Privacy Policy

We respect and value the privacy of everyone who visits specialty-applications.co.uk and will only collect and use information in ways that are useful to you and in a manner consistent with your rights and our obligations under the law.

This policy applies to our use of any and all data collected by us in relation to your use of any of our websites. Please read this privacy policy carefully and ensure that you understand it. Your acceptance of our Privacy Policy is deemed to occur upon your first use of our site. If you do not accept and agree with this Privacy Policy, you must stop using our site immediately.

1. Definitions and Interpretation
In this Policy the following terms shall have the following meanings:

“Cookie” means a small text file placed on your computer or device by our site when you visit certain parts of our site and/or when you use certain features of our site. Details of the Cookies used by our site are set out in section 12, below;
“our site” means all web pages hosted on specialty-applications.co.uk;
“UK and EU Cookie Law” means the relevant parts of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 as amended in 2004, 2011 and 2015;
“GDPR” means the General Data Protection Regulation (EU Regulation 2016/679);
“we/us/our” means specialty-applications.co.uk

2. Scope – What Does This Policy Cover?
2.1 This Privacy Policy applies only to your use of specialty-applications.co.uk. It does not extend to any websites that are linked to from our site. We have no control over how your data is collected, stored or used by any websites we link to and we advise you to check the privacy policies of any such websites before providing any data to them.

3. What Data Do We Collect?
3.1 Some data will be collected automatically by our site via cookies, other data will only be collected if you voluntarily submit it via our contact form and consent to us using it for the purposes set out in section 5.
3.2 Depending upon your use of our site, we may collect some or all of the following data:
a) Information about your use of the site (e.g. IP address, web browser type and version, operating system, device type, screen resolution, pages visited, URL of referring site, your activity on our site, URL of any linked sites you visit)
b) information submitted by you in contact forms (e.g. your name and your email address)

4. How Do We Use Your Data?
4.1 All personal data is stored securely in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (GDPR). For more details on security see section 6, below.
4.2 We use your data to provide the best possible products and services to you. This includes:
4.2.1 Responding to communications from you;
4.2.2 Analysing your use of our site to enable us to continually improve our site and your user experience.
4.3 Under GDPR we will ensure that your personal data is processed lawfully, fairly, and transparently, without adversely affecting your rights. We will only process your personal data if at least one of the following applies:
a) you have given consent to the processing of your personal data for one or more specific purposes;
b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or in order to take steps at the request of you prior to entering into a contract;
c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject;
d) processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of you or of another natural person;
e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller; and/or
f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child.

5. How and Where Do We Store Your Data?
5.1 We only keep your data for as long as we need to in order to use it as described above in section 5, and/or for as long as we have your permission to keep it. In any event, we will conduct an annual review to ascertain whether we need to keep your data. Your data will be deleted if we no longer need it in accordance with the terms of our Data Retention Policy.
5.2 Some or all of your data may be stored outside of the European Economic Area (“the EEA”) (The EEA consists of all EU member states, plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). You are deemed to accept and agree to this by using our site and submitting information to us. If we do store or transfer data outside the EEA, we will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated as safely and securely as it would be within the EEA and under the GDPR. Such steps may include, but not be limited to, the use of legally binding contractual terms between us and any third parties we engage and the use of the EU-approved Model Contractual Arrangements.
5.3 Data security is of great importance to us, and to protect your data we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure data collected through our site.
5.4 Steps we take to secure and protect your data include:
a) Password protection of computers and mobile devices;
b) Encryption of computer hard drives;
c) Only using encrypted and password protected USB drives.
5.5 Notwithstanding the security measures that we take, it is important to remember that the transmission of data via the internet may not be completely secure and that you are advised to take suitable precautions when transmitting to us data via the internet.

6. Do We Share Your Data?
6.1 We may use third parties to supply services to you on our behalf. These may include transmission of messages and storage and/or delivery of electronic files. In some cases, the third parties may require access to some or all of your data. Where any of your data is required for such a purpose, we will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data will be handled safely, securely, and in accordance with your rights, our obligations, and the obligations of the third party under the law. This may include the use of:
WeTransfer – https://wetransfer.com – name, email address, electronic files;
Microsoft – Office 365 for email and OneDrive for shared file storage – https://www.onedrive.com – name, email address, electronic files.
6.2 We may compile statistics about the use of our site including data on traffic, usage patterns, user numbers, sales and other information. All such data will be anonymised and will not include any personally identifying information.
6.3 In certain circumstances we may be legally required to share certain data held by us, which may include your personal information, for example, where we are involved in legal proceedings, where we are complying with the requirements of legislation, a court order, or a governmental authority. We do not require any further consent from you in order to share your data in such circumstances and will comply as required with any legally binding request that is made of Us.

7. What Happens If Our Business Changes Hands?
7.1 We may, from time to time, expand or reduce our business and this may involve the sale and/or the transfer of control of all or part of our business. Data provided by users will, where it is relevant to any part of our business so transferred, be transferred along with that part and the new owner or newly controlling party will, under the terms of this Privacy Policy, be permitted to use the data for the purposes for which it was originally collected by us.
7.2 In the event that any of your data is to be transferred in such a manner, you will be contacted in advance and informed of the changes. When contacted you will be given the choice to have your data deleted or withheld from the new owner or controller.

8. How Can You Control Your Data?
8.1 If you do not agree to your data being used (e.g. in order for us to respond to a question or comment submitted by our contact form) we suggest you do not use the contact form to contact us.
8.2 If you submit a question or comment to us via our contact form and then decide you do not want us to store or process your data in order to respond to your question or comment please see section 9.
8.3 You are able to opt out of cookies, see section 11.

9. Your Right to Withhold Information and Your Right to Withdraw Information After You Have Given it
9.1 You may access our site without providing any data at all.
9.2 You may restrict your internet browser’s use of Cookies. For more information, see section 11.
9.3 You may withdraw your consent for us to use your personal data as set out in section 5 at any time by contacting us using the details set out in section 14, and we will delete your data from our systems. However, you acknowledge this may limit our ability to provide services to you.

10. How Can You Access Your Data?
10.1 You have the legal right to ask for a copy of any of your personal data held by us (where such data is held). Please contact us for more details using the contact details in section 14.

11. Cookies
11.1 Our site may place and access certain first party cookies on your computer or device. First party cookies are those placed directly by us and are used only by us. We use cookies to facilitate and improve your experience of our site and to provide and improve our products and services. By using our site, you may also receive certain third-party cookies on your computer or device. Third party cookies are those placed by websites, services, and/or parties other than us. Our site uses analytics services provided by Google, which also use cookies. Website analytics refers to a set of tools used to collect and analyse usage statistics, enabling us to better understand how people use our site.
11.2 You have the right to opt-out of cookies, use the cookie control service displayed on first use of the site to choose which cookies to accept/decline, or control via your browser’s settings.
11.3 For further information on cookies and links to pages on how to control access to cookies through your browser please see: https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/

12. Summary of Your Rights under GDPR
12.1 Under the GDPR, you have:
12.1.1 the right to request access to, deletion of or correction of, your personal data held by us;
12.1.2 the right to complain to a supervisory authority;
12.1.3 the right to be informed of what data processing is taking place;
12.1.4 the right to restrict processing;
12.1.5 the right to data portability;
12.1.6 the right to object to processing of your personal data;
12.1.7 rights with respect to automated decision-making and profiling (see section 14 below).
12.2 To enforce any of the foregoing rights or if you have any other questions about our site or this Privacy Policy, please contact us using the details set out in section 15 below.

13. Automated Decision-Making and Profiling
13.1 We do not use personal data for the purposes of automated decision making.
13.2 We do not use personal data for profiling purposes.

14. Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us through the website’s contact form.

15. Changes to Our Privacy Policy
We may change this Privacy Policy as we may deem necessary from time to time, or as may be required by law. Any changes will be immediately posted on our site and you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the privacy policy on your first use of our site following the alterations.

Date: 9 September 2024
Next review: 9 September 2025