Privacy Policy for London Business Forum
London Business Forum (LBF) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
This privacy notice and privacy policy describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
LBF is a "data controller". This means we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this policy.
This notice applies to current and former customers, suppliers, contractors and other third parties. This notice does not form any part of any contract to provide services.
We may update this notice at any time.
Topics:
What type of information is collected from you?
How do we collect your personal information?
How do we use your information?
How long will we keep your information for?
Who has access to your information?
Controlling information about you
Changes to this privacy notice
Who are we?
We’re London Business Forum, a company dedicated to creating a programme of fun and insightful events for business people. We are registered in England and Wales under company number 04188195.
Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to [email protected], or in writing to: London Business Forum 38 Bartholomew Close London EC1A 7HP
Alternatively, you can telephone us on 020 7600 4222.
Data Protection Principles
We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
- Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
- Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
- Accurate and kept up to date.
- Kept only for as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
What type of information is collected from you?
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 will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information about you including, but not limited to, the following:
- Your personal contact details, such as your name, address (usually your work address), telephone number and email address (usually your company email address).
- Your company and job title
- Bank information
- Website usage data (please see our Cookie Policy)
- Your purchase history
If you make a payment online, your card information is not held by us. It is collected by our third-party payment processors, Worldpay, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions.
There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection and we do not envisage that we will hold or process special categories of sensitive personal data. If we are required to process special categories of sensitive personal data then we will contact you and obtain your explicit consent for us to process your special categories of sensitive personal data.
How do we collect your personal information?
Most of the information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:
- When you register with us and create and account on our website.
- You have placed an order for products or services.
- You have booked to attend an event.
- You have subscribed to receive our email updates.
- You have contacted us directly by email or hardcopy format.
We may also receive your personal information indirectly. For example, if someone has booked for you to attend an event on your behalf.
We may also collect information via our information technology systems, e.g.
- Case management and document management systems.
- Automated monitoring of our websites and other technical systems, such as our computer networks and connections, communications systems, email and instant messaging systems.
How do we use your information?
We collect this information from you to process your order, manage your account and event bookings and to email you about other products or services that may be of interest to you.
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to, e.g.:
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
- For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
- For our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or
- You have given consent
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.The table below explains the reasons that we use and process your personal data and our reasons for doing so:
| What we use your personal data for: | Our reasons: |
| To provide our services to you | For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
| To communicate with you regarding our services, such as events, bookings and requesting feedback after an event. | For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
| Sending information about our services/events or upcoming services/events. | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
| To prevent and detect fraud against you or LBF. | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to minimise fraud that could be damaging for us and for you. |
| Ensuring business policies are adhered to, e.g. policies covering security and internet use. | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
| Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, e.g. in relation to our financial performance, client base, work type or other efficiency measures. | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
| Updating and enhancing customer records. | For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
| Your payment information so that we can take payment for our services/events. | For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. |
| Marketing and communications of our products. | For the performance of our contract with you. For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
| Your navigation through our website. | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
| Marketing our services and those of selected third parties to: existing and former clients; third parties who have previously expressed an interest in our events; third parties with whom we have had no previous dealing. | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party. |
The above table does not apply to special category personal data, which we will only process with your explicit consent.
Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds that justify our use of your personal information.
Marketing Communications
We aim to communicate with you about our events and other products in ways that you will find relevant, timely and respectful (by email, telephone, post or social media). To do this we use data that we have stored about you, such as what events you have booked onto in the past, as well as whether your organisation has a discount package with us.
We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data for promotional purposes (see above How do we use your information?). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.
We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell OR share it with other organisations outside of LBF for marketing purposes.
You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by following the opt-out links on marketing material or by contacting us by post or email at [email protected] (see How to contact us).
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
How long will we keep your information for?
We will keep your personal data after we have finished working with you. We will do so for one of the following reasons (but not limited to):
- To send you communications about products, services, offers and other things we believe may be of interest to you;
- To respond to any questions made by you;
- To respond to any complaints or claims made by you on your behalf;
- To keep records required by law.
We will not retain your data for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of data.
We will 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.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer a customer we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
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 and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including contact, identity, financial and transaction data) for legal, regulatory and tax purposes.
Information (hard copy and electronic) will be retained for at least the period specified in our Data Retention Period (see Appendix).
All information must be reviewed before destruction to determine if there are special factors that mean destruction should be delayed, e.g.:
- potential litigation
- complaints
- ongoing services and events
We will endeavour to delete hard copy and electronically held documents and information at the end of the retention period.
Data Retention Period – Appendix
| Data | Retention Period |
| Your personal information as shown at “the kind of information we hold about you” above. | 6 years or a date you notify us in writing to delete your data in accordance with this Privacy Policy, whatever comes earlier. |
| Your navigation history on our website and purchase history | 3 years or a date you (i) notify us in writing to delete your data (ii) ‘opt out’ of the marketing material or (iii) exercise your right to withdraw in accordance with this this Privacy Policy, whatever comes earlier. |
| Financial/Accounts records | 6 years |
| Complaints records | 1 year from the conclusion of the complaint |
What happens if you fail to provide personal information?
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to provide you with our service, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal information 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 we need to use your personal information 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 information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
How do we use particularly sensitive personal information?
“Special categories" of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information.
As confirmed previously, we do not envisage that we will obtain, handle or process your sensitive personal information.
Who has access to your information?
As highlighted above, we will never sell any of your data to a third party.
However, we may have to share your data with third parties to enable us to provide our services to you, such as:
- third-party service providers, such as our website host, event venues, Zoom, Document Despatch, Low&Behold, MailChimp, Constant Contact, platform.sh, Online Computing and Quickbooks;
- Third parties to get your purchases to you, such as delivery companies and warehouses;
- Professional advisers, such as our lawyers, accountants, marketing agencies and others who help us run our business;
- Law enforcement agencies and fraud prevention agencies;
- Social media websites, marketplace sellers where you choose to use their payment service to order our products.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
We may transfer your personal information outside the EU. If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.
We will never lease or sell your personal information to third parties unless we have your explicit consent or the law requires us to.
All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business. We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.
Data Security
We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information.
Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.
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. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
Your Rights
You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:
| Access | The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data (the right of access) |
| Rectification | The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data |
| To be forgotten | The right to require us to delete your personal data—in certain situations |
| Restriction of processing | The right to require us to restrict processing of your personal data—in certain circumstances, e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data |
| Data portability | The right to receive the personal data you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations |
| To object | The right to object: —at any time to your personal data being processed for direct marketing (including profiling); —in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal data, e.g. processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests. |
| Not to be subject to automated individual decision-making | The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you |
| To withdraw | In the limited circumstances where you may 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 contact [email protected]. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law. |
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us or see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.
If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:
- email, call or write to us—see below: How to contact us, and
- let us have enough information to identify you (e.g. your full name, address and client or matter reference number);
- let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill); and
- let us know what right you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.
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). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Controlling information about you
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us, then you can contact us on the details in this Policy and we will comply with your request immediately.
If you have agreed that we can use your information for marketing purposes, you can change your mind easily via one of these methods:
- Click unsubscribe at the bottom of any of our marketing emails
- Send an email to [email protected]
- Call us on 020 7600 4222
- Write to us at London Business Forum, 38 Bartholomew Close, London EC1A 7HP
When logged in, you can change your details in your Profile: http://www.londonbusinessforum.com/account/profile
Cookies and how we use them
As is common practice with almost all professional websites, this site uses cookies. Cookies are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience.
Please visit our Cookie Policy page, which describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored, however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the site’s functionality.
For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies...
Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites. This Privacy Policy only applies to our website so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.
Please note that we have no control of websites outside the londonbusinessforum.com domain. If you provide information to a website that we link to, we are not responsible for its protection and privacy, even if you access them using links from our site.
Changes to this privacy notice
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact [email protected].
How to complain
We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your information.
The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone: 0303 123 1113.
How to contact us
Please contact us by post, email or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you.
020 7600 4222 London Business Forum 38 Bartholomew Close London EC1A 7HP
Review of this policy
We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in January 2022.