Privacy Policy 

 

This Privacy Policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you or you provide to us, will be processed by us.  Please read the following information carefully. 

Women’s Enterprise Scotland (CIC) is a not for profit organisation, constituted as a Community Interest Company trading as Women’s Enterprise Scotland (WES) and www.womensbusinesscentre.com (“Women’s Enterprise Scotland”, “Women’s Business Centre”, “WES”, “WBC”, “we”, “us” or “our”) are committed to protecting the privacy of our clients, potential clients and users of our website. We want to provide a safe and secure user experience. We will ensure that the information you submit to us or which we collect, via various channels (including our website, through written correspondence including e-mail) is only used for the purposes set out in this policy. 

Through this Privacy Policy we aim to inform you about the types of personal data we collect from users, the purposes for which we use the data and the ways in which the data is handled. We also aim to satisfy the obligation of transparency under the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“GDPR”), Data Protection Act 2018 and other relevant laws. 

For the purpose of this Privacy Policy the data controller of personal data is Women’s Enterprise Scotland and is registered with the Information Commissioner as a data controller with registration number ZA746182 

Our contact details are set out in the Contact Us section at the end of this Privacy Policy. 

  

 

Right to Object 

You have a legal right to object at any time to 

 

• the use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes; and 

 

• the processing of your personal information which is based on our legitimate interests, unless there are compelling legitimate ground for our continued processing. 

 

 

Online Privacy Practices 

The following websites www.womensbusinesscentre.com and www.wescotland.co.uk, (“the Sites”) are operated by Women’s Enterprise Scotland (CIC) a company registered in Scotland, company registration number SC406892, whose registered office is located at 2 Atlantic Square, 31 York Street, Glasgow G2 8AS . 

We are keen to strike a fair balance between your personal privacy and ensuring that you obtain full value from the services (“the Services”) that we may provide to you. 

 

The Information we collect about you 

We may ask for your consent to use your contact details for future marketing purposes. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. 

 

• When users sign up to the mailing list we ask them for: 

• Name: first name and last name 

• Email address 

• Current Business stage: (e.g. Pre-start / Just curious, Just launched, Established business) 

• If a User Account is created on the website we will require a Username and password. 

• Details of your visits to our websites (including, but not limited to, traffic data and location data) whether this is required for our own purposes or otherwise, and the resources that you access. 

• In addition through Google Analytics we will look at aggregated data across a range of insights such as where they have come from, how many users have met certain determined ‘objectives’, how many users have downloaded certain content, how many users return, how many users filter content according to certain criteria (finance, support, inspiration etc) or stage of business (pre-start, launching etc) 

• We also have a contact form asking for name, email and a free-type area for a message. 

• If you contact us, we may keep a record of your email or other correspondence. 

 

The Legal Basis for Processing your Personal Information 

Under GDPR, the main grounds that we reply upon in order to process personal information of our users are the following: 

(a) Necessary for entering into, or performing, a contract – in order to perform obligations that we undertake in providing a service to you, or in order to take steps at your request to enter into a contract with us, it will be necessary for us to process your personal data; 

(b) Necessary for compliance with a legal obligation – we are subject to certain legal requirements which may require us to process your personal data. We may also be obliged by law to disclose your personal data to a government agency, regulatory body or law enforcement agency; 

(c) Necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests – either we, or a third party, will need to process your personal data for the purposes of our (or a third party’s) legitimate interests, provided we have established that those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms, including your right to have your personal data protected. Our legitimate interests include responding to requests and enquiries from you or a third party, optimising our website and customer experience, informing you about our products and services and ensuring that our operations are conducted in an appropriate and efficient manner; 

(d) Consent – in some circumstances, we may ask for your consent to process your personal data in a particular way. 

 

How long we will hold your information 

We will retain your personal information for the time necessary to provide the Services we perform for you, or stated by the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy. 

In particular, we will store certain categories of your personal information for the following periods of time: 

 

 

Category of Personal Data and Storage time period 

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Marketing data on contacts - 5 years 

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User login and account information to provide access to our services - After 5 years of account inactivity 

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Ambassador contact data - 2 years after cessation of relationship 

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Website and analytics data - 2 years 

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How we share your Personal Information 

We may disclose your personal information to relevant third parties who will supply services you requested, to Government bodies and other authorities to whom we are legally obliged to pass your data and to relevant third parties.  

 

Trusted Third Parties 

We will only share your personal information with trusted third parties where we have retained them to provide services that you have requested or for our legitimate business purposes, such as IT, website or professional support services. 

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New Business Owners 

If we or our organisation merges with or is acquired by another entity, we will share your personal information with the new owners of the entity and their advisors. If this happens, we will notify you of such an event. 

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Transfer of Information outside the EEA 

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, we are required to tell you if we transfer or intend to transfer information which we hold on you to countries outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). We currently do not transfer such information outside the EEA. 

 

Visitors to our website 

When someone visits www.womensbusinesscentre.com we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to 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. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. 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 and tracking technology 

We use cookies (defined below) for collecting user information from the Sites. Cookies are messages given to a web browser by a web server. The message is then stored by the browser in a text file called cookie.txt. Each time the browser requests a page from the server, this message is sent back. A cookie’s main objective is to identify users and personalise their visit by customising web pages for them, for example by welcoming them by name next time they visit the same site. 

We use cookies and tracking to understand how users use and behave on the Site. 

Other websites which provide information about cookies and allow you to manage your privacy can be found at: 

www.aboutads.info 

optout.networkadvertising.org for US-based users 

www.youronlinechoices.eu for users in the EU 

More information regarding our use of cookies can be found in on our Cookies Policy.  

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E-mail campaign 

We use a third party provider, Mailchimp, to deliver our e-mail campaigns. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies including clear gifs to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. For more information, please see www.mailchimp.com 

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Internet based transfers 

Given that the Internet is a global environment, using the Internet to collect and process personal data necessarily involves the transmission of data on an international basis. Unfortunately the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site via third party networks; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access. 

 

Links to other websites 

Our sites contain links to and from the websites of our suppliers and other third parties.  If you follow a link to any of these other websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies or for these third party websites.  This privacy notice does not cover the links within these sites linking to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. 

 

Your rights on the information we hold about you 

You have certain rights in relation to personal information we hold about you. Details of these rights and how to exercise them are set out below. We will require evidence of your identity before we are able to act on your request. 

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Right of Access 

You have the right at any time to ask us for a copy of the personal information about you that we hold. Where we have good reason, and if the GDPR permits, we can refuse your request for a copy of your personal information, or certain elements of the request. If we refuse your request or any element of it, we will provide you with our reasons for doing so. 

 

Right of Rectification 

If personal information we hold about you is not accurate, out of date or incomplete, you have a right to have the data rectified, updated or completed. You can let us know by contacting us. 

 

Right of Erasure 

In certain circumstances, you have the right to request that personal information we hold about you is erased e.g. if the information is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or processed or our processing of the information is based on your consent and there are no other legal grounds on which we may process the information. 

 

Right to object to or restrict processing 

In certain circumstances, you have the right to object to our processing of your personal information by contacting us. For example, if we are processing your information on the basis of our legitimate interests and there are no compelling legitimate grounds for our processing which override your rights and interests. You also have the right to object to use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes. 

You may also have the right to restrict our use of your personal information, such as in circumstances where you have challenged the accuracy of the information and during the period where we are verifying its accuracy. 

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Right of Data Portability 

In certain instances, you have a right to receive any personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. 

You can ask us to transmit that information to you or directly to a third party organisation. 

The above right exists only in respect of personal information that: 

 

• you have provided to us previously; and 

 

• is processed by us using automated means. 

While we are happy for such requests to be made, we are not able to guarantee technical compatibility with a third party organisation’s systems. We are also unable to comply with requests that relate to personal information of others without their consent. 

 

Consent 

To the extent that we are processing your personal information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can do this by using the details in the Contact section below. 

You can exercise any of the above rights by contacting us using any of the methods in the Contact Us section below. 

Most of the above rights are subject to limitations and exceptions. We will provide reasons if we are unable to comply with any request for the exercise of your rights. 

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Complaints 

If you are unhappy about our use of your personal information, you can contact us at privacy@womensbusinesscentre.com. You are also entitled to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office using any of the below contact methods: 

Information Commissioner’s Office 

Wycliffe House 
Water Lane 
Wilmslow 
Cheshire SK9 5AF 

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Telephone – 0303 123 1111 

Website – https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ 

If you live or work outside the UK or you have a complaint concerning our activities outside the UK, you may prefer to lodge a complaint with a different supervisory authority. 

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Changes to our Privacy Policy 

This privacy policy can be changed by WES at any time. If we change our privacy policy in the future, we will advise you of material changes or updates to our privacy policy by email. 

 

Further Information on Data Protection and Personal Privacy 

If you have any enquiries or if you would like to contact us about our processing of your personal information, including to exercise your rights as outlined above, please contact us centrally by any of the methods below. 

When you contact us, we will ask you to verify your identity. 

 

Contact Us 

Contact name – Carolyn Currie, Chief Executive 

Email – privacy@womensbusinesscentre.com 

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