Creative Sponge Limited respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you of the personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us. It will also inform you of how we use your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Important Information and who we are

Creative Sponge Limited is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice.

Alex Tosh is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights. You can contact Alex:

• by email: alex@creativesponge.co.uk.
• by post: Fuel Studios, Pottergate, Norwich NR2 1DX

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

The data we collect about 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 may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together follows:

• Identity Data includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier, title.
• Contact Data includes address, billing address, email address and telephone numbers.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes the personal data you provide when you:

• apply for our services; or
• complete a customer survey or give us some feedback.

Third parties. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties who we work with as set out below:

• Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from providers of payment services where you carry out a transaction on our website. We will not collect or store payment card information when you make a payment via our website.
• Identity and Contact Data from local authorities who ask us to carry out work for them.

How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Contractual obligations: where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Legal or regulatory obligation: where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Purpose/Activity	Type of data	Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To register you as a new customer	(a) Identity (b) Contact	Performance of a contract with you
To process and deliver the services requested including: (a) Manage payments, fees and charges (b) Collect and recover money owed to us	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial (d) Transaction	(a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us)
To manage our relationship with you which will include: (a) Responding to your queries and complaints (b) Notifying you about changes to our terms (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile	(a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to provide you with the best service and how we can improve our service based on your experience)
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical	(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise) (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about our services that may be of interest to you	(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business)

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or used our services and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Opting out

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to us contacting you to ask for feedback or asking you to complete a customer satisfaction survey, as we are required to do this to comply with our regulatory obligations.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to help us analyse web traffic and allow us to provide you with a better website by giving us information to enable us to monitor how our pages are navigated. Cookies simply allow our website to retrieve information in order to improve your access to our website.

If you wish to block non essential cookies you can do so by clicking the button below.

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Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data 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 you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data 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 data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with trusted third parties based in the UK, examples of the kind of third parties we work with are:

IT companies who support our website and other business systems

Operational companies and contractors who work in conjunction with us to carry out work on your behalf, e.g. electrical contractors.

Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide legal, banking, insurance and accounting services.

HM Revenue & Customs, our regulators and other authorities who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.

Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data 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 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 seven years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.

In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. (See the Glossary at paragraph 10 below for further information)

Request access to your personal data.

Request correction of your personal data.

Request erasure of your personal data.

Object to processing of your personal data.

Request restriction of processing your personal data.

Request transfer of your personal data.

Right to withdraw consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.