PRIVACY NOTICE
Privacy and Cookies
The below notice explains how we at Smartdesc process and protect your personal information.
This privacy notice may change so please remember to check back from time to time, this was last updated in December 2023.
Where we have made any changes to this privacy notice, we will make this clear on our website. We may possibly contact you about any changes to this privacy notice if we are providing you with a service at the time and feel that it may impact your rights and freedoms.
What is personal information?
Personal information can be anything that identifies a natural living person. For example, having both somebody’s full name and email address.
What are the Special Categories of Data?
Special categories of data require additional protection due to how sensitive the information is. This information includes anything that reveals your:
- Sexual orientation or sexual life
- religious or philosophical beliefs
- ethnicity
- physical or mental health
- trade union membership
- political opinion
- genetic data
- biometric data (where used for I.D purposes)
Who we are
At Smartdesc we are committed to protecting your personal information and making every effort to ensure that your personal information is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.
We are a “data controller” for the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.
For further information about our privacy practices, please contact solutions@smartdesc.co.uk
How we collect personal information about you
We may collect personal information from you in the following ways:
When you interact with us directly: This could be if you express an interest in our services, apply for a job or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you speak to us on the phone, visit our website, register for an event, get in touch through the post, or in person.
When you interact with us through partners or suppliers working on our behalf: This could be if you are referred to Smartdesc by one of our carefully selected partners.
When you visit our website: We gather general information which might include which pages you visit most often and which services, events or information is of most interest to you. We may also track which pages you visit when you click on links in emails from us. We also use “cookies” to help our site run effectively. There are more details below in the section titled “Cookies”.
We use this information to personalise the way our website is presented when you visit to make improvements and to ensure we provide the best service and experience for you. Wherever possible we use anonymous information which does not identify individual visitors to our website.
From other information that is available to the public: To tailor our communications with you to your background and interests we may collect information about you or the charity you work for from publicly available sources such as LinkedIn or the Charity Commission or through third party subscription services or service providers such as the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).
Information we collect and why we use it
Personal Information
Personal information we collect includes details such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address and telephone number as well as information you provide in any communications between us.
We will mainly use this information:
- To provide the services or goods that you have requested.
- To update you with important administrative messages about our services or provide support with any problems you have where we have a contract with you.
- To keep a record of your relationship with us.
If you do not provide this information, we may not be able to provide you or your organisation with a particular service, sign you up for a particular event or provide goods and services you have requested.
We may also use your personal information:
- To contact you about our work and services we can provide (see section ‘Marketing’ below for further information).
- To invite you to participate in surveys.
Legal basis for processing your information
In most cases, we will only process your personal information in order to fulfil a contract with you (for example, because you are currently receiving Smartdesc services, or you are a Smartdesc employee).
However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and that may be because we have a ‘legitimate interest’. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for Smartdesc to process your information to help us to achieve our strategic objectives.
Whenever we process your Personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we consider your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that there is an imbalance.
Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your Personal information are where we contact you about our work via post, use your personal information for data analytics, conducting research to better understand who our customers are, improving our services or for our legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims).
Marketing
We will only contact you about the services we offer if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner or because we have a legitimate interest in contacting you about a service you may be interested in or a similar service to one you have already received.
You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by filling out the online form on ‘https://www.smartdesc.co.uk/contact-us’ email solutions@smartdesc.co.uk or by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant communication.
Sharing your Information
The personal information we collect about you will be used by our staff so that they can fulfil your request or provide you with the support you need.
From time to time, we may share personal information about you with selected partners when you attend one of our events. The personal information we share will be limited to your name and business email address and the purpose of this is so that they can contact you about the services they provide. We will tell you when we would like to share your details with third parties in this context and always provide an option for you to object.
We may also share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers who work with us or on our behalf to deliver our services, but processing of this information is always carried out under our instruction. We make sure that they store the data securely, delete it when they no longer need it and never use it for any other purposes. Aside from these specific activities, we will not share or sell any of your personal information.
We enter into contracts with all of our service providers that require them to comply with Data Protection Laws and ensure that they have appropriate controls in place to keep your information secure.
Our electronic marketing activities are carried out by via HubSpot and Mailchimp. Mailchimp’s privacy policy can be found here. HubSpot’s privacy policy can be found here. Please note that the information we share with Mailchimp and HubSpot is limited to your name and work email address
Signing up for Smartdesc blog post notifications and event notifications is done so with your consent. This consent can be withdrawn at any time by using the unsubscribe link provided in every communication. You can also withdraw your consent by contacting solutions@smartdesc.co.uk
Legal disclosure
We may disclose your information if required to do so by law (for example, to comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes of practice or in response to a valid request from a competent authority); or, in order to enforce our conditions of sale and other agreements.
Keeping your information safe
We take looking after your information very seriously. We’ve implemented various physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.
Our websites may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that advertisers or Web sites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.
How long we store information for
We only keep your personal data for as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity. For example, we hold data on our employees for 6 years after they have left Smartdesc.
Your rights
You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below. If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting our Information Governance Team at info@smartdesc.co.uk You can also make a complaint to the regulatory body, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) by visiting https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or by sending a letter to the following address:
Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF
- Access to your personal information: You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, along with information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. When making a request, please note that we will ask for proof of I.D before completing your request.
- Right to object: You can object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. Please contact us as noted above, providing details of your objection.
- Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.
- Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.
- Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.
- Portability: You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.
- Restriction: You can ask us to restrict the personal information we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.
- No automated-decision making:Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or have a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us your consent, it is necessary for a contract between you and us or is otherwise permitted by law. You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you. We do not currently carry out any automated decision-making.
Please note, some of the rights listed above will only apply in certain circumstances. Due to this it may not be lawful for us to always fulfil that request. Whenever this happens, we will explain why.
Cookies
The Smartdesc ltd website uses cookies. Cookies are text files that are stored in a computer system via an Internet browser.
Many Internet sites and servers use cookies. Many cookies contain a so-called cookie ID. A cookie ID is a unique identifier of the cookie. It consists of a character string through which Internet pages and servers can be assigned to the specific Internet browser in which the cookie was stored. This allows visited Internet sites and servers to differentiate the individual browser of the data subject from other Internet browsers that contain other cookies. A specific Internet browser can be recognized and identified using the unique cookie ID.
Through the use of cookies Smartdesc Ltd can provide the users of this website with more user-friendly services that would not be possible without the cookie setting.
Cookies allow us, as previously mentioned, to recognize our website users. The purpose of this recognition is to make it easier for users to utilize our website.
You may, at any time, prevent the setting of cookies through our website by means of a corresponding setting of the Internet browser used, and may thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Furthermore, already set cookies may be deleted at any time via an Internet browser or other software programs. This is possible in all popular Internet browsers. If you deactivate the setting of cookies in the Internet browser used, not all functions of our website may be entirely usable.
Monitoring
Your communications with our teams (including by telephone or email) may be monitored and/or recorded for training, quality control and compliance purposes to ensure that we continuously improve our customer service standards.
To find out more about this policy and how we look after your personal information, contact our Information Governance team at info@smartdesc.co.uk or on 0203 440 2445
