Data Policy

Data Controller
Any personal information that you provide on this website is controlled by the MLA West Midlands ("MLAWM").

Your personal information
Occasionally you will be asked to submit personal information about yourself (e.g. name, address and email address) in order to receive or use services on our websites. Such services include events, newsletters, publications, information and advice.

By entering your details in the fields requested and pressing 'Submit', you are consenting to the processing of your information by MLAWM and its agents in accordance with this Data Policy. You may also provide personal information to us when you contact us by email, telephone or letter. Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat that information in accordance with this policy. Our services are designed to give you the information that you have requested. MLAWM will, at all times, act in accordance with current legislation and aim to meet current Internet best practice.

Use and storage of your personal information

When you supply any personal information to EST we have legal obligations towards you in the way we deal with that information. We must collect the information fairly, that is, we must explain how we will use it. This Data Policy explains how we will use your personal information.

We will use personal information provided by you or gathered by EST for the following purposes:

• To process and respond to requests, enquiries and complaints received from you;
• To provide services requested by you;
  § To communicate with you about services provided to you;
• To update our records;
• To analyse trends and profiles;
• For audit purposes;
• To carry out customer satisfaction research;
• To prevent or detect fraud;
• To recommend products and services that we believe will be of interest to you;
• To enable third parties to carry out any of the purposes above on our behalf.

If you are notified that your personal information may be used to allow MLAWM  to contact you for 'service administration purposes', this means that MLAWM may contact you for a number of purposes related to the service you have signed up for. For example, we may wish to provide you with password reminders or notify you that the particular service has been suspended or changed.

We will not contact you for promotional purposes unless you specifically agree to be contacted for such purposes at the time you submit your information on the site, or at a later time if you sign up specifically to receive such promotional information.

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out above and we will remove it when the purposes have been met, unless you opt-in for future communications with us.

Where you have opted-in to future communications, we will, on each subsequent communication, offer you an easily executable 'opt-out' option, which will allow you to remove yourself from any future mailings.

Sharing of your personal information

MLAWM may share your personal information with third parties in the following ways:

• We sometimes use agents and service providers to process personal information on our behalf. For example, we use third parties to [carry out inspections, to send postal mail, to carry out credit checks and to maintain our IT systems]. Where we use agents and service providers to process your personal information, we will ensure that they have adequate security measures in place and are governed by our privacy policies in respect to the use of your personal information.
• We share information with government departments and government bodies that provide funding to MLAWM or have an interest in MLAWM's activities. Information is passed to government departments and government bodies for analysis purposes.
• We will release your personal information when we are required to do so by law.
• We will release your personal information to others when you have given your consent to that release.
• MLAWM may occasionally present a promotion that is sponsored by a third-party company. To qualify for entry, we may ask you to provide personal information. If we plan to share that information with the sponsor(s) we will make this clear at the point of collection of your information.

In some circumstances we may transfer your personal information to countries outside of the European Economic Area, where data protection safeguards are not as high as they are in the UK. If this occurs we will ensure that adequate procedures are put into place to protect your personal information.

Access to your personal information
You have the right to request a copy of the personal information MLAWM holds about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. We will ask for confirmation of identity before we disclose any personal information and may charge a £10 administration fee to process the request. Please address requests to the Data Protection Officer, MLA West Midlands, Floor 2, Grosvenor House, 14 Bennetts Hill, Birmingham B2 5RS