Privacy policy

The Knowledge Transfer Network Ltd, (“we”, “us”, “our”, “Innovate UK Business Connect”) is a company limited by guarantee, formed in April 2014 (no. 8705643), our registered office address is at KTN, Unit 218, Business Design Centre, Upper Street, Islington, London N1 0QH.

This privacy notice sets out how your information is used under the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (“KTP”) and your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (“KTP”) programme aims to help big and small organisations to innovate for growth. As a part of the programme, Innovate UK Business Connect manages delivery of KTP across the whole of the UK.

Innovate UK Business Connect is working with Innovate UK (“Partner”) to develop the programme. Therefore, Innovate UK Business Connect and Partner will collect and exchange information that will include personal data.

1. Information we may collect from you

When you participate in, access or sign-up to any of our services (including our newsletters, events, competitions, social media, message boards and telephone discussions), create an account using our Innovate UK Business Connect platform or otherwise correspond with us, we will receive data about you.

This data may consist of information such as your name, email address, postal address, landline or mobile number. Depending on the activity we may also obtain information about the name and type of your business, and its address.

We also use cookies and collect IP addresses from visitors to our websites (see Section 8 for further details).

2. How we use your data

We process personal information for certain legitimate business purposes which include some or all of the following:

• To manage communications between you and us relating to the KTP programme including contacting you for support, sending updates, service messages, policies and procedure updates etc.
• Where the processing enables us to enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services/communications for the benefit of our members.
• To meet our obligations to you.
• To analyse your participation in the project and facilitate the monitoring & evaluation of the programme.
• To accommodate your queries, complaints and requests including data subject rights requests.
• To provide you with our services, activities or online content and to deal with your requests and enquiries.
• To identify and prevent fraud.
• To enhance the security of our network and information systems.
• To better understand how people interact with our website.
• To provide e-communications which we think will be of interest to you.
• To determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns.

3. What is the legal basis for doing so?

Article 6 (1) (a)–That the data subject has given consent to the processing of their personal data for one or more specific reasons.

Article 6 (1) (b) – processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract.

Article 6 (1) (f)– processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the Controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require Protection of Data, in particular where the data subject is a child.

4. Promotional communications

Promotional and marketing communications may be sent to you by various communication channels. In the case of electronic communications, these will be sent to you if you have given express permission to allow Innovate UK Business Connect to use your data for such purposes or where we think these communications are highlighting services that we believe may be of benefit to you.

You can instruct us at any time not to process your personal data for the purposes of marketing by changing your preferences on the Innovate UK Business Connect website, or by opting out using the “unsubscribe” link provided on all our electronic communications.

5. Your rights

Your principal rights under data protection law are:

• The right to access – you can ask for copies of your personal data; you or any third party acting on your behalf with your authority may request a copy of the personal data we hold about you without charge. We, Innovate UK Business Connect will ask to verify your identity or request evidence from the third party that they are acting on your behalf before releasing any personal data we hold about you.
• The right to rectification – you can ask us to rectify inaccurate personal data and to complete incomplete personal data.
• The right to erasure – you can ask us to erase your personal data.
• The right to restrict processing – you can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data.
• The right to object to processing – you can object to the processing of your personal data if, processing relies on legitimate interests, processing is for scientific or historical research, processing includes automated decision making and profiling, processing is for direct marketing purposes.
• The right to data portability – you can ask that we transfer your personal data to another organisation or to you.
• The right to withdraw consent – to the extent that the legal basis of our processing of your personal data is consent, you can withdraw that consent.
• Rights relating to complaints and remedies – you can always contact us to make a complaint at dataprotection@iukbc.org.uk. Alternatively, you can make a complaint to the ICO from here.

These rights are subject to certain limitations and exceptions. You can learn more about the rights of data subjects by visiting: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

If you have questions or want to exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal data please contact dataprotection@iukbc.org.uk.

6. Retention & Deletion

We shall not keep data any longer than is necessary from the original purpose of collection and we will delete data in line with our Data Retention policy in compliance with our legal obligations.

7. IP address and cookies

An IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet. We may collect information about your computer, including your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your usage of our site by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. They help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service.

They enable us:

• To estimate our audience size and usage pattern.
• To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our site according to your individual interests.
• To speed up your searches.
• To recognise you when you return to our site.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to do so. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log-on to our site.

Here is a report of cookies our site uses:

You may adjust the cookies that you allow the site to use with your browser here: Manage cookie Settings.

8. Disclosure of your data to third parties

i) Major stakeholders & UK Research and Innovation & Innovate UK

As Innovate UK Business Connect, we provide support to our major stakeholders in achieving their objective to stimulate and support UK innovation, including Innovate UK. To ensure that our members continue to benefit from our networking and knowledge-sharing activities, we allow these organisations to use the data held by us, in accordance with this Policy.

ii) Other third parties

Only where necessary, we may otherwise disclose your data:

• To contractors, agents and professional advisors where such entities have agreed to provide services to us.

• Third parties that support us to provide products and services such as cloud-based software services.

• If Innovate UK Business Connect or a substantial part of its assets are transferred to another public body (for example, as a result of a change in the Innovate UK’s reallocation of public funding), in which case personal data held by Innovate UK Business Connect may be among the transferred assets.
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation (including any reporting obligations we may have to the UK Government), or in order to enforce or apply our and other agreements, or
• To protect the rights, property, or safety of others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from other websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that they have their own privacy policies, and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

9. International Transfer of Data

We will only transfer data to countries outside of the UK where they comply with the appropriate safeguards for processing personal data as approved by the Information Commissioner’s Office in line with UK GDPR.

10. Changes to our Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

11. Data Protection Officer

Your trust is important to us. That is why we are always available to talk with you at any time and answer any questions concerning how your data is processed. If you have any questions that could not be answered by this privacy policy or if you wish to receive more in-depth information about any topic within it, please contact our DPO via email on dataprotection@iukbc.org.uk.