Privacy policy

ScreenSkills is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Privacy Notice explains why and how we process information about you (personal data), as well as your rights in respect of your personal data.  

This website is not aimed at children and we currently do not knowingly collect personal data relating to children.

Who we are

For the purposes of the data protection law, the controller of your personal data is ScreenSkills. This means that ScreenSkills is ultimately responsible for how and why your personal data is used.  

ScreenSkills is a registered charity in England and Wales (registered charity number: 1015324) and in Scotland (registered charity number: SC039556) and a company limited by guarantee incorporated and registered in England and Wales (company number: 02576828). Our details are as follows: 

Address: Ibex House, 42-47 Minories, London EC3N 1DY 

Website: https://www.screenskills.com/  

ICO Registration Number: Z8941934 

Our Data Protection Manager can be contacted via: data.protection@screenskills.com 

Personal data that we process

When you visit our website, we may collect and process the following personal data: 

  • Identity and contact information: This may include your title, name, date of birth, and gender, as well as your address, email address and telephone number. 
  • Profile data: If you create an account on our website, we will process information about your account, including your username and password, your preferences, and other information you share with us, such as your employment status, career history, education history, skills, audience industry sector(s), and other details about your professional life you choose to share with us. 
  • Information necessary to provide services you have requested: This is to enable us to assess your eligibility for the services you are requesting. For example, we may need additional information about your education or employment history.  
  • Technical data: Some information is automatically collected by our website, and includes your internet protocol (IP) address, login information, information about your internet browser, date and time information, location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technical information about the devices you use to access this website. Collecting this information allow us to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer, and that our site is safe and secure.  
  • Website usage data: We may collect information about the way that you use our website through cookies (for more information, please see our Cookie Policy). 
  • Marketing data: We will also collect information about your preferences to receive marketing emails from us and your communication preferences. 

Certain categories of personal information are considered by data protection law to be more sensitive than others. Known as ‘special category personal data’, this relates to information about your health, racial or ethnic origin, details of sexual life, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political opinions or any genetic or biometric data that is used to identify you.  

We do not routinely process special category personal data, however if we need to do so we will explain what information we need and why. Providing special category data will usually be optional.  

How and why we process your personal data

The personal data that we collect and process is primarily used to enable us to provide our services to you. For example, we may use your personal data for the following purposes: 

  • To provide you with information you have requested, for example if you have signed up to receive newsletters from us, and to otherwise communicate with you; 
  • To deliver services to you, for example if you have signed up to undertake training with us through our online platform either in your personal capacity or where required by your employer; 
  • To display your profile in our directories and elsewhere on the ScreenSkills website; 
  • To administer our site and for internal operations including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, and surveys; 
  • To assess your professional needs and attributes in order to match you with other users, and to identify content and resources appropriate for you and those other users; 
  • To facilitate delivery of mandatory e-learning content required by our commercial contacts, which may include your employer or an organisation you are engaged by in a freelance capacity; 
  • To fulfil the legal obligations of our contractual relationships and legal obligations; 
  • To monitor equal opportunities where contractually required. 

Data protection law requires us to have a valid legal reason to use your personal data. These are: 

  • To comply with our legal obligations 
  • To comply with our contractual obligations towards you 
  • Where we have your consent: For example, in relation to receiving marketing communications from us.  
  • Because we or someone else has a legitimate interest in using your personal data in a certain way and your interests and rights do not override those interests (we rely on this when use of your personal data falls outside our specific legal obligations). For example:
    • If we have been asked by your employer / the organisation that has engaged you in a freelance capacity to contact you about mandatory training that you are required to complete in connection with your roll via our e-learning platform;
    • If we have been asked by your employer / the organisation that has engaged you in a freelance capacity to review your training records and check whether you have completed any mandatory training via our e-learning tracker tool;
    • To enable us to administer our website and provide web-based services, such as allowing you to build a profile on our e-learning platform or delivering website personalisation; 
    • To communicate with you in relation to our services, including informing you about service interruptions or providing you with certificates when you complete one of our e-learning courses; 
    • For sales and business development purposes; 
    • To prevent misuse of our online platform;
    • Carrying out equality and diversity monitoring.

Marketing

If you sign up to our mailing list, you will receive marketing emails from us. You can opt out of receiving marketing at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the end of any email or by contacting us directly via data.protection@screenskills.com. Please note, if you unsubscribe from marketing emails, we may still contact you by email regarding your training or other services you have requested from us. 

Failure to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law or in order to perform a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to meet our legal obligations or perform the contract we have entered or are trying to enter into with you. For example, failure to provide the requested personal data when placing an order on our website may mean that we are unable to fulfil your order. 

How is your personal data collected?

We collect personal data about you from the following sources: 

  • Direct interactions: We collect personal data that you provide to us, this includes information you provide when you communicate with us (e.g. to contact us or give us feedback), sign up for our email mailing list, or when you register an account with us.  
  • Automated interactions: As you interact with our website, our website provider Technical Labs will automatically collect technical data. 
  • Third parties or publicly available sources: We may also receive personal data from third parties and public sources. This may include: 
    • Analytics: We may receive technical data from analytics providers such as Google; 
    • Contact: If you sign up to our mailing list, we may also receive information from mailing service providers. 
    • Social media: If you contact us via social media, we will process information contained within your communications as well as other associated information, such as your username. Please note, Screenskills has no control over the processing of your personal data by social media platforms you use and we recommend you review the relevant privacy policies on the individual platforms. 

Where we store your personal information

We do not deliberately target users outside the UK but if you choose to visit the ScreenSkills website from outside the UK, you do so with the understanding that any personal data collected from the website will be processed in compliance with the UK data protection laws. 

On occasion we may need to transfer your personal data outside the UK. For example, where we use a third party service provider involved with the provision of support services or mailing services, that operates outside the UK.  

If we do transfer your personal data outside of the UK, we will put in place appropriate legal mechanisms and safeguards to ensure that your personal data is transferred and processed in compliance with data protection law. If you would like more information about how we protect your personal data if it is transferred outside the UK please contact data.protection@screenskills.com. 

Information security

We take every reasonable precaution to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal data and to ensure that it will be processed in accordance with this Policy. Unfortunately, the transmission of data via the internet is not completely secure and therefore we cannot guarantee the security of data sent to us electronically.  You acknowledge and accept that, despite our efforts to protect your personal data, there is a risk that others may try to intercept the information you provide to us. Transmission of your personal data is entirely at your own risk. Once we have received your personal data, we use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password so that you can access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. 

Disclosing and sharing your information

In certain circumstances we may share your personal data with third parties. We will never share your personal data unless we are allowed or required to do so by law. For example, we may share your personal data with: 

  • Your employer or organisation that has engaged you to carry out work for them (for example, if they ask us to contact you about mandatory training or to share your training record). We would only share training certification data in this instance. 
  • For research, reporting, or analytical purposes, we may share anonymised or aggregated data with external partners.
  • Analytics and search engine providers that help us with improving and optimising this website. 
  • If we sell all or part of our business to another company, your personal data may be disclosed to the prospective seller or buyer. 
  • Law enforcement agencies, regulatory organisations, courts or other public authorities where we have a legal obligation to do so.  
  • Our legal advisors and insurers, for example if we are involved in a dispute with you. 

Retention of Data

We will only store your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements and, where required for us to assert or defend against legal claims, until the end of the relevant retention period or until the claims in question have been settled. 

We keep your personal data in line with our legal or contractual obligations. Personal data related to financial transactions is usually kept for 6 years. Funding contracts may provide specific variable data retention periods and where your data has been processed in relation to a specific contract that retention period will apply. 

When you subscribe you our newsletter list we will process your data until you unsubscribe from our mailing list. Your data will then be included in the data cleansing processes we employ to keep our data up to date and will be archived/deleted. 

Your individual data rights

Data protection law provides individuals with various legal rights, which may be exercised in certain circumstances. You have the following legal rights over your personal data:  

  • The right of access: The right to access a copy of your personal data as well as other information about how we are processing your personal data; 
  • The right to rectification: The right to have data corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete; 
  • The right to erasure: The right to have your personal data erased from our systems in certain circumstances (such as where we no longer need your personal data for the purpose it was originally collected for); 
  • The right to restrict processing: The right to restrict how we process your data in certain circumstances (such as where you believe your personal data is incorrect and we need to verify the accurate of the personal data we hold); 
  • The right to data portability: The right to transfer your data to another provider in a commonly used, machine-readable format. Please note, this right only applies to automated information that you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you. 
  • The right to object: You may object to our processing of your personal data in certain circumstances, such as where we are processing your personal data on the basis of “legitimate interests”. Please note, you always have the right to object to processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.  
  • The right to withdraw consent: Where we are relying on your consent to process your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, and may do so by contacting us via data.protection@screenskills.com. If you decide to withdraw your consent, that does not mean that our use of your personal data before you withdrew your consent is against the law. 

Some of these rights do not apply in all circumstances and we may be able to refuse or partially refuse requests in certain circumstances such as where a legal exemption applies. In most cases we have one month to respond to you. Occasionally, we may need to verify your identity before we are able to process a request. 

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are not happy with the way we are processing your personal data or have processed your request. Details of how to do this can be found at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/. In the first instance, please contact us to discuss your concerns and we will make every effort to resolve any issues. 

Automated decision-making and profiling

Automated decision-making is when a computer or similar electronic system uses personal information to make decisions about people without any human involvement. Profiling is a type of automated decision-making process that takes place when different aspects about a person (such as their behaviour, interests or personality) are analysed in order to make predictions or decisions about them. 

We do not carry out automated decision making (including profiling). If that changes we will update this Privacy Notice and notify you in writing (where appropriate). 

Changes to this Privacy Notice

We will update and change this Privacy Notice from time to time to keep it up to date and accurate. We will always publish the most up to date version on our website. If we make a substantial change that affects your rights, we will notify you of the change, usually by email. This policy was last updated on 26 September 2024.