Privacy notice
- I am an individual who belongs to Department for International Trade (DIT) Clients. These include UK exporters, UK or foreign importers, third party suppliers, other public sector’s organisations, private corporate investors, etc.
- I am an individual who is interested in trading or planning to open a trading enterprise.
- I am an organiser of – or attendee to - DIT trade events or roadshows.
- I am a visitor at DIT premises.
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The purpose of this document
The Department for International Trade (DIT) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your information in accordance with UK Data Protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
DIT is a “controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.
This privacy notice explains what personal data (information) we will hold about you, how we collect it, and how we will use and may share information about you during the application process. We are required to notify you of this information, under data protection legislation. Please ensure that you read this notice and any other similar or shorter notices we may provide you with from time to time when we collect or process personal information about you.
This notice is a shorter version of the full privacy notice.
What data we collect about you
We process (collect, store, and use) the following personal information about you:
- private contact information (such as name, business postal address including country and city, business e-mail address, and business phone number)
- business contact and other information (such as job title, department, name of company, size of your company, industry the company is in and information about your dealings with DIT)
Why we need your data and how we use it
We will typically collect and use this information for the following purposes.
To perform a task in the public interest
For example:
- providing you with relevant information about investing in the UK or abroad
- matching you to the right UK trade and investment opportunities
- understanding barriers to trade and investment and implement measures to overcome them
- designing trade and investment policies, and related services
- researching, developing, and improving products and services, including digital services
- managing our relationship with businesses, maintaining, and promoting contact with existing and prospective trade clients
- targeting financial support at businesses to secure trade and investment opportunities
For our legitimate interest in the exercise of our functions as a government department
For example, we may anonymise your data and make analyses that help DIT understand your trade better, or how well we are meeting your sector’s expectations. This will allow us to improve our performance, tailor services more appropriately to your needs, influence future government’s policies and strategies.
To take steps to enter - or fulfill - a contract with you
For legal and/or regulatory compliance, such as:
trade control, anti-money laundering, bribery and corruption laws, or any other applicable law or regulation
- for litigation and defence of legal claims
- Business management and execution, including:
- financial management, account management, customer service, implementation of controls, management reporting, analysis
- performing budgetary analysis, reporting budget to the Treasury
- registering you for trade events and taking your payments
- internal audits and investigations
- granting you access to our websites and prospectuses, monitoring use of the site to identify security threats
Marketing When you provide your personal information, you have the option to provide your consent for us to contact you by email or telephone for direct marketing communications. You have the right to unsubscribe at any time. For email marketing, you can do so using the ‘unsubscribe’ link included in the marketing emails. For telephone marketing, you should inform the caller that you no longer wish to be contacted.
Execution and analysis of surveys and marketing strategies
Health, safety and security
Communicating and managing our relationship with you
Where do we obtain your information from?
Information that you give us
You give us your information in many ways, including:
- by visiting our websites, interacting with our tools, using our digital services. For example
- when visiting ukbusinessinchina.com and
- creating a company profile on our websites
- populating our online forms and/or completing our surveys
- when you download our prospectus
- when you contact us about investing capital in the UK and/or buying from the UK
- in any communications you make with us via phone, email, post, websites, social media or otherwise
- when you register, pay for, and attend trade events
- Information we may obtain about you
In order to fulfil our duties in the public interest, protect our employees and assets, and comply with legal and regulatory obligations, such as trade control, anti-money laundering, bribery and corruption laws and other regulatory requirements, DIT may carry out checks on existing or potential Clients both on pre-contract basis and post-contract periodically.
We may verify the background of individuals - such as directors, officers, sole traders, shareholders, and key stakeholders.
We may check the information you provided against:
- publicly available information about your company or business activities
- any government’s issued sanctions lists or blacklists
- media sources – including social media
For more information, please refer to the full privacy notice.
Our legal basis for processing your data
The legal bases for processing your personal data are:
- to perform our public tasks
- for the exercise of our functions as a government department
- in order to take steps prior to entering into a legal contract or to fulfil a contract DIT has entered with you
When our processing is based solely on your consent - and subject to applicable local laws - you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. This will not affect the validity of the processing prior to the withdrawal of consent.
To withdraw your consent, please contact the Data Protection Team at data.protection@trade.gov.uk (details provided in the “Contacting us” paragraph at the end of this notice).
For more information, please refer to the full privacy notice.
How we may share your information
We will only share your personal information with third parties for the purpose disclosed in this privacy notice and in accordance with our instructions. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes.
Where the law allows us, we may share your data with other recipients, e.g. government departments, public agencies or bodies, business companies, third-party service providers, or markets applied for.
We will not:
- sell or rent your data to third parties
- share your data with third parties
- for their own marketing purposes.
We will also share your data if we are required to do so by law or regulation, or to counteract fraud or other crime.
Information provided whilst using our digital services - including personal information - may be published or disclosed in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). For this purpose, we will anonymise or aggregate information as appropriate to ensure minimisation, privacy and confidentiality. For more information, please contact the Head of Information Rights Unit (details provided in “Contacting us” section).
For more info, please refer to the full privacy notice.
How long we keep your data
We will keep your personal information while you have an account with us or we are providing our services to you. Thereafter, we will keep your personal information for as long as is necessary:
- to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf
- to show that we treated you fairly
- to keep records required by law
When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal information, we will delete or anonymise it.
For more info, please refer to the full privacy notice.
How we protect your data and keep it secure
We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach.
From time to time your information may be stored in or accessed from countries outside the European Economic Area. Where this may happen, we always make sure that there are appropriate safeguards in place and your rights are protected to the same high standard as under UK Data Protection legislation.
For more information, please refer to the full privacy notice.
Your rights
Your rights in connection with personal information
Under the data protection laws, you have several rights in respect of your information and the way we use it. You have the right to request:
- information about how your personal data is processed
- a copy of that personal data
- that anything inaccurate in your personal data is corrected immediately
You can also:
- raise an objection about how your personal data is processed
- request that your personal data is erased if there is no longer a justification for it
- ask that the processing of your personal data is restricted in certain circumstances
For more info, please refer to the full privacy notice.
Contacting us
If you would like to exercise any of your rights, or have any questions about this privacy notice, or any complaints about how we handle your personal information, please contact us.
We hope that Data Protection Officer can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your information.
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 if we make any substantial updates.