Privacy Policy

Your right to privacy

Your right to privacy is important to us. We take the security of your information seriously and have policies and processes in place to ensure that your data is safe. This notice describes how we collect information, use it, and protect it.

Who we are

Springpod is a trading name of The Education Hub Group Limited, registered in England and Wales under company number 10150500. Our address is Arch 6, Maltings Place, 169 Tower Bridge Road, London. SE1 3LJ and our website is www.springpod.com.

To ensure the best possible consideration is given to protecting your data, we subscribe to expert support from a specialist consultancy called Business Risk and Compliance Experts Ltd who supply us with our dedicated Data Protection Officer, Kieran Morgan-McGeehan. If you have any queries or concerns, you can contact him by telephone at 0203 637 8665 or by email at dpo@springpod.com.

1. How we follow data protection regulations

We are committed to the ethical use and protection of personal information. We are legally obliged to use your information in line with all laws concerning personal information security. We have several policies and processes to ensure that we protect your personal information as well as we can.

We are a UK Company, so while we are aware of our obligations on a global scale, this notice outlines our approach to protecting your personal information in the UK, and has been put together in compliance with all applicable UK data protection legislation and guidance, including but not limited to; the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Privacy in electronic Communications Regulation (PECR), the Data Protection Act 2018, and the Data Protection, Charges and Information Act 2018.

As a company that uses personal information, we have registered with the UK Information Commissioners Office ("ICO"), and our registration number is ZA195343. The ICO is the independent regulator of data protection in the UK.

2. Information we hold about you and how we use it

We collect personal information about you when you enquire about or make use of our services. The lawful reasons that we process information varies depending on the purpose, but, depending on the use, we will only ever process your data if:

You have given us your consent, which you can remove at any time.
We have a contractual obligation.
We have a legal obligation.
We have a vital interest.
We need it to perform a public task.
We have a legitimate interest.

In general, we may use your information to:

Communicate with you.
Keep our records up to date.
Process payments.
Ensure the safety of users.
For research and statistical purposes.
To fulfil our legal and regulatory obligations.
Process job applications.
Gain feedback from you.
Prevent crime and meet our legal obligations.
Prudentially manage our business using models and forecasts.
Keep you informed of products or services that may be of interest to you where you have given us consent for us to do this.

We use different personal information for other purposes, depending on the type of services you use. For all users of our services, the information we collect, and hold may include:

Basic information, such as your name, date of birth, address, telephone number and email address so that we can stay connected and manage your service. We may also use this information to verify your identity.
Information we need to process payments for you, for example, bank and credit or debit card details.
Records of contact with you, such as system notes, emails, and letters.
Your Internet Protocol (IP) address, together with cookies and other information about how you use our website, your browser, operating system, any plug-ins, and your time zone. We use this information to optimise our website.

For students, the information we collect, and hold may also include:

Information about you, such as your gender, date of birth, year group, expected leaving year group, application details, qualifications, and information about your interests and skills to help employers judge whether you are well suited to the position or work experience.
Some more sensitive detail about you, such as your ethnicity, information about any disabilities, special needs or learning difficulties, whether you receive free school meals, details about your parents, whether you have completed a DofE award and details about your career, if applicable. This helps schools understand your next steps and enables them to plan.
Information about the services that you use, together with other related information, including data about your progress after using our services, such as what salary you achieve or details about any further education to which you move. This helps schools understand what happens to their students when they leave school,and it helps them meet their obligations to supply data to Ofsted and the Government.
Interests and usage data, including which opportunities, companies, and careers you view and interact with to personalise the suggested careers and opportunities you see.
This information is also visible to all staff at your school to help them give you personalised careers advice.

For school and college employees, the information we collect, and hold may also include:

Personal information that you provide us with about students, including name, email address, year group, expected leaving year group, gender, Unique Learner Number and destination data,including destination, level, salary, company/university,and role/course. This information will be visible to all staff at your school,together with destination data,to help understand where groups of students go when they leave and meet the school’s obligations with supplying data to Ofsted and the Government.

For alumni, the information we collect, and hold may also include:

The year you left your school, the year group you left in, and information about what you currently do to supply a support network for current students.
Some sensitive personal information, including ethnicity and disability status to help schools understand where groups of students go when they leave school and help them set targets to aid under performing groups. We never show your sensitive personal information to employers.
A link to your LinkedIn account and “About Me”section.
Details of any help you are happy to offer including work experience, mentoring, attending careers events, and giving talks.
Your interests and skills. This information is visible to all staff members at your school.
All data related to any earlier student account if your account transfers to an alumnus account, just in case your school needs to convert it back to a student account and to help them maintain records.

For company representatives, the information we collect, and hold may also include:

Details of any help you are happy to offer schools, such as mentoring, attending careers events,and talking about careers.
Information about your role, including job title, how long you have been in the position and answers to questions about the nature of the role, what you do day-to-day and how you go the job. This information will be visible to your organisation’s administrator and every student, alumnus and school staff member on Springpod, once the administrator approves your profile for your organisation.
You can hide your profile at any time from your account, which will mean students, school staff and alumni cannot see it, but your organisation’s administrator will still be able to.

Letting us know about your sensitive data is optional, and you can always select “don’t want to say” without any adverse effects on your experience of using the platform

3. How we get your personal information

We collect data through various methods, including our website, correspondence between us by phone, email, live chat, or social media. This could include information you provide when you register to use our site, subscribe to our services, take part in discussion boards or other social media, enter a competition, promotion, or survey, and when you report a problem with our site.

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you. We will only collect, use, hold or disclose personal data where we have a lawful basis for doing so. This means the information needed to provide you with a product or service, to satisfy legal or regulatory requirements, or where we have your consent. We also receive some personal information, from schools, colleges, universities, and employers that use our services, but only ever under the protection of a written agreement.

4. How long we keep your information

We will keep your personal information only for as long as necessary in line with regulatory and legal requirements. We will either anonymise it or destroy it securely when we do not need it anymore.

We have a retention schedule that we use to manage the length of time we keep personal data,and if you would like to know any specific timescales listed on it, please contact us using the contact details on this form.

5. How we protect your information

The security of your information is important to us. We protect your information by maintaining physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards concerning collecting, storing, and disclosing personal data to prevent unauthorised access, accidental loss, disclosure, or destruction.

No data transmission over the internet can be entirely secure, and therefore we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information and/or use of our sites. However, we use our reasonable endeavours to protect the security of your personal information from unauthorised access.

6. Where we process your information

Your data is stored securely on servers located within the UK, EU and in cloud-based applications.

To deliver some aspects of our service, we may transfer personal data we have collected from you to countries outside the United Kingdom, and in some cases, outside Europe. Where this is the case, we will not transfer your information unless it is unavoidable to allow us to deliver our products and services. If we do, we take care to ensure the same privacy and security level as the UK.

7. How we share your information

From time to time we may send information to, receive information from, or exchange your personal information with:

Partners or agents who support us to deliver our products and services to you, or that we refer you to, or that refer you to us.
Companies who perform essential services for us.
Third-party organisations that conduct research, analysis, and marketing activities on our behalf.
Regulators, courts, or other public authorities.
The emergency services in the case of an accident or emergency.
Law enforcement agencies for the prevention of crime.
Appropriate authorities to ensure safety, especially considering safeguarding concerns.

We utilise some third-party companies to improve our website and platform’s experience, and some of your data might be passed to these providers. Some of these key suppliers include:

Segment to integrate our marketing, automation and analytics activities and ensure data integrity between all areas. You can view their privacy notice at www.segment.com/docs/legal/privacy.
Autopilot to manage our transactional and marketing emails. You can view their privacy notice at www.autopilothq.com/privacypolicy.
Typeform to create and use data capture forms on our marketing website and for application forms. You can view their privacy notice at www.admin.typeform.com/to/dwk6gt.
Google Analytics to track users on our website and capture the pages visited, duration of stay, user device and more. We use this information to optimise your experience of our site and identify any problems. You can view their privacy notice at www.privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance.
Hubspot to manage our marketing database.You can view their privacy notice at www.legal.hubspot.com/privacy-policy.
Heysummit to operate some of our online events, including but not limited to Learn Lounge, Online Open Days and Online Insight Days. You can view their privacy notice at www.heysummit.com/legal/privacy.
Onesignal to send you information via push notifications. You can view their privacy notice at www.onesignal.com/privacy_policy.
Facebook –for tracking pixels to serve relevant adverts to you on the Facebook platform. You can view their privacy notice at www.facebook.com/privacy.
Google for tracking pixels to serve relevant adverts to you on the Facebook platform.You can view their privacy notice at www.google.co.uk/privacy.
Bigmarker to deliver some of our webinars and live online events. You can view their privacy notice at www.bigmarker.com/privacy.

We may share student information with schools and employers so that everyone can work together and give the student better and more targeted careers advice and build a better understanding of how well-suited opportunities may be for the students.

We will only share or exchange data with third parties under the protection of a written agreement and the ability to oversee their activities unless the information is needed for legal or regulatory reasons.

We may receive information about you if you use any other websites we operate or the other services we provide. In this case,we will have informed you when we collected that data that it may be shared internally and combined with data collected on this site. We are also working closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers). We may receive information about you from them.

Our website may have links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers, and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their privacy notices and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you send any personal data to these websites.

We may share your information with organisations based outside the UK and European Union. Where this is the case, we will only do so if the organisation follows local data protection regulations,and it is done under the protection of a written agreement.

If a third party delivers all or part of the service requested by you, whilst the information you provide will be disclosed to them, it will only be used to administer the service provided and maintain management information for business analysis. Where we have relationships with other organisations that process your information on our behalf, we always ensure they have high data security standards. We will not allow these organisations to use your personal information for unauthorised purposes.

If the business is reorganised or sold, we may transfer any personal information we hold to that organisation.

8. How you can manage the information we hold and how we use it

Data protection regulations mean you have rights in respect of the information we hold about you:

Your right to transparency
You have the right to know what information is being processed about you and why.
Your right to manage consents
You have the right to give your consent to us using your data for any activities we do not have another lawful basis to carry out, for example, sending you certain direct marketing communications. You can withdraw consent at any time.
Your right to access your data
You have the right to request access to the information we hold about you; this is called a Data Subject Access Request.
Your right to know about sharing
You have the right to know who your data is shared with and why.
Your right to rectification
You have the right to have your details updated if they are inaccurate and for information not needed for lawful reasons to be deleted. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to be forgotten
You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing
You have the right to object to the processing of your data in certain circumstances.In some circumstances, your information may be transferred to a secondary database in case you want to reactivate your account in the future,and it will be kept and securely destroyed in line with our Data Retention Policy.
Your right to restrict processing
You have the right to have automated processing and profiling restricted. Profiling may be used to analyse or predict economic situations, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location, or movements. Without it, you may find that the suggestions and guidance you receive from us do not reflect your circumstances very accurately.
Your right to data portability
You have the right to ask us to send information that we process by automated means to you or another nominated data controller in a commonly used electronically readable format.

You do not have to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we will respond to you within one month. If you wish to action any of the above, please contact us by:

Emailing dpo@springpod.com
Writing to Springpod, Unit 5 Lloyd’s Wharf, Mill Street, London, SE1 2BD.
Telephoning us on 0203 637 8665

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.You can contact them in writing to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire. SK9 5AF or call their helpline on 0303 123 1113.

9. Cookies

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us provide you with the best experience when you browse our website and improve our site.

For detailed information on the cookies that we use and why we use them, you can read our Cookie Policy, which is availablehere.

10. Changes to this policy

We regularly review this policy. Any changes that we may make in the future will be made availablehere, so you can always view the most recent version there.

This Privacy notice is the February 2021 version.