Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://britishsmallbusinessawards.co.uk and we are managed by Vitesse Media Plc. You can read the Vitesse Media Plc Privacy Policy here.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Nominations

When you nominate yourself your data is kept on file for the purposes of creating a shortlist of potential award winners.

If you nominate anyone else then we will contact the nominee to ensure they are happy for their data to be processed for the purposes of curating the shortlist of potential award winners.

When a nominee makes the shortlist we will contact them to inform them they have made the shortlist and to gain consent, if not previously acquired, to share their nomination information with the panel of judges.

We process business card information for certain legitimate business purposes, which include some or all of the following;

  • where the processing enables us to enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services / communications to the benefit of our clients and attendees.
  • to identify and prevent fraud.
  • to enhance the security of our network and information systems.
  • to better understand how people interact with our websites.
  • to provide communications that we believe would be of interest to you.
  • to determine the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

If you complete the Newsletter signup your submitted details will be passed through to our secure email lists. All our email lists are double opt-in meaning you will need to confirm your subscription. If you have not confirmed your subscription within 14 days your data will be automatically deleted from the list. If you do confirm your subscription your data will be retained and consent to contact you via email for the purposes of keeping you informed about the British Small Business Awards and related awards managed by Vitesse Media Plc until you unsubscribe from the list.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

All analytics data is anonymised and used as aggregated data with no personally identifiable data stored or transmitted in any way.

Who we share your data with

Before we share your data with any contracted 3rd parties we will contact you to gain your consent to pass the data to them. Typically these 3rd parties are the Judging Panel, brochure printers and venue services. We always ensure that the 3rd parties are GDPR compliant or access and process your data in compliance with the current data regulations.

We may share attendee business card data with sponsors on a lawful basis of Legitimate Interest that they may contact you regarding products and services directly relating the topics covered by this event.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

All nomination data will be retained for 18 months unless specifically requested otherwise by the data subject.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, made a nomination or been nominated you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. We may retain anonymised submitted data for analytics and business intelligence purposes.

Where we send your data

Nomination data may be passed through a 3rd party scoring service called Convertr Media that provides validation and enrichment services. You can read their privacy policy here: http://www.convertrmedia.com/privacy-policy/

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Your contact information

You can contact us regarding your data and how we process it by the following methods.

The Data Manager
Vitesse Media Plc
14 Bonhill Street
London EC2A 4BX
United Kingdom

You can call the Data Manager on (+44) 020 7250 7020
You can email the Data Manager at: data.manager@vitessemedia.co.uk

Additional information

How we protect your data

  • All data is transmitted securely
  • All data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
  • Our Access Control systems are managed on a least privilege basis
  • All data is anonymised wherever possible
  • All data is securely deleted as soon as no longer required

What third parties we receive data from

We may use 3rd party data from publically available sources such as Social Media to verify, validate or enrich your data only where there is a need to ensure the veracity or accuracy of the stored data to keep the data up to date.

What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data

We currently perform no automated decision making or profiling of your data beyond validating your email address and telephone number.