Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy Statement

National Grid plc and its subsidiary companies ("National Grid", "we" or "us") are committed to respecting your privacy and to complying with applicable data protection and privacy laws.

We have provided this Privacy Policy Statement to help you understand how we collect, use and protect your information when you visit www.nationalgrid.com and any other National Grid website on which this Privacy Policy Statement is posted (each, a “Website” and, collectively the "Websites"). We wish to help you make informed decisions, so please take a few moments to read the sections below and learn how we may use your personal information.

Our use of any information we collect about you when you visit a Website will be governed by this Privacy Policy Statement together with any site-specific privacy notice posted on that Website. This Privacy Policy Statement should also be read in conjunction with any Terms and Conditions of Use of such Website, and will form part of such Terms and Conditions of Use.

Collection of Personal Information

We typically collect personal information when, by means of one of the Websites, you use services, make customer enquiries or send other communications, submit an application to National Grid, register for information or other services or when you respond to communications from us (such as questionnaires or surveys).

If a Website offers any chat rooms, notice board facilities, newsgroups or other social networking facilities, we might also collect information you disclose there. However, we cannot be responsible for the use by other persons of any personal information that you may make available through such facilities. Please be careful about what personal information you disclose in this way.

The types of personal information collected when you do any of the above could include, for example, your name and postal address, date of birth, gender, telephone and fax numbers, email address, and other information collected on registration or through surveys completed via the Website. If you register with or apply for a job by means of any Website used for recruitment purposes, the types of personal information collected could also include details of your education and employment history as described on your CV together with salary information and additional personal information that you may choose to provide to us.

Processing of Your Information

If you choose to provide to us or if we collect any personal information about you, we may process your personal information in support of the purpose for which you provided it or any purpose stated or made apparent to you when your information was provided or collected (each, a “Purpose”), subject where applicable to any preferences indicated by you. For example, the Purposes may include:

  • responding to and keeping a record of any of your enquiries, requests for information (including responding to requests to receive information about job opportunities) or other communications from you;
  • providing services that you have requested;
  • if you apply to work for us, processing your application;
  • performing any contract between you and us;
  • any other processing for which you have given your consent;
  • enforcing the terms of any contract between you and us, including our Website Terms and Conditions of Use; and/or
  • any processing required by any law or regulation and/or requested by regulatory bodies or law enforcement organisations.

Disclosure of Your Information

National Grid may disclose your information, strictly for the Purposes:

  • to other National Grid companies and our and their employees, contractors and other personnel;
  • to third party service providers who use your personal information to provide services to us ("Service Providers");
  • as necessary in order to investigate, respond to, and address any issues raised by, any complaint made by you;
  • as otherwise stated when your information was provided or collected; and/or
  • as otherwise required to enforce the terms of any contract between you and us or to comply with legal or regulatory obligations or requests.

Your personal information may also be disclosed:

  • to auditors, contactors or other advisors auditing any of our business processes (“Third Parties”);
  • in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal information to the seller or buyer of that business or those assets; and/or
  • if National Grid plc or any of its subsidiaries or substantially all of its or their assets are acquired by another party, in which case your personal information may be one of the transferred assets.

Where required, processing performed by National Grid, Service Providers or Third Parties will be governed by a data processing agreement in the form required by law, preserving any and all of your statutory data protection rights.

National Grid does not sell, trade or rent your information, or use or disclose it for marketing purposes, and does not give or distribute it to any third parties except as described above.

Your Rights

You can write to us at any time to request a copy of your information and to have any inaccuracies corrected. Where appropriate, you may also ask to have your personal information erased or object to any processing of your information that is causing you damage or distress. Please write to:

Global Data Privacy Manager
National Grid
National Grid House
Warwick Technology Park
Gallows Hill
Warwick CV34 6DA
Facsimile: +44 (0)1926 655 630
Email: _box.web.updates@nationalgrid.com

Please quote your name and address. We would be grateful if you could also provide brief details relating to your personal information, as these help us to more readily locate your data.

We will require proof of your identity before responding to any request from you as described in this section. If you have requested a copy of your information, we reserve the right to charge £10 to cover the administration costs involved in providing that copy to you.

Information Security

Please be aware that communications over the Internet, such as emails/webmails, are not secure unless they have been encrypted. The form of security that we use is Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This is a method of hiding the information that a web browser and a web server send to each other. An SSL-enhanced browser uses encryption to scramble the data you send to a website into an unintelligible string of seemingly random characters. This is the industry standard for encrypting digital communications between any two points across a network.

Despite the encryption described above, your communications may route through a number of countries before being delivered - this is the nature of the internet - and National Grid is therefore unable to guarantee the security of any information you transmit to or via our Websites.

We do, however, have appropriate policies, rules and security measures in place to protect the personal information that we have under our control.

Choices about Cookies

The Websites may involve use of a mechanism called “cookies”. A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier, that is sent to your browser from a website's computers and stored on your computer's hard drive, if your browser settings permit it.

When you use our Websites National Grid may set and access cookies on your computer as described below. If you do not agree to this use of cookies you can adjust your browser settings to reject all cookies (each browser is different, so check the “Help” menu of your browser to learn how to do this). Alternatively you can choose not to use our Websites.

If you choose to reject all cookies using your browser settings, you will not be able to use National Grid products, services and/or Websites that require you to "sign in" and you may not be able to take full advantage of all offerings. However, many National Grid online services do not require that you accept cookies.

Please note that if you choose to continue with use of our Websites without taking any further action in relation to cookies, we will consider that you agree to the use of cookies as described below.

When you use this website, cookies are set and accessed by or on behalf of National Grid for a number of purposes, including to:

  • access your information when you "sign in" to a National Grid website so that we can provide you with customised content;
  • identify you as a registered user of this website so that you are able to use the site for its intended purpose(s) without having to re-enter your information each time you do so;
  • keep track of preferences you specify while you are using National Grid's services;
  • estimate and report our total audience size and traffic;
  • conduct research to improve National Grid's content and services; and/or
  • require you to re-enter your National Grid password after a certain period of time has elapsed to protect you against others accidentally accessing your account contents.
  • National Grid does not use cookies to target advertising or to share information with social networking sites or other services.

Google Analytics Cookies

In addition, National Grid uses Google Analytics to help analyse how users use National Grid websites. This analytical tool uses a cookie set by Google to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form. The information generated by the Google analytics cookie about your use of any website (including your IP address) is transmitted to Google, and used to evaluate and compile statistical reports about this use for National Grid.

National Grid will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the statistical analytics tool to track or collect any personally identifiable information about users of our sites, and will not associate any data gathered by means of the Google statistical tool with any personally identifying information. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither National Grid nor Google will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user.

Transfer / Use of Information Outside the European Economic Area**

Since National Grid operates globally, it may be necessary to transfer your personal information to other companies within National Grid and/or to Service Providers that are located outside and/or use facilities located outside the EEA. This may happen where our servers or such companies/facilities are based in countries outside of the EEA or where you use our services and products while visiting countries outside of the EEA. The data protection and other laws of countries outside the EEA may not be as protective of your information as those in the UK or the EU - in these instances we will take steps to ensure that your privacy rights are respected and your personal information adequately protected as required by applicable law. Where your information is transferred to, or services or products are provided by, National Grid in the United States, National Grid has committed to handling such personal information in accordance with the United States Department of Commerce Safe Harbor Principles for the transfer of personal information outside of the EEA. National Grid’s Safe Harbor certification can be found at http://web.ita.doc.gov/safeharbor/shlist.nsf/webpages/safe+harbor+list.

**The European Economic Area (EEA) currently comprises the Member states of the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Third Party Websites

We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of third party websites even if you accessed the third party website using links from our Websites or you linked to our Websites from the third party website.

We recommend that you check the privacy policy of each third party website you visit and contact the owner or operator of such website if you have any concerns or questions.

Privacy Support

We reserve the right to amend or modify this Privacy Policy Statement at any time. If the Purposes for processing change, we will notify you as soon as practicable and we will post the revised Privacy Policy Statement on all Websites.

If you have any questions about our data protection and privacy policy or practices, please write to:

Global Data Privacy Manager
National Grid
National Grid House
Warwick Technology Park
Gallows Hill
Warwick CV34 6DA
Facsimile: +44 (0)1926 655 630
Email: corpcomms@ngrid.com

Legal