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Privacy Policy

About this Privacy Notice

This privacy notice describes how British Boarding Schools Network Ltd ('BBSN', 'us' or 'we') collects and uses your personal information during and after your relationship with us.

We are a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you, and for explaining this clearly to you.

This notice applies to prospective, existing and former clients and associates of BBSN (including employees and representatives of the Schools we work with, individual Educational Agents (and employees of Educational Agents if they are a company) and any other representatives of our clients); individual and business contacts and prospects; any person who provides services to us or works with us on one of our events or products - either as an individual or as the employee or representative of a corporate service provider; all members of BBSN with use of the members' portal; and users of our website https://britishboarding.com/ (our site).

This privacy notice should be read in conjunction with our cookies policy. 

It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy information or notices we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.


How do we collect information about you?

We collect personal information directly from you when you enquire about our products and services, or make an application to join one of our services (either directly to BBSN or via the site); when you become a client of BBSN; when you prepare for and take part in one of our services (for example, in relation to the BBS Workshop attendance, BBSN membership, BBSN training days and BBSN Fam Trips; when we enter into a contract to receive services from you; when we work with you in relation to one of our products or services (for example, if you are an exhibitor at the BBS Workshop); when you become a member of BBSN and contribute to the portal (for example, when you complete your member profile); and when you use our site.

  • We collect further information from you during the period of our relationship.
  • We collect personal information about you indirectly from our clients, suppliers or other market contacts.
  • We may collect information about you from public sources, including your website and social media sites such as LinkedIn.

What information do we collect about you and how do we use it?

In summary, we use your personal data for the following purposes:

  • to carry out obligations arising from any contracts between us and you; with our exhibitors; with our suppliers; or with third parties;
  • to communicate with you, including to provide you with information, products or services; and
  • where it is necessary for our business or our customers' business.


We set out below further information and our lawful bases for processing such information.

  • Clients (general):
    • We collect and process your name, email address, telephone number, address and, if required, bank details so we can provide products and services to you and communicate with you about your booking. Such processing is necessary for the performance of the contract between us.  
    • As part of our services we will send relevant sector updates and information from our exhibitors and associates to you via email. Such communications are necessary for the performance of the contract between us.  
    • If you attend one of our events we may use photographs or videos of you for our website and social media sites. We do this to pursue our legitimate interest of promoting our business.  
    • We may also process feedback you provide to us on our products and services. Such processing is necessary for the legitimate interest of managing our business and improving our products and services. 
  • All Educational Agents (regardless of the services provided):
     
    • We collect details from the Agent Membership Application Form when you apply for membership of BBSN and/or a place at a future BBSW events: this includes your name, job title, email address, telephone number, qualifications, photographs and any other personal information you include on your application form. We also collect information about you from the referees listed on the form. We use this information to assess your suitability to become a member of BBSN. Such processing is necessary for our legitimate interests of managing our business and ensuring that BBSN members and BBSW participants are suitable and therefore improve our products and services.  
    • If you are successful with your application, we collect your passport details, visa details, date of birth, dietary requirements, bank details and medical information. Such processing is necessary for the performance of the contract between us - to provide you with our services.
  • BBSW attendees:  

    • For all BBSW attendees (whether you are an Educational Agent, representative of a School or an exhibitor), we collect your name, address, email address, phone number, job title, qualifications, photograph, details of appointments during the workshop, registrations and enquiries made in relation to the Workshop. We use this information to organise and facilitate the Workshop. Such processing is necessary for the performance of the contract between us and for our legitimate interest of ensuring the smooth running of the Workshop.
    • We collate a delegate list of attendees for each BBSW and we share this with the other attendees in advance of the networking event. Such processing is in furtherance of our legitimate interest of ensuring that delegates get the most out of our services and events.  
    • Each participating school/company of the Workshop has a profile on the BBSN portal. This is made available to all attendees in electronic format. Such processing is necessary for the performance of the contract between us and in support of our legitimate interest of ensuring that attendees get the most out of our event. 
  • BBSN Fam Trips:  

    • In addition to the other information we collect about you as part of the services we provide, we may also need to collect details of your dietary requirements, medical information, emergency contact and travel arrangements in order to arrange the Fam Trips. Such processing is necessary for performance of the contract between us.  
  • BBSN Networking Days:  

    • For all attendees of the BBSN Networking Days (whether you are an Educational Agent, representative of a School or an exhibitor), we collect your name, address, email address, phone number, job title, booking information registrations and enquiries made in relation to the event, so we can communicate with you and provide the services to you. Such processing is necessary for the performance of the contract between us.  
  • BBSN Members:  
    • If you sign up to BBSN membership, we will use the information you provide to us via the application form and staff form to set you up as a member and provide the services to you. Such processing is necessary for the performance of the contract between us.  
    • We may review the content you submit via the BBSN portal to ensure it complies with our standards and we may collect information about your use of the platform (for example, the pages you accessed and page interaction information). This is for our legitimate interests in giving you content which is helpful, making sure that the BBSN portal runs smoothly and to support improvements to our services. 
  • Suppliers, third party business contacts and prospects:  

    • We process names, job titles and business contact information including addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses for your employees and representatives and other information to maintain and manage our relationship with you. Such processing is necessary for the performance of the contract between us.  
    • Where you are an employee of a corporate client or contractor, we process this information for the legitimate interest of performing our contract with your employer.  
    • If there is a problem, for example, if we have a complaint about a service you have provided, then we have a legitimate interest in using personal information in connection with that complaint, for example, so that we can tell you what happened so that you can put things right.   
    • We may perform due diligence in the form of credit checks on companies, including checking photographic identification and proof of address of directors and, in some cases, your shareholders, and verification of the company registration details. We do this to comply with our legal obligations, and as necessary for our legitimate interests of checking that the entities we contract with are financially viable and would not cause us reputational damage.  
  • Users of our site:  

    • When you browse our site or book events/services through our site we may collect information about your preferences and the types of services you are interested in.  
    • We also collect technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform.  
    • We also collect information about your visit, including: the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); products you viewed or searched for; page response times; download errors; length of visits to certain pages; page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs); methods used to browse away from the page; and any phone number used to call our customer service number.  This is for our legitimate interests in giving you content which is bespoke to you and making sure that our website runs smoothly. 
    • Third party links: our site 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 notices and policies. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy or transparency notice of every website you visit.
  • Other uses:  

    • Regardless of the relationship we have with you, we may need to use your personal information for legal reasons such as fraud prevention and to check that you are complying with our terms and conditions and to enforce our legal rights.  
    • Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.
    •  We may contact you about our products and services by email, telephone, post or by text message but we will only do this where we are allowed to under data protection law.  If you tell us that you do not want to be contacted for any of these purposes then we will of course respect that.  Sometimes we will need your consent before contacting you for these reasons.  If you give us your consent then you have a right to withdraw that consent at any time.  Any use of your personal information before you withdraw consent remains valid. 


Sharing your information

We may share your information with third parties as follows:

  • we will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so;  
  • with our employees, Educational Agents, School representatives or service providers to deal with any accounts or to deliver specific services to you;  
  • if you are an Educational Agent, we will share your information with the referees you have provided for the purposes of your application;  
  • any colleagues at your school/company that are provided with login details to access/update your school/company online profile on the BBSN portal;  
  • as mentioned above, we will share information with attendees of the BBSW. This includes Schools/Educational Agents/companies/exhibitors that book/register to attend the Workshop.  Details will be shared with other Workshop delegates via the event dashboard and the EASy (the electronic appointment system) to enable delegates to arrange appointments with each other. Delegate lists will also be circulated to participants and can be dowloaded from the event dashboard which is only available to participating companies and schools; 
  • in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets, subject to their entering into appropriate confidentiality undertakings;  
  • if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of BBSN, our customers, or others. This includes, but is not limited to, exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection, credit risk reduction and dispute policies;  
  • we may share your personal data with third party service providers who act on our behalf such as IT services providers. This notice also covers third party service providers we may engage with.


Where will we store your personal information?  

Any personal information that you submit to us will be held on secure servers.  

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will inform you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

How long will we use your personal information for?

We only retain your personal information 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.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. 

If you have a contract with us then we will typically keep information for six or twelve years after the contract is finished. 

Your rights in relation to our processing of your personal information

You have the right to:

  • be informed about what we are doing with your personal information - we do this by providing you with this privacy notice;  
  • object to the processing of your personal information;  
  • request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it;  
  • request correction of the personal data that we hold about you if it is incorrect;  
  • ask us to delete the information that we hold about you where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it;  
  • ask us to stop processing personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to our processing on this ground;  
  • ask us to restrict how we use your personal information for a period of time if you claim that it is inaccurate and we want to verify the position, or if our processing is unlawful but you do not want us to erase your personal information, or for some other limited circumstances; and  
  • ask us to send another organisation information that you have provided to us in a format that can be read by computer.


If you want to exercise any of your rights, please contact us. 

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights).

If you ask us to restrict our use of your personal information or delete it, we will not be able to provide you with our products or services.

If you consider that we have not acted properly when using your personal information you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk

British Boarding Schools' Network Ltd incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 05728330 whose registered office is at MFW Accountants, Bank Chambers, 61 High Street, Cranbrook, Kent TN17 3EG, UK. (Please note this is not our office address. Please contact us via the link below if you are sending materials to our office).