Privacy Statement

What is the purpose of this document?

SOPRANO DIGITAL MEDIA LTD is a “controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

This notice applies to current and former employees, workers, contractors and suppliers with whom we work. This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services. We may update this notice at any time. Please ensure that you check the latest version of this notice whenever you contemplate a contractual relationship with us.

It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using that information and what your rights are under the data protection legislation.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law, which says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.

2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.

3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.

4. Accurate and kept up to date.

5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.

6. Kept securely.

The kind of information we hold about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the person’s identity has been removed (anonymous data). There are certain types of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection, such as information about a person’s health, sexual orientation or criminal convictions.

We will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information about you:

Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers and personal email addresses, Social Media profiles and other personal information arising out of any contract that we may have with you. Contact information is stored on Robert James’ phone & computer and fully within the Google ecosystem – Gmail & Android

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about employees, workers, contractors and suppliers through entering into contracts with you or the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency or background check provider. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies

We will collect additional personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us.

How we will use information about you

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

1. Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you.

2. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

3. Where it is necessary for legitimate interests pursued by us or a third party and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

1. Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).

2. Where it is needed in the public interest.

Situations in which we will use your personal information

We need all the categories of information in the list above primarily to allow us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases we may use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below.

• Making a decision about any contract we may have with you.
• Making a decision about your recruitment or appointment.
• Determining the terms on which you work for or with us.
• Administering the contract we have entered into with you.
• Business management and planning, including accounting and auditing.
• Conducting performance reviews, managing performance and determining performance requirements.
• Assessing qualifications for a particular job or task.
• Making arrangements for the termination of our working relationship.
• Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other employees, workers, contractors and suppliers, including accidents at work.
• Ascertaining your fitness to work.
• Complying with health and safety obligations.
• To prevent fraud.
• To monitor your use of our information and communication systems to ensure compliance with any IT policies that we may have.
• To ensure network and information security, including preventing unauthorised access to our computer and electronic communications systems and preventing malicious software distribution.

Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of those for whom we owe a duty of care).

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

Special categories of particularly sensitive personal information, such as information about your health, racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, or trade union membership, require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

1. In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.

2. Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in connection with employment or arising out of a contract with you.

3. Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring.

4. Where it is necessary to protect you or another person from harm. Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.

Situations in which we will use your sensitive personal information

In general, we will not process particularly sensitive personal information about you unless it is necessary for performing or exercising obligations or rights in connection with employment. On rare occasions, there may be other reasons for processing, such as it is in the public interest to do so. The situations in which we will process your particularly sensitive personal information are listed below. We will use information about your physical or mental health, or disability status, to:

• ensure your health and safety in the workplace;
• assess your fitness to work;
• provide appropriate workplace adjustments;
• monitor and manage sickness absence; and
• If we reasonably believe that you or another person are at risk of harm and the processing is necessary to protect you or them from physical, mental or emotional harm or to protect physical, mental or emotional well-being.

Do we need your consent?

We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.

We do not need your consent where the purpose of the processing is to protect you or another person from harm or to protect your well-being and if we reasonably believe that you need care and support, are at risk of harm and are unable to protect yourself.

Information about criminal convictions

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This is usually where that processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our Data Protection Policy.

We do not envisage that we will hold information about criminal convictions.

We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so. Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for or with us.

Automated decision-making

Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. We are allowed to use automated decision-making in the following circumstances:

1. Where we have notified you of the decision and given you one month to request a reconsideration.

2. Where it is necessary to perform the contract with you and appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.

3. In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent and where appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights. If we make an automated decision on the basis of any particularly sensitive personal information, we must have either your explicit written consent or it must be justified in the public interest, and we must also put in place appropriate measures to safeguard your rights.

We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means. However, we will notify you in writing if this position changes.

Data sharing

We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other entities. Contact information & project information is shared via email or text message, sometimes Whatsapp, Teams, Google Chat, Zoom etc but mostly via gmail.

We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We may, subject to complying with applicable legal requirements, transfer your personal information outside the UK.

Why might you share my personal information with third parties?

We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working or contractual relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

Which third-party service providers process my personal information?

Third parties include third-party service providers (including contractors and designated agents)

How secure is my information with third-party service providers and other entities with whom we engage?

All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

What about other third parties?

We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business. In this situation we will, so far as possible, share anonymised data with the other parties before the transaction completes. Once the transaction is completed, we will share your personal data with the other parties if and to the extent required under the terms of the transaction.

We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.

Transferring information outside the UK

We will transfer the personal information we collect about you mainly within the United Kingdom, occasionally within the European Union, to the USA and Australia. in order to perform our contract with you.

Where necessary, we will ensure that your personal information does receive an adequate level of protection and we will put in place appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information is treated in a way that is consistent with and which respects UK law on data protection:

Data security

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. All devices and external hard drives are password protected. Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. Additionally, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors, suppliers and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider:

• The amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data.
• The potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data.
• The purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means.
• The applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use that information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer an employee, worker, contractor or supplier of the company, we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

Rights of access, correction, erasure and restriction

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a data subject access request). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact Rob James by email: rob@sopranodigitalmedia.com.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contract Rob James by email: rob@sopranodigitalmedia.com.

 Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Data protection officer (DPO)

Rob James will oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact him by email: rob@sopranodigitalmedia.com . You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) with respect to data protection issues.

Changes to this privacy notice

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time. Please ensure that you check the latest version of this notice whenever you contemplate a contractual relationship with us. (Last updated 05/02/2024).