
International transfers
We share your personal data with the third parties to enable you to pay for food and drinks orders placed via the apps or to book a hotel room via the website. This may involve transferring your data outside of the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data outside of the EEA, we ensure that a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by implementing at least one of the following safeguards:
- We will transfer your personal data only to those countries deemed, by the European Commission, to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data. For further details, see: European Commission: Adequacy of the protection of personal data in non-EU countries
- Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection as it has in Europe. For further details, see: European Commission: Model contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries
If you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us, if your data is transferred outside of the EEA, please contact us.
Data security
We have appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, altered, disclosed or accessed/used in an unauthorised way. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties with a business need to know. They will process your personal data on our instruction only and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have implemented procedures to deal with any suspected personal data
breach – where legally required to do so, we will notify you (and any applicable regulator) of any breach.
6. Data retention
For how long will you use my personal data?
We will retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil those purposes
for which we collected it, including satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements.
In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete your data – see ‘Your legal rights’, below, for further information.
7. Your legal rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights, under data protection laws, in relation to your personal data, as follows:
Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a ‘data subject access request’). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data which we hold about you and to check that we are processing it lawfully.
Request correction of the personal data which we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, although we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data which you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data, where there is no good reason for our continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. However, please note that, for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you at the time of your request (if applicable), we may not always be able to comply with your erasure request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or that of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground, because you consider that it affects your fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds, which override your rights and freedoms,
to process your information.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you
to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the scenario where:
- you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
- our use of the data is unlawful, yet you do not want us to erase it.
- you need us to hold the data, even if we no longer require it, as you need it
to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. - you have objected to our use of your data, yet we need to verify whether
we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide you, or a third party you have chosen, with your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right applies only to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw consent, we may be unable to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you, at the time you withdraw your consent, whether this is the case.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, contact: [email protected]
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive, we may charge a reasonable fee. Alternatively, in these circumstances, we could refuse to comply with your request.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us to confirm your identity and to ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information about your request, to speed up our response.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month, but it could take
longer – if this is the case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
Glossary
Legitimate interest means the interest of our company in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service, as well as the best and most secure experience. Before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests, we ensure that we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can contact us to obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact
on you, in respect of specific activities.
Performance of contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps, at your request, before entering into such a contract.
Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal
data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject.
