This is BCTG’s privacy notice. It explains our approach to collecting and using personal information (any information which relates to or identifies an individual) about people we interact with. It also supplements more specific information you may have been given (a privacy notice or statement) when engaging with a service, facility, event or initiative run by BCTG. For example, you may have followed a link here because you signed up to attend an event aimed at prospective students or members of the public. The information below is the same for all of BCTG’s activities where personal information is collected, so we thought it would be helpful to have it in one place that you can refer to and revisit whenever you need.

Who are we?

We are BCTG Limited, the single largest independent private consortia of Training Providers within the West Midlands. We provide education and training across a wide range of programmes and learner needs, from programmes for 16-19 NEET, Adult employability courses, Advanced Learner Loans as well as our core Apprenticeship programmes.

Why are we processing your personal information?

You may have already been told about the specific purposes for which we are processing your personal information, as well as the ‘legal’ or ‘lawful’ basis for that processing (the justification under current data protection legislation).

More about ‘legal’/’lawful’ basis:

We can only process (collect, use, store etc) your personal information if one of the following applies:  

• We need your personal information to provide a service as part of a contract (for example, to enable you/us to fulfil your/our obligations under an education contract or employment contract). Note that in English law ‘contracts’ are not limited to those in writing, so this justification may also cover less formal agreements between you and BCTG.
• We need your personal information to perform our official functions as a government funded training provider, and those functions are in the public interest. This justification also covers situations where we need to share information with other organisations in order for them to carry out their official functions (for example, audit and compliance).
• We need your personal information to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, providing data about our staff and learners to the Education & Skills Funding Agency and Department for Education is a legal requirement for training providers under the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.
• We need your personal information for a legitimate interest of the organisation or a third party, provided that interest is not overridden by your interests and rights (for example, we may need to process your information to comply with the Ofsted Common Inspection Framework).
• We need your personal information to protect somebody’s life (a vital interest).
• You provide consent for us to process your personal information, based on clear and specific information, with a genuine choice (without any pressure), and the ability to change your mind at any time.

How do we use your personal information?

We will generally use your personal information to provide you with the services, products or information you have requested from us. We may need to share your information with our service providers for these purposes, but we will ensure that appropriate contracts with these parties are in place and they only process your information in accordance with our instructions and data protection legislation. If we need to transfer any information to a country not recognised as providing equivalent protection, we will use additional safeguards approved by UK or EU regulators.  

What are your rights?

By law, you have certain rights over your personal information:

• To receive a copy of your information
• To ask us to correct any errors
• To delete it once we no longer need it
• To ask us to stop using your information in a certain way
• To ask for certain information in a portable, electronic format
• To object to certain uses of your information (for example, marketing and automatic profiling or decision making)

To make a request for any of the above, please contact enquiries@bctg.org.uk

Do we carry out marketing? 

If you register an interest with BCTG or through one of our subcontractors, you may be asked to opt-in to receive marketing communications. This is done at the point where your personal information is first collected. Within any marketing communications, you will be provided with a simple and transparent way to unsubscribe. Any changes you request to how your personal information is processed for the purposes of marketing and/or the provision of service updates will be acted on promptly.

Do we use 'cookies'?

Cookies are text files, which identify a user's computer to our servers. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used.

Our website uses cookies for collecting user information which may include IP address, operating system and browser information. We use persistent cookies to track returning visitors. They expire after 12 months and enable us to compare website traffic from month to month.

Information on controlling or rejecting cookies is available from several websites, such as http://www.aboutcookies.org. Most browsers allow you to refuse cookies – see the help section of your browser’s toolbar for further information.

How long do we keep your information for?

Unless stated otherwise in a privacy notice, we will keep your information based on the periods or criteria specified in BCTG’s Document Retention Policy.

Will changes be made to this privacy notice?

We keep our privacy notice under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This privacy notice was last updated on 23 May 2018.

How can you contact us or make a complaint to the regulator?

To contact us about our privacy notice or information we hold about you, please write:

• by email – enquiries@bctg.org.uk
• or by post – BCTG Limited, European Business Park, Taylors Lane, Oldbury, B69 2BN

If you don’t feel we have dealt with your request appropriately, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.