Privacy Policy

GDPR & ICO

Open College UK Ltd is a fully GDPR compliant and ICO annually registered Company.

ICO Registration number: ZA361896  Date first registered: 9^th of May 2018

Registered Organisation: Open College UK Limited

ICO – Wycliffe House – Telephone 0303 123 1113 F. 01625 524510

Who we are

We Open College UK Ltd also known as Open College UK Limited and Open College are committed to maintaining trust and confidence to our entire website visitors including all customers, students and Members. We will never sell, rent or trade ANY information such as email lists with other companies for marketing purposes. For that reason, in this Privacy Policy there are lots of information on when and why we collect your personal data and how we use it in accordance with GDPR legislation under the lawful basis of consent.

GDPR & lawful consent

At the checkout when booking onto any Open College UK Ltd course or by purchasing any of our goods or services you are giving us legal and lawful consent to use your personal details as outlined below.

Overview

In the normal course of using this website and within our services Open College UK Ltd only collects minor personally identifiable information about you such as your name, postal address and or billing address, phone number and e-mail address for the sole purpose of processing and posting out your course pack and subsequent posting of you qualifications such as Diploma or Membership Certificates through the post or via email.

This includes ANY correspondence or post that we need to send you such as replacement course materials, certificates, qualfications, text books, folders and test papers, letters, college prospectus and to keep in touch as part of your course studies with us.

Open College UK Ltd also obtains some types of non-personally identifiable information such as the Internet Service Provider you use to connect to the Internet, your browser type, or the type of computer operating system you use (iphone, ipad, Macintosh or Windows, for example).

The information collected by Open College UK Ltd is used for the purpose of analysing patterns of use on this website only and enhancing the value of the website for other users and for improving our user experience.

In some cases, you may voluntarily provide personal information when you complete a specific booking form through the post or at the website or request any service that we offer on site through our mail order services.

This information is used by Open College UK Ltd to assist us to respond to whatever query or other interest you may have expressed in relation to our services.

In addition Open College UK Ltd may internally combine this information with other users information and review it in an aggregate form to understand the types of individuals who use the website, raise particular types of questions or express particular types of interest for ‘statistical purposes’. If and ‘only if’ you have requested it, your email address may be added to an Open College UK Ltd mailing list which may or may not be available on our website.

In all other cases information such as your email address will only be used for the declared purpose. Neither your email address nor any other personally identifiable information will be passed to any third parties for any purposes whatsoever.

All Open College UK Ltd students and customers are aware that upon their enrolment booking onto any training course all students automatically receive one free 6 month listing onto the SFTR – National UK Therapists Register (student and or introductory status only) for that period of membership.

This is recorded on our company books only and will not displayed on our websites or shown in the public domain. Any Member wishing to go onto the visible public register will have to manually join it on the applicable website. See website for details or contact us for details if you wish to go into the public domain.

We reserve the right to not include any name at our discretion. No other personally identifiable information will be displayed unless you manually add it yourself.

Open College UK Ltd website/s may rarely provide some credible and vetted links to other websites for example the ICO, our Membership bodies, Barclays, Payment Sense, (VAT) customs and excise or Inland Revenue although very rare.

When you click on one of these external links your browser will download pages from the other site and not ours.

You should satisfy yourself that you are comfortable with the privacy policy adopted by any website you visit. Open College UK Ltd supports and advocates all ethical policies with regards to your privacy and data protection GDPR requirement but cannot and will not be held responsible for the actions of any other website that may or may not be linked on our websites.

Although we take all reasonable steps to validate ANY external links these are for information only and do not represent any undertakings as to the availability, merits or behaviour of any other website or organisation that is related or linked to us as a service, body or Company.

Open College UK Ltd is a super secure website using expensive up to date technology which is regularly updated and can be fully trusted with your data. We are totally opposed to Spam in any form.

As from the 24/11/14 Open College UK Ltd uses Google Tracking Coding for the sole purposes of improving Google Ad Words advertising if and when we use Google ads. We use this tracking code to determine keys words and sales made from the Google search network. This information is solely used to determine which ads and keywords are working.

Financial Details

As a business we regularly use and hold business and Merchant bank accounts with Barclays Bank and Payment Sense. We also hold business accounts with Pay Pal and Stripe (Stripe.com) to process payments from all our customers on all our websites.

All transactions and card payments made off our website go directly to any of the above banks. Your card or bank details are NOT actually made at our website or through us.

Our payment page on our website is just a doorway only to the above secure banks websites. Therefore if our websites were ever broken into or hacked then there would be NO customer financial data or details held there to be stolen giving you total security and peace of mind in using our website.

We Open College UK Ltd will never see your card details. We only take payments from your card via the website as outlined above and never over the phone to date – unless this changes.

When we log into our business bank accounts the only information we see is your billing postal address, your name and your bank name and if and when we provide any full or part refunds to customers cards we do so from the business bank account control panel by selecting and clicking a refund button and all this is done without us holding, storing or seeing your card details.

We may in some rare instances receive your BACS details because you gave them to us and that would be mainly related to your refund method or request if you initially paid that way and the same goes for cheques.

We only refund customers using the original method of payment.

Types of data we collect

Website Cookies

Our website use cookies to collect information. This includes information about browsing and purchasing behaviour by people who access our website: Pages viewed, products purchased and the customer journey around our websites. Detailed information is set out in our Cookie Policy on the website.

Google Analytics

When someone visits opencollege.info we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does NOT identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website.

Mailing Lists

To date we don’t run them, never have and nor do we use any external services to support them for us.

We do have a mailing list feature (email address slot box) on our website which in effect is disabled. This is part of the original website template build and is kept in place in case we activate it and introduce a mailing list for our customers at a time in the future.

You could then unsubscribe to general mailings at any time of the day or night by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails or by emailing (your email).

Please note: We as a Company have our own daily struggle with people placing us on unwanted mailing lists and spamming us constantly to buy from them.

Third Parties

Please be assured that we do not under no circumstances share your personal details with any other company or services for sales, profit or marketing purposes, and is only used to interact or communicate with you as a customer, provide information that you may need or may be interested in as our customer of Open College UK Ltd.

These are the only third parties or services that we use simply because we have to use them and are outlined as follows:

Your information is only accessible to some or all of these third parties who help us to manage our business, such as our Accountants, Customs & Excise (VAT), Barclays Bank, Payment Sense, Pay Pal, Stripe and Web Hosting (BlueStar).

Please be assured that none of the above organisations are able contact you unless you tell them that this is acceptable or if you have used their service specifically and directly as part of using our website to buy from us such as Pay Pal or Barclays bank for example.  We will not share sensitive information or your payment details. This is something you will control.

Company security

Open College UK Ltd uses Norton security and firewalls throughout its operating systems.

We use up to date state of the art systems to manage all our security and data held via WP and through our online activities which have all the usual security features you would expect from a sound hosting company service.

Access to your personal information

You are entitled to view, amend, or delete the personal information that we hold. Email or write to us your request through the post to our data protection officer (Mike Sherwood – Director) using the contact details on our website contact page). This request must be in writing or email only and not via telephone (for security ID purposes).

We will action these requests as quickly as possible for you.

Time your data will be held for

We hold your data for a minimum of 6 years for tax records purposes.

We are legally required to hold your details securely for a minimum of six years by the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise (VAT). After this period you can be removed by request.

If you do not request the removal of your data then your basic information will be held securely off line in hard back form only and archived away for the duration of the existence of the Company.

Please note:

The only information that is filed away is the details you provided on your booking form which is also on your invoice for the purchase of a course or service we offer. This information is your full name, postal and delivery or billing address, your telephone number and your email address.

We only use your postal delivery address to post your course to and any other post or correspondence such as letters that relates to your course enrolment.

We will only use your main telephone number to reach you related to your course studies in case of any issues, errors or difficulties that may arise. This would be the only related reasons. We will never telephone you for sales or marketing purposes or give your number out.

If you gave us a mobile telephone number on your booking form then you will be sent two notification texts. The first text will be sent to notify you of your course booking as a confirmation and to advice that you must check your email inbox.

The main reason for this initial text is to warn you about our booking confirmation emails that may go into your anti spam folder thus giving you the impression that you have not received a booking or payment receipt from us after you enroled upon a course. This happens!

The second text a day to two later will be to let you know your course pack has been despatched and also to advise you to check your email inbox for details and again to warn you about our despatch emails going into your anti spam folder. This happens!

Your email address will only be used to send you confirmation emails and notifications related to your course enrolment and to respond to study help and support enquires during your course duration.

Removal of your data

Please be aware that if you request the removal of all your data then we cannot at any time in the future provide you with a replacement qualification or diploma certificate or confirm to anyone who asks such as a prospective employer that you hold with us or have undertook any course of study or received any qualification from us.

We will make no exceptions on the following: You are legally entitled to the removal of all your data and if you request its removal then we will have no record of it to confirm you ever studied with us.

A point to consider if such a scenario arises in the future where you may need qualification copies or a letter of verification from us, we cannot help you as we will have no record of you even if you hold a damaged or defaced certificate as your form of proof we will not be able to help once you have requested the removal of your data.

Your course results

Your course results will also be kept on file for the duration of the Company’s existence unless you request the removal of your data. These results will simply be your score in % percentages, the date of your completion, the level such as Distinction, Merit or Pass and your certificate or diploma registration number. These details will be affixed to your A4 size booking form and kept in file and securely archived away in lever arch folders. These will be personally held by the Director Mike Sherwood for the duration of the Companies existence offline and not online or electronically.

Your test papers

Your test papers once received by us will be processed and or marked by the Company and then destroyed within 21 working days. These will be shredded and then incinerated. All test papers or exam work sent in to us is never returned to you. You must keep copies before submitting your course work to us.

Your legal entitlement to the data we hold

You may at any time request a copy of the data that we hold in your name. You may also request that any data that we hold in your name is removed from our systems (provided the legal tax record requirement time limit above is met).

The data that will be removed upon your request is the total amount of data we hold which will be your billing and or postal address, name, telephone number along with email address and final course work score results. Nothing else is held by us. We don’t even hold your bank details as outlined above.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

In the interests of readability, access, privacy improvement and changes in legislation, this Privacy Policy can and will be updated at anytime or annually whichever is required first.

Last Updated November 2022.