Privacy

NET was originally established in 1997 as the Government-licensed National Training Organisation (NTO) in accordance with the wishes of the industry. It carried out this role until NTOs were superceded by Sector Skills Councils in 2002 but retained its core remit of owning, managing and developing the industry’s assessment of occupational competence, the AM2, which it retains today.

NET maintains the Assessments of Occupational Competence (AOC) it owns and licences on the industry’s behalf through its relationship with more than 40 licensed assessment centres across the UK, all of whom adhere to strict criteria and are subject to regular inspections by NET as part of its quality assurance process.

As a registered UK charity, any surplus NET generates is re-invested in support of its charitable objects. NET is proud to be a premier sponsor of SkillElectric, the industry’s skills competition and a founding partner of The Electrotechnical Skills Partnership (TESP).

The law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons or conditions for which an organisation may collect and process your personal data. When collecting your personal data, we will always make clear to you, which data is necessary for each purpose we have told you about. Most commonly, we will process your data on the following lawful grounds:

Consent & Implied Consent

In specific situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent.

This may include when you agree to receive an email about our assessment services, or a competition we are organising with WorldSkills. When you make an enquiry online, for example, we may assume your implied consent to enable us to send the information you have requested. This is a quick and easy way for you to indicate your agreement. You can easily stop these communications at any time by unsubscribing or Opting-out.

If you have not engaged with us for more than five years, you may be flagged as an inactive individual and we will contact you to ask whether you want us to keep your data or not. Unless you reply to say ‘yes’, we will delete or anonymise your personal data.

NET may have some Contractual obligations

In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations. If a law says we must process your information we have no alternative. This might be for example if you have entered a competition at any time.

Other Legal compliance

If the law requires it, we may need to collect and process your data. This might be when a criminal act is detected or matters relating to taxation for example. Again, we have no option but to comply with the law.

Legitimate interest

In certain circumstances, we require your data to pursue the NET legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected when we pursue our aims and objectives as an organisation. When we process data in this way we’ll make sure there isn’t a chance of any materially impact on your rights, freedom or interests, we promise.

NET has a legitimate interest in maintaining a record of its activities, the people with whom it has interacted, its organisational history and the development of future products and services it may provide to candidates.

Vital use of data

We may also use your data, typically in an emergency, where this is necessary to protect your vital interests or someone else’s vital interests. In a small number of cases where other lawful bases do not apply, we will process your data on this basis and in your best interest.

Special category data – The most sensitive of all information

NET doesn’t set out to collect sensitive information about you. We have no need for this information. However, we are mindful that information of the type shown below may be available to us from time to time. For example, if the NET is made aware of a health condition for which it is bound to make special arrangements to accommodate. We only process this information for that purpose and never use it for any other reason.

“Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal data require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal data. We aim to collect and process special category data as little as possible. NET will document all incidents of its processing of special category data in its Information Asset Register. We have carefully measured the risk associated with this by conducting an impact assessment.

The Special Categories of personal data consist of data revealing:

• racial or ethnic origin;
• political opinions;
• religious or philosophical beliefs;
• trade union membership.

They also consist of the processing of:

• genetic data;
• biometric data (e.g. fingerprints) for the purpose of uniquely identifying someone;
• data concerning health;
• data concerning someone’s sex life or sexual orientation.

We may process special categories of personal data in the following circumstances:

• With your explicit written consent; or
• Where it is necessary in the substantial public interest, and further conditions are met;
• Where the processing is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, or for scientific or historical research purposes, or statistical purposes, subject to further safeguards for your fundamental rights and interests specified in law;
• Where there is a legal obligation.

Further legal controls apply to data relating to criminal convictions and allegations of criminal activity. We may process such data on the same grounds as those identified for “special categories” referred to above.

NET collects personal data in order to manage its business and deliver its service to its candidates. The data collected is most likely in electronic format but can also be in paper form.

When you visit our website, we may collect your IP Address, page visited, web browser, any search criteria entered, previous web page visited and other technical information. This information is used solely for web server monitoring and to deliver the best visitor experience. We may use technology such as cookies to help us deliver relevant and interesting content in our communications in the future. We may profile you to find out more about you but in the least most intrusive way. We may use the information we collect to display the most interesting content to you on our website we may use data we hold about your previous visits.

We may also collect your social media username if you interact with us through those channels in order to help us respond to your comments, questions and feedback. The data privacy law allows this as part of our legitimate interest in understanding our audience.

For your security, we use all appropriate organisational and technical security controls to safeguard your data.

When we interact with you we may also collect notes from our conversations with you, and details of any complaints or comments you make. We may record your age or identity where the law requires this.

We will only ask for and use your personal data collected for the purpose stated at the point at which it is collected. If we believe your data is no longer needed for this purpose, we will not process your data further.

You have eight important rights under the data protection act 2018, here’s a brief explanation of each.

Right to Object

You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information if we used it for the purpose of direct marketing. But remember in some cases we are bound by law to process your data. If you have given consent for NET to collect and process your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and to withdraw that consent. We’ll let you know how every time to communicate with you.

Right to challenge automated decisions

You have the right to challenge automated decisions we make about you. You may ask for these to be assessed by a member of the NET team. Remember, if the client or the product or brand we are working with is making a decision about you, you may need to refer to them.

Right to a copy of your information and a chance to correct inaccuracies

You have the right to request a copy of any information about you that NET may hold at any time to check whether it is accurate. To ask for that information, please contact NET using the details below. To protect the confidentiality of your information and the interests of NET, we will ask you to verify your identity before proceeding with any request for information. If you have authorised a third party to submit a request on your behalf, we will ask them to prove they have your permission to request such information.

Right to be Forgotten

You have the right to ask us to Forget you from our records. We will always uphold this right unless there is a legal obligation upon us to keep your data. This might be a contractual obligation for example.

Right to be informed

You have a right to be informed, to know what we are doing with your data and why. We promise to publish privacy notices wherever they may be required to clearly explain our reasons.

Right to Restriction

You have the right to ask us to stop processing your data for a number of different reasons. For example, it might be because you think the data we hold about you is incorrect. Or maybe you think we are doing something wrong, please contact us for further details.

Your right of portability

If we hold information about you and you want us to ‘port’ it or send it to another company that does similar work to us or provides a similar service, you can ask us to do that. This service will be free of charge and we will endeavour to provide this service without undue delay.

Other important information

Sometimes we are required to inform you about certain changes, including updates to this Privacy Notice and where we have a legal obligation such as a duty of care or safeguarding. These administrative messages will not include any marketing content and do not require prior consent when sent by email. This ensures that we are compliant with our legal obligations.

We may use your data to send you a survey and feedback requests to help improve the way we communicate. These messages will not include any marketing and do not require prior consent when sent by email. We have a legitimate interest to do so as this helps improve our services and make them more relevant to you. Of course, you are free to opt out of receiving any of these communications should you wish.

Whenever we collect or process your personal data, we will only keep it for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. The Information Asset Register includes retention periods and this Register will indicate the types of data concerned and clearly, indicate the period it will be retained. Annual reviews will ensure that retention schedules are followed. At the end of the retention period, your data will either be deleted completely, put beyond use or anonymised. In some cases, personal data will be kept in perpetuity.

Occasionally we will need to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside the European Economic Area (EEA). The EEA includes all EU Member countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

We may transfer personal data that we collect from you to third-party data processors in countries that are outside the EEA, such as the USA. For example, this might be required when we store data in a Cloud Service. If we do this, we have procedures in place to ensure your data receives the same protection as if it were being processed inside the EEA, and we will treat the information under the guiding principles of this Privacy Notice.

You can stop NET from processing your data by either:

• clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any email communication that we send you. We will then stop any further emails and will ‘forget’ your information in line with your rights unless we have a legal obligation to keep it; or
• by contacting us using the information below.

Remember, some administrative communications cannot be stopped.

If you feel that your data has been handled incorrectly, or you are unhappy with the way we have dealt with your query regarding the way we use your personal data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) which regulates the use of information in the UK.

You can call them on 0303 123 1113 or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns

If you are based outside the UK you have the right to complain to the relevant data protection supervisory authority in your country.

If you would like to discuss any aspect of this policy or the way NET processes your information please contact;

Mark Burnett, The Data Protection Officer;

By Post – NET (National Electrotechnical Training), CAN Mezzanine, 49-51 East Road, London N1 6AH
By Email – mark@hope-may.com
By Telephone – 07817 779006