Privacy policy

We respect your privacy. This page explains our policy regarding your privacy and the way we handle data associated with you. Users of this website are subject to its Terms of use which include this Privacy policy and our Cookies policy. Your privacy is of great concern to us. This Privacy policy tells you what to expect when Bale Crocker collects personal information. It applies to information we collect about:

• visitors to our websites
• people who communicate with us
• people who use our services, eg subscribe to our newsletter or request a publication
• job applicants and our current and former employees.

Visitors to our website

When someone visits balecrocker.com we collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. We collect this information in a way which does not identify anyone. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any personally identifying information from any source. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.

Use of cookies by this website

You can read more about how we use cookies on our Cookies policy page.

Search engine

Our website search queries and results are logged anonymously to help us improve our website and search functionality. No user-specific data is collected.

Newsletter

We gather sufficient data to issue our Newsletters to Subscribers and we monitor feedback from Newsletters.

People who email us

Any email sent to us, including any attachments, may be monitored and used by us for reasons of security and for monitoring compliance with office policy. Email monitoring or blocking software may also be used. Please be aware that you have a responsibility to ensure that any email you send to us is within the bounds of the law.

People who use our services

We offer various services. We use third parties to deal with some publication requests, but they are only allowed to use information that we provide to them send out the publications. We have to hold the details of the people who have requested the service in order to provide it. However, we only use these details to provide the service the person has requested and for other closely related purposes. For example, we might use information about people who have requested a publication to carry out a survey to find out if they are happy with the level of service they received. When people do subscribe to our services, they can cancel their subscription at any time and are given an easy way of doing this.

Job applicants, current and former Bale Crocker employees

When individuals apply to work for Bale Crocker, we will only use the information they supply to us to process their application and to monitor recruitment statistics. Where we want to disclose information to a third party, for example where we want to take up a reference or obtain a ‘disclosure’ from the Criminal Records Bureau we will not do so without informing them beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law. Personal information about unsuccessful candidates will be held for 12 months after the recruitment exercise has been completed, it will then be destroyed or deleted. We retain de-personalised statistical information about applicants to help inform our recruitment activities, but no individuals are identifiable from that data. Once a person has taken up employment with us, we will compile a file relating to their employment. The information contained in this will be kept secure and will only be used for purposes directly relevant to that person’s employment. Once their employment with us has ended, we will retain the file in accordance with the requirements of our retention schedule and then delete it.

Access to personal information

Bale Crocker tries to be as open as it can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information in our possession. Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a ‘subject access request’ under the Data Protection Act 1998. If we do hold information about you we will:

• give you a description of it
• tell you why we are holding it
• tell you who it could be disclosed to
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

To make a request to us for any personal information we may hold you need to put the request in writing addressing it to our Information Governance department at the address provided below. If you prefer, we will try to deal with your request informally, for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the telephone. If we do hold information about you, you can ask us to correct any mistakes by, once again, contacting the Information Governance department.

Disclosure of personal information

In many circumstances we will not disclose personal data without consent. However when we investigate a complaint, for example, we will need to share personal information with the organisation concerned and with other relevant bodies. Further information is available from our Information Governance department in response to specific queries about the factors we shall consider when deciding whether information should be disclosed and also:

• agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information
• circumstances where we can pass on personal data without consent for example, to prevent and detect crime and to produce anonymised statistics
• our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete personal data
• how we check that the information we hold is accurate and up to date.

Links to other websites

This privacy notice does not cover the links within this site linking to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

Enquiries and complaints

When enquiries are submitted to us we will only use the information supplied to us to deal with the enquiry and any subsequent issues and to check on the level of service we provide. We have received no complaints but if we received a complaint from a person we would make up a file containing the details of the complaint. This normally contains the identity of the complainant and any other individuals involved in the complaint. We will only use the personal information we collect to process the complaint and to check on the level of service we provide. We do compile and publish statistics showing information like the number of complaints we receive (zero to date), but not in a form which identifies anyone. If a complainant doesn’t want information identifying him or her to be disclosed, we will try to respect that however it may not be possible to handle a complaint on an anonymous basis. Information relating to a complaint will be retained for two years from closure in a secure environment and access to it will be restricted according to the ‘need to know’ principle. Bale Crocker tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we would take any complaint we receive very seriously. We encourage people to bring to our attention any belief that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our procedures. This privacy policy was written with brevity and clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of our collection and use of personal information. However we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be sent to the address below. We believe that this policy tells site visitors what they need to know.

Changes to this Privacy policy

We keep our Privacy policy under regular review and it was last updated on 10 May 2016.

How to contact us

If you want to request information about our Privacy policy you can email us or write to “Information Governance” at the address shown at the foot of this page.