Privacy Policy

Gold Consulting provides business improvement, project and consultancy services.

For the purposes of UK data protection law, the data controller responsible for your personal information is:

Gold Consulting
Email: jo@goldconsulting.org.uk

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal information, please contact us using the email address above.

When you contact us

If you contact us through our website, by email, LinkedIn or another communication channel, we may collect:

• your name;
• your email address;
• your telephone number, where provided;
• your company or organisation name, where provided; and
• any other information you choose to include in your enquiry or message.

When you use our free diagnostic or assessment tools

If you complete one of our online diagnostic or assessment tools, we may collect:

• your name;
• your email address;
• information about your business or organisation;
• your responses to the questions within the tool; and
• the results generated from those responses.

We use this information to provide you with the results or information you have requested and, where appropriate, to respond to any follow-up enquiry.

When you become a client

If you engage Gold Consulting to provide services, we may collect and process information necessary to:

• discuss and agree the work to be carried out;
• provide our services;
• communicate with you;
• manage our relationship with you;
• prepare proposals, contracts and invoices;
• maintain appropriate business and financial records; and
• comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

Depending on the nature of the engagement, this may include contact details and other information relevant to the services you have asked us to provide.

We use personal information for the following purposes:

• to respond to enquiries and requests for information;
• to provide the services, diagnostic results or other information you have requested;
• to communicate with prospective and existing clients;
• to manage and deliver consultancy or project work;
• to prepare proposals, agreements and invoices;
• to maintain business and financial records;
• to protect the security and operation of our website and systems; and
• to comply with legal obligations or deal with legal claims where necessary.

We will not use your personal information for purposes that are incompatible with the reason it was originally collected.

Under UK data protection law, we must have a lawful basis for processing your personal information. Depending on the circumstances, we may rely on the following.

Legitimate interests

We may process your information where it is necessary for our legitimate interests and where those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms. This may include:

• responding to enquiries;
• providing information or results you have requested;
• managing relationships with prospective and existing clients;
• administering and developing our business;
• protecting our website and systems from misuse or security threats; and
• establishing, exercising or defending legal claims.

Contract

Where you are a client, or where processing is necessary to take steps towards entering into a contract with you at your request, we may process your information because it is necessary for the performance of a contract or to take steps before entering into one.

Legal obligation

We may process and retain certain information where necessary to comply with legal, accounting or tax obligations.

Consent

Where we rely on your consent, we will make this clear at the time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at jo@goldconsulting.org.uk. Withdrawing consent will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before you withdrew it.

We will not add you to an email marketing list simply because you have contacted us or used one of our diagnostic tools.

If we wish to send you marketing communications in circumstances where consent is required, we will ask for your consent first.

Where you have agreed to receive marketing communications, you can opt out at any time by using the unsubscribe option provided or by contacting us at jo@goldconsulting.org.uk.

We do not sell your personal information.

We may share personal information with trusted third-party service providers where this is necessary to operate our business and provide our services. Depending on the services you use, these may include providers of:

• website hosting and technical infrastructure;
• online forms or diagnostic tools;
• email and business communication systems;
• cloud storage and business administration systems;
• accounting and professional services; and
• IT, security or technical support.

These organisations may process personal information on our behalf and are only permitted to use it for the purposes for which they provide services to us, subject to appropriate contractual and legal safeguards.

We may also disclose information where required by law or where necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

Some of the service providers we use may process personal information outside the United Kingdom. Where this happens, we will take appropriate steps to ensure that your personal information receives an appropriate level of protection in accordance with UK data protection law. This may include relying on an adequacy regulation or using appropriate contractual safeguards.

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, including any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. As a general guide:

• general enquiries and prospective client information: normally for up to 12 months after our last meaningful contact, unless there is a continuing legitimate reason to retain it;
• diagnostic or assessment responses: normally for up to 12 months after the results are provided, unless a longer period is necessary because of an ongoing business relationship or other legitimate reason;
• client and project information: for the duration of the relationship and for an appropriate period afterwards, taking account of contractual and legal requirements;
• financial and accounting records: for as long as required by applicable law.

We may retain information for longer where necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration or disclosure.

However, no method of transmitting information over the internet or storing information electronically can be guaranteed to be completely secure. We therefore cannot guarantee absolute security, but we take reasonable and appropriate steps to protect the information we hold.

Depending on the circumstances, you have the right to:

• request access to the personal information we hold about you;
• ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information;
• ask us to delete your information in certain circumstances;
• ask us to restrict how we use your information in certain circumstances;
• object to our use of your information where we rely on legitimate interests;
• request the transfer of certain information to another organisation where applicable; and
• withdraw consent where we rely on consent to process your information.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at jo@goldconsulting.org.uk.

You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office if you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information.

The website may use automated processes to generate results or feedback from the information you enter into a diagnostic or assessment tool. These results are intended to provide general information or guidance based on your responses. They are not used to make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

Cookies are small files that may be stored on your device when you visit a website. Similar technologies may also store or access information on your device.

We do not currently use cookies or similar technologies for:

• advertising;
• behavioural tracking;
• targeted advertising; or
• website analytics.

Strictly necessary technologies

Our website may use limited technologies that are necessary for security or the technical operation of the website. For example, a security cookie known as __cf_bm may be used by Cloudflare to help protect the website against bots, malicious traffic and automated abuse.

This type of technology is used for security purposes and is not used by Gold Consulting for advertising or cross-site behavioural tracking.

Where a cookie or similar technology is strictly necessary for the security or technical operation of a service you have requested, UK rules may not require us to obtain consent. We will nevertheless provide information about such technologies in this Privacy Policy.

We will review and update this section if the technologies used on the website change.

Non-essential cookies

If we introduce analytics, advertising, marketing or other non-essential cookies or similar technologies in the future, we will update this Privacy Policy and implement an appropriate consent mechanism where required before those technologies are used.

Our website may contain links to external websites, including social media platforms. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external website you visit.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to our services, website, the way we process personal information or applicable legal requirements. The latest version will always be published on this page, together with the date it was last updated.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the way we handle your personal information, please contact:

Gold Consulting
Email: jo@goldconsulting.org.uk