Privacy & Cookies

Privacy Notice for Our Customers and Contacts

Our policies:

Privacy Notice for Our Customers and Contacts
Privacy Notice for Our Service Providers / Suppliers
Cookies

Privacy Notice for Our Customers and Contacts

What is the Purpose of this notice?

In this notice we refer to the business that you deal with, Essential Secretary Ltd, as “Company”, “we”, “us” and “our”. We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This notice is provided for our prospective, existing and former customers and their staff (referred to in this notice as “you” and “your”).

This notice (together with our Cookie Notice published on our website and our Terms of Service (the “notices”)) tell you about how we process your personal information, including our collection, usage and sharing of your personal information, including in relation to your use of our website (“website”).

We will only process your personal information in accordance with the notices (and any other information we give to you about how we process your personal information) and in accordance with the Data Protection Legislation.

In this notice, the terms “Data Controller”, “Controller”, “Data Processor”, “Processor” and “personal information” each have a meaning set by law (“Data Protection Legislation”). The Data Protection Legislation is, from the date it comes into force in the United Kingdom, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679) and, until such date, the Data Protection Act 1998. Please note that “personal information” is, whilst the Data Protection Act 1998 is in force, a reference to “personal data” as defined under that Act.

Your Data Controller

We are a Data Controller in relation to your personal information. Our address is Essential Secretary Ltd, Bedford Street, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 1JE. We can be contacted by email at dp@essentialsecretary.co.uk.

Your Data Processor

We are a Data Processor in relation to your customers, your staff, and your participant’s personal information that may be gathered in your audio recordings, which we in turn transcribe into text documents on your instructions.

Transcribers are vetted by the Company’s HR Department and are required to provide and verify personal details, produce a valid form of identification, and sign agreements containing strict confidentiality clauses.

Content sent or uploaded to the Company is stored for usually no more than 3 months. Special arrangements for longer or shorter periods can be made upon request. The Company does not make content available to anyone other than its transcribers, all of whom have signed contracts and confidentiality agreements with the Company, and transcribers have no access to your personal information.

Your Personal Information

What personal information do we collect about you? We obtain your personal information (including that of your staff) from the following sources:

From you: You will know what personal information we obtain from you, because you (or someone you have authorised to deal with us, e.g. a member of your staff) has provided it to us. Examples of how we obtain personal information about you include:

○ When you make an enquiry (such as submitting an online enquiry form to us)

○ When you submit works (such as submitting the booking form or registration form)

○ When you give us information via email, or our website

○ During a telephone call with us, or during face to face discussions with us

○ Your registration on our website, information provided by you via our website, or via social media messaging

○ If you report something to us (such as a problem with the website)

From Marketing Sources: We love to receive new customers as a result of recommendations from our existing customers, and we also actively seek new customers through marketing. We obtain information about prospective new customers, and enquiries from prospective and existing customers from:

○ Your responses to our online marketing or direct marketing to you, whether you respond by electronic mail, telephone, post, social media or other means

○ Your interactions with us at exhibitions and other events that we may run or attend, such as receiving your business card, and our discussions with you

○ Your interactions with our online advertising and advertisements placed by our digital media and marketing service providers

From our service providers / third parties: We receive personal information about you from the following third parties who provide services to us:

○ Our bank or providers who process payments from you, to confirm the outcome of the payment transactions

○ Our digital media and marketing service providers who provide us with personal information obtained via social media, being the ability to contact you directly via social media (particularly Linked In, Facebook and Twitter, and if you choose to network with us, respond to our posts, or permit the social network provider to allow other users to contact you whether or not they belong to your network), and the contents of any enquiry or message you submit to us via social media.

IP Addresses: We will automatically collect your IP address (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific completer or other network device on the internet) each time you visit and use the website. This allows us to identify the location of users, to block disruptive use and to establish the number of visits from different countries. We analyse this data for trends and for statistical reasons, such as which parts of the website users are visiting and how long they spend there.

To help us decide what marketing to provide to you, we obtain information from some social media providers (particularly LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) about group(s) that you belong to within that social network. The information we receive is about the group(s), not specifically to you, and it gives us statistics about the relevant group(s) that you belong to such as the size and demographic profile of each group. For the purposes of online advertising, some service and social media providers, and particularly Google and Linked In, Facebook and Twitter, do not provide us with personal information about you, but they do use what they know about you in order to present our advertising to you online after you have visited our website or have been identified (by those social networks) as having an interest in topics or keywords that we place advertisements against. Our website uses cookies to help us and our online service providers (and particularly Google) to collect information, build a profile about your interests, and direct our advertisements to you when you are browsing the internet. Please see the Cooking Notice on our website for more information. What choices do you have as to the personal information we collect? To stay in touch with you before and after you place an order with us, as a minimum we need your name, the name of your organisation, and telephone number(s) and email address and postal address and / or the ability to stay in touch with you via social media and details of your preferred method of contact, if you tell us of any (“Contact Details”). To complete an order for you, as a minimum we need the following in order to enter into the contract in addition to the Contact Details:

Your job title
The department you work in
The description of the service you require
The quantity and length of files you send
Your project requirement
The address of the property where you require delivery
The address of the property where the invoice should be sent to, if different from the delivery address
Your payment details

How do you withhold or provide less personal information? You can control all of our sources of your personal information. You can:

Provide less personal information that we request.
Exercise choice about what personal information you provide as long as it is true and accurate

(for example, you may have a choice about what payment details you provide to us)

Use our website, or the email address given at the beginning of this notice, to tell us to stop contacting you with our marketing.
Not respond to our marketing and communications (and you also have the right to stop our direct marketing to you – please see below).
Opt out of the receipt of our newsletters and updates by using the links and details provided in those communications.
Change your settings and connections in the online social networks that you use. You can remove us from your network within each social network, choose not to follow us within each network, and choose not to respond to our general posts made within each network. Your social network provider should also give you the ability to opt out of receiving direct messages from us if we are outside your network.
Change your internet browser settings to prohibit cookies.

What is the impact of providing less / withholding personal information? Please note that withdrawing or withholding personal information from us will mean that:

Any updates, offers and communications (via advertising, direct marketing or messages) from us

(whether by telephone, email or other means) are not personalised for you.

You do not get to receive any updates, offers and communications (if you withhold your contact details or tell us not to contact you, or you remove us from your network or choose not to follow us within online social networks).
If you do not provide us with the minimum information as listed above, we cannot enter into contract with you for the sale of services.

If you ask us to erase any of your personal information we may be unable to comply with your previous instructions to us about your personal information in some circumstances. For example, if we erase records of your instruction not to email you, you may receive emails from us if we subsequently lawfully acquire your email address from a third party.

Using Your Personal Information

How do we use your personal information? For as long as we have access to your personal information, we will use it for the following purposes, unless otherwise required as a result of your exercising your data protection rights. We may use your personal information for any of the following purpose, whether we obtained it directly from you or someone you authorise.

Use	Basis of Use
To provide you with our services in accordance with our contract with you, once you have placed an order.	Our legitimate interest in carrying out our obligations under a contract with you.
To process your payment for our services.	Our legitimate interest in carrying out a contract with you.
To provide you with information that you request from us, or respond to your enquiries made directly to us.	Our legitimate interest in responding to your requests and enquiries e.g. by email, telephone, post or social media.
To take legal or administrative action (including collecting debts, resolving disputes and dealing with regulators) in relation to our supply arrangements with you, including to enforce the terms of the contract, to resolve any disputes	Our legitimate interest in enforcing the contract and in resolving disputes with you and as necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
To prepare and send you solicited direct marketing that you have opted into, consisting of (a) online advertising directed to you via our service providers (particularly Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) or (b) direct correspondence with you via email and service provider via Mailchimp campaigns, and containing relevant information about services we provide (including news updates and guidance articles).	Existing customers: our legitimate interest in staying in touch with you to discuss potential repeat business. Prospective customers: our legitimate interest in sending you direct marketing to seek business from you, unless you ask us to stop (in which case we will stop). We may send notifications by email. The emails will include an “unsubscribe” link. We use cookies. See the Cookie Notice on our website for more information.
To profile you via social media channels, using information about social media group(s) that you belong to.	Our legitimate interest in ensuring we are able to focus our marketing and advertising more effectively provided that you can ask us to stop profiling you at any time (in which case we will stop).
To ensure that features and content from the website are available for you (if you choose them) and are presented in the most effective manner for you and your devices.	Our legitimate interest in providing services, choices, operations and the website that meets the requirements of our existing and prospective customers. We use cookies. Please see the cookie notice on our website for more information.
To check and confirm that we carry out your instructions accurately, to enable us to review and improve our services and operations and develop new and changed services and operations.	Our legitimate interest in providing services, choices, operations and the website that meets the requirements of our existing and prospective customers.
To undertake financial management, planning and reporting within our business.	Our legitimate interest in respect of corporate governance and management.
To keep in touch with you by email or social networks.	Prospective customers: normally we ask for consent and will not contact you by these means if you have withheld or withdrawn your consent to this. Existing customers: It is lawful for us to contact you by email provided that we give you an easy method to unsubscribe. You can stop us contacting you by email at any time using the link provided in each email or (in the case of social networks) in the ways described above under heading “How do you withhold or provide less personal information?”.
We may cite you as a referee in tenders, and may include case studies about our work with you, unless you tell us otherwise.	Our legitimate interest in ensuring we are able to present effective tenders that contain examples of our work and referees for the commissioner to contact provided that you can ask us to stop at any time (in which case we will stop).

Keeping Your Personal Information

Sharing Your Personal Information

Who do we share your personal information with? For as long as we have access to your personal information, we may share any of it with any of the following to the extent that they need to have access to your personal information in order to perform their role:

Selected employees within our organisation who would have a legitimate reason in order to perform their role
Selected third parties who help us to perform our contract with you. This includes third parties who help us indirectly such as service providers who host and / or transmit data for us such as MailChimp, SendThisFile and WeTransfer.
Our banks and other payment processing service providers who process your payments to us.
Our professional service providers, such as accountants, auditors, legal advisors and insurance brokers.
Any third party company or companies in the event that we go through a business transition, such as a merger, or being acquired by another person or company.

We reserve the right to disclose your personal information to other third parties if we have lawful grounds to do so, or are under a legal obligation to disclose or share it with them, or in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights or to protect the rights or safety of the company or our staff.

Your Rights

What if your personal information changes? It is important that the information we hold about you is correct and accurate. Please tell us if your personal information changes during your relationship with us. What rights do you have? In certain circumstances and by law, you have the right to:

Request access: to your personal information that we hold about you. This is commonly referred to as a “data subject access request” or “SAR”. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check we are lawfully processing it.
Request Correction: of your personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
Request Erasure: of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where: (i) there is no good reason for us continuing to process it; (ii) you have withdrawn your consent to our processing; (iii) you have the right to object to processing (see below) and no exception permits us to keep using it; (iv) it is established that we did not have the lawful right to process your personal information; or (v) the law requires us to erase your personal information.
Object to processing: of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and where there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to the processing on this ground and there is no exception which applies to permit us to keep using it or we use it for scientific or historic research purposes or statistical purposes.
Request the restriction of processing: of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you. For example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it you consider we no longer need to use your personal information for the purposes for which it was collected or used (but you need it to be preserved for the purposes of legal claims). You may also ask us to restrict processing if you have exercised your right to object to our use of your personal information and no exception applies to permit us to keep using it.
Request the transfer: of your personal information to a third party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, withdraw consent, object to the processing of your personal information, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact us using the contact details set out at the beginning of this notice.

No Fee is usually required

You will not pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively we may refuse to comply with your request in such cases.

What we may need from you

We may need specific information from you to help us to confirm your identify and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any other right). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that the personal information is not disclosed to someone who is not entitled to receive it.

Withdrawing consent

In the limited circumstances where you have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please use the facility provided (e.g. the link contained in emails from us if you wish to unsubscribe to email marketing) or contact us using the contact details set out at the beginning of this notice. Once we have received notification of your withdrawal of consent, we will no longer process your information for that purpose, unless we have another legitimate basis to do so by law. You also have the right to ask us not to process your personal information for direct marketing purposes. You can unsubscribe at any time using the facility provided by email (if you wish to unsubscribe to email marketing) or contact us by using the contact details set out at the beginning of this notice.

Data Protection Manager

We are not required to appoint a Data Protection Officer to comply with the law, but we have appointed a member of management to oversee compliance with this notice. If you have any questions about this notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact us using the contact details set out at the beginning of this notice. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection matters.

Changes to this notice

We reserve the right to make changes to this notice from time to time. If this notice changes in any way, we will place an updated version on our website. Regularly reviewing our website will ensure that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we share it with other parties. If we make material changes to this notice, we will notify you via a prominent notice on our website and email footers. If you do not agree to the changes that we make from time to time, please tell us via the contact details set out at the beginning of this notice.

Privacy Notice for Our Service Providers / Suppliers

What is the Purpose of this notice?

This notice is provided for our prospective, existing and former suppliers (referred to in this notice as “you” and “your”).

This notice tells you about how we process your personal information, including our collection, usage and sharing of your personal information.

Your Data Controller

We are a Data Controller in relation to your personal information. Our address is Essential Secretary Ltd, 5 Maes Elwyn John, Reynalton, Kilgetty, SA68 0PE. We can be contacted by email at info@essentialsecretary.co.uk.

Your Personal Information

What personal information do we collect about you? We obtain your personal information (including that of your staff) from the following sources:

From your staff: Your staff will know what personal information we obtain from you, because the member of staff (or someone they have authorised to deal with us, e.g. another member of your staff) has provided it to us. Examples of how we obtain personal information about you includes when you market, offer and / or agree to supply us with products and services

(including as part of any bid or tender process); when you give us information via email, during a telephone call or in face to face discussions and also from networking events, trade shows and exhibitions.

From third parties: we may obtain personal information about you from third party sources, by way of introduction. For example, we may be passed your details by other parties within the industry / our clients as a potential supplier.
From your employees: We may obtain personal information about you from your employees and other staff who have been introduced to us.
From your customers and contacts: We may obtain personal information about you from you or your customers and clients who have been introduced to us.

What choices do you have as to the personal information we collect? To complete an order with you to buy goods and services from you, as a minimum we need the following in order to place the contract:

Your name, postal address, email address and phone numbers, as well as a contact within your business and details of your preferred method of contact (“Contact Details”).
The description and quantities of the goods and services you will provide to us.
Your payment details.

If you prefer for us to hold and / or to use less personal information about you, you can choose to make less available, but please note that withdrawing or withholding personal information from us will mean that you may not receive updates and requests for further goods and services from us (whether by telephone, email or other means), plus it may mean that we cannot place a contract with you for the purchase of goods and / or services if you do not provide us with the minimum details (as set out above). If you ask us to erase any of your personal information we may be unable to comply with your previous instructions to us about your personal information. For example, if we erase records of your instruction not to email you, you may receive an email from us if we subsequently lawfully acquire your email address from a third party.

Using Your Personal Information

Use	Basis of Use
To contact you about a potential supply arrangement with you.	Our legitimate interest in approaching you about possible business opportunities.
To make a decision to buy goods and / or services from you, including making enquiries of you, undertaking supplier approval checks and negotiating the terms of any contract.	Our legitimate interest in approaching you about possible business opportunities and taking steps to enter into a contract.
To perform our obligations to you under the contract with you for the supply of goods and services, including the processing of payments to you.	Our legitimate interest in complying with our obligations under a contract with you.
To take legal or administrative action in relation to our supply arrangement with you, including to enforce the terms of the contract and resolve any disputes.	Our legitimate interest in enforcing the contract and in resolving disputes with you and as necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
To undertake financial management, planning and reporting within our business.	Processing will be in our legitimate interest in respect of corporate governance and management.
To undertake health and safety management activities and checks.	Processing will be in our legitimate interests to ensure the health and safety of our staff and visitors to our premises.
To keep in touch with you regarding future business opportunities.	Our legitimate interest in staying in touch with you to propose and discuss potential repeat business.
We may cite you as a referee in tenders, and may include case studies about our work with you, unless you tell us otherwise.	Our legitimate interest in ensuring we are able to present effective tenders that contain examples of our work and referees for the commissioner to contact provided that you can ask us to stop at any time (in which case we will stop).

Keeping Your Personal Information

How long will we retain your personal information? We will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. We will retain contact details and records of our contact with you until you ask us to delete them. We will retain details relating to the orders we place with you or your organisation for as long as it is necessary for us to establish, exercise or defend legal rights. In determining the appropriate period for the retention of your personal information, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of that data, the purposes of which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve these purposes by other means, as well as the applicable legal requirements.

Sharing Your Personal Information

Selected employees within our organisation who would have a legitimate reason in order to perform their role.
Our banks and other payment processing service providers who process our payments to you.
Our professional service providers, such as accountants, auditors, legal advisors and insurance brokers.
Any third party company or companies in the event that we go through a business transition, such as a merger, or being acquired by another person or company.

Your Rights

Request access: to your personal information that we hold about you. This is commonly referred to as a “data subject access request” or “SAR”. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check we are lawfully processing it.
Request Correction: of your personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
Request Erasure: of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where: (i) there is no good reason for us continuing to process it; (ii) you have withdrawn your consent to our processing; (iii) you have the right to object to processing (see below) and no exception permits us to keep using it; (iv) it is established that we did not have the lawful right to process your personal information; or (v) the law requires us to erase your personal information.
Object to processing: of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and where there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to the processing on this ground and there is no exception which applies to permit us to keep using it or we use it for scientific or historic research purposes or statistical purposes.
Request the restriction of processing: of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you. For example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it you consider we no longer need to use your personal information for the purposes for which it was collected or used (but you need it to be preserved for the purposes of legal claims). You may also ask us to restrict processing if you have exercised your right to object to our use of your personal information and no exception applies to permit us to keep using it.
Request the transfer: of your personal information to a third party.

No Fee is usually required

What we may need from you

Withdrawing consent

Data Protection Manager

Changes to this notice

Cookie Notice

Accessing this website constitutes an agreement that this Cookie Policy will apply whenever the website is accessed on any device.

The Company reserves the right to vary this cookie policy from time to time and such changes will be posted here and will become effective as soon as they are posted. Continued use of the website constitutes an agreement to all such changes. The website uses small files called cookies. They are used in order to make the website work, or work more efficiently, as well as to store elements like user preferences. Cookies are stored by the browser on a user’s computer device.

Essential Secretary Ltd uses the following cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies
Functionality cookies
Performance / Analytics cookies
Geotargeting cookies
Registration cookies

Strictly necessary cookies:

These are cookies that are required for the operation of the website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into parts of the website.

Functionality cookies:

This type of cookie is used to recognise you when you return to the website and remembers preferences for tools found on the website, so you don’t have to reset them each time you visit, such as your choice of language.

Performance / Analytics cookies:

Every time someone visits the website, software provided by a third party generates an anonymous analytics cookie. These cookies can tell the Company whether you have visited the website before. Your browser will tell the Company if you have these cookies and if you don’t, it generates new ones. This allows the Company to track how many individual users it has, and how often they visit the website. Unless you are signed into the Company it cannot use these cookies to identify individuals.

The Company uses these cookies to gather statistics, for example, the number of visits to a page. If you are logged in, the Company will also know the details you gave to it for this, such as your username and email address. Passwords are not stored by or affected by cookies.

Geotargeting cookies:

These cookies are used by software which tries to work out what country you are in from the information supplied by your browser when you click on a web page. This cookie is completely anonymous.

Registration cookies:

When you create a user account with the Company, it generates cookies that let it know whether you are logged in or not.

How to turn cookies off

It is usually possible to stop your browser accepting cookies, or to stop it accepting cookies from a particular website. However, without using cookies, the Company cannot tell if you are signed in. All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your browser.

Category	Cookie Name	Purpose
Necessary Cookies	PHPSESSID	Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Necessary Cookies	cookiesAccepted	Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Necessary Cookies	cookiesAcceptedAnalytics	Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Necessary Cookies	cookiesAcceptedWordpress_logged_in	Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Necessary Cookies	cookiesAcceptedWordpress_	Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Necessary Cookies	cookiesAccepted_test_cookie	Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Necessary Cookies	cookiesAcceptedShareThisFile	Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Analytical cookies	'_ga','_gat','_gid'	Used to see how our website users navigate the site
SendThisFile	'JSESSIONID'	Used by the website to provide file transfer service