Academy Plus Group Ltd Privacy Policy
Introduction
Welcome to Academy Plus Group Ltd’s (“Academy+”, “we”, “us”, “our”) privacy policy.
We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information about who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal data. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.
Controller
Academy+ is the data controller and trades as ‘New Skills Academy’ and ‘Staff Skills Training’ (plus such other potential trading names as may be used from time to time). Academy+ is responsible for certain personal data collected by these brands about you, that we use to supply you with our services and access to our courses as a representative of a corporate customer (for example via Staff Skills Training) or as an individual learner (for example via New Skills Academy), or where you use or browse one of our websites.
We may also act as processor of some personal data, such as information we receive from or collection behalf of one of our corporate customers, acting as a controller, so that we can provide learning services to their authorised users. Our legal obligations as a processor are instead set out in the contract between us and the relevant controller and the relevant privacy obligations applied.
If you have any questions about this policy or about how we handle your data, please contact our data privacy manager as follows:
Email: data@academypl.us
Address: 6 Corunna Court, Warwick, CV345HQ.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes
We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated in April 2024.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Third-party links
Our websites may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our websites, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
Third-party apps, websites and services
If you use any third party apps, websites or services to access our services, your usage is subject to the relevant third party’s terms and conditions, cookies policy, and privacy policy. For example, if you interact with us on social media, your use is subject to the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the relevant social media platform (Facebook, Instagram etc.).
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
Individual learners
- Identity Data: includes name.
- Contact Data: includes company email address and telephone number job title and company details where applicable, online presence.
- Marketing Data: includes your preferences in receiving marketing communications from us or third parties.
- Profile Data: includes your username, profile photo, feedback, course progress, certificate ID, your contact history, purchase history, your testimonials.
- Usage Data: information about how you use our websites, IT, communication and other systems.
- Technical Data: includes your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type and version, the pages you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on each page, the device type, operating system, unique device identifiers, device settings, and geo-location data.
- Transaction Data: includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us.
Representatives of our corporate customers
- Identity Data: includes name and job title.
- Contact Data: includes business address, email address and telephone numbers, organisation details, where applicable online presence.
- Profile Data: includes your username, password, orders made by you on behalf of your organisation, your interests, preferences, feedback.
- Usage Data: includes information about how you use our websites and services.
- Marketing and Communications Data: includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
Website users/browsers
- Technical Data: includes your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type and version, the pages you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on each page, the device type, operating system, unique device identifiers, device settings, and geo-location data.
- Usage Data: information about how you use our websites, IT, communication and other systems
We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.
We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with our services). In this case, we may have to cancel a services you have purchased from us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
- Direct interactions. You may give us your personal data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
- apply for our courses or services;
- create an account on our websites;
- subscribe to our publications;
- request marketing to be sent to you; or
- give us feedback, leave a testimonial or contact us.
- Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our websites, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see our cookie policy [LINK] for further details.
- Third parties. We will receive personal data about you from various third parties such as:
- analytics providers such as Google;
- providers of technical, payment and delivery services such as Stripe or PayPal.
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
- Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
- In limited circumstances where you have given your consent.
Purposes for which we will use your personal data
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.
Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.
| Purpose/Activity | Type of data | Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest |
| To register you as a new learner or your organisation as a new customer | (a) Identity
(b) Contact |
(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to manage our contract with your organisation) |
| To process and deliver your or your organisation’s request to participation in course(s) including:
a) To provide you with access to our courses; b) To record your course progress; c) Managing payments, fees and charges d) Collecting and recover money owed to us |
(a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Transaction (d) Marketing and Communications |
(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us) (c) Consent |
| To manage our relationship with you or your organisation which will include:
(a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey |
(a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Marketing and Communications |
(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our services) (d) Consent |
| To enable you to partake competition or complete a survey or leave a testimonial | (a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communications |
(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our services, to develop them and grow our business) (c) Consent |
| To administer and protect our business and our websites (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) | (a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Technical |
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
| To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you | (a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communications (f) Technical |
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
(b) Consent. |
| To use data analytics to improve our websites, services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences | (a) Technical
(b) Usage |
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our services, to keep our websites updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy) |
| To make suggestions and recommendations to you about services or services that may be of interest to you and to send your our weekly newsletter. | (a) Identity
(b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile (f) Marketing and Communications |
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our services and grow our business)
(b) Consent |
Marketing
We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.
If you are an individual learner, you may receive marketing communications from us if you have consented for us to send you this information or if you have requested information from us or purchased services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.
Opting out
You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by unsubscribing.
Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a service/ purchase, service experience or other transactions.
Cookies
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of our websites may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see Academy Plus Group Ltd – Cookie Policy.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table [Purposes for which we will use your personal data] above.
- External Third Parties
- Service providers who provide services such as payment processing services and IT and system administration services, CRM, customer engagement platforms email segmentation and course/education support.
- Marketing Companies and Online Advertising – Helping us to manage our electronic communications to you and to help us show you the advertising you are most likely to be interested in, companies that provide marketing and advertising assistance (including management of email marketing operations, mobile messaging services such as SMS, and services that deploy advertising on the internet or social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube and Google) as well as analysis of the effectiveness of our advertising and communications campaigns.
- Certain other third parties, for example, market researchers, fraud prevention agencies, price comparison sites etc.
- Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
- HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United Kingdom.
- Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Many of our external third parties are based outside the UK so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.
Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
How long will you use my personal data for?
We will retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data, the term of your arrangement with us and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
In very limited circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes or to help us to understand metrics regarding our business – in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
Details of other specific retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available from us by contacting us.
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Please see below (Your Legal Rights) to find out more about these rights.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights please contact our privacy manager.
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
Time limit to respond
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
You have the right to:
Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:
- If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
- Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
- Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
- You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.