Last updated: August 2024

At BusinessLDN, our mission is to make London the best city in the world in which to do business, working with and for the whole UK.

We collect and make use of personal data relating to individuals from both within and outside of our member organisations to carry out our activities in representing London business, including running events, generating intellectual property including reports, policy work, blogs and podcasts, engaging with members and non-members, sending newsletters and event invitations, and recruiting staff.

This policy sets out how we collect this information and how we use it.

Should you have any queries about this policy or how to update your contact preferences, please get in touch with our marketing department by email or by writing to Marketing department, BusinessLDN, 2^nd Floor, One Oliver’s Yard, 55 – 71 City Road, London, EC1Y 1HQ.

Information we collect about you

You may directly provide us with information about you by filling in a website form, survey, phoning us, emailing us, visiting our office or attending an event.

This includes information you provide if you complete a membership form on behalf of a business and if you complete an application form.

The information you give us depends on the reason for you contacting us, but may include your name, job title, address, date of birth, e‑mail address and phone number, personal identification documents, financial information, data relating to access or dietary requirements and your political opinions.

When you contact us, we may also ask you to provide us with information about your ethnicity, disability status, and age. This information is optional, and you do not have to provide it to us: we will only collect it with your explicit consent. We will use that information to ensure our events and other activities reflect the diversity of London. 

In limited circumstances, we may receive your information from a third party, for example where we organise or take part in an event in collaboration with other organisations.

If you apply for a job with BusinessLDN, either directly or through a recruitment agency, we will collect certain data to allow us to carry the recruitment for a post. This information can include: your personal contact details, proof of right to work in the UK, employment and salary history, details of qualifications, reference contact details and their opinion about your professional performance, and the outcome of any assessment or test we may carry out.

Use of your information

As outlined above, our business activities mean that we need to obtain, store and use information about you. This includes:

• To facilitate the administration of BusinesssLDN membership, to share insights, send content, such as contracts, invitations, tickets to events, member communications or renewals information
• To let you know about our activities which we think will be of interest to you, including our events, working groups, blogs and other intellectual property. This may take place by means of automated marketing campaigns, where our systems algorithmically place users into categories
• To notify you of changes to the way we operate or changes to our services, including changes to terms and conditions, privacy policies or about changes in personnel
• To run and develop our website based on your visiting history.

Contacting you

If you are part of a BusinesssLDN member organisation, we will automatically send you our communications on the basis of legitimate interest to make you aware of our work, to promote our events and to allow you to gain full benefit from BusinesssLDN membership. We will use the contact details supplied to us when your organisation became a member of BusinesssLDN, and/​or any additional details supplied by you at a later date e.g., by sending a contact form on our website.

If you are not part of a BusinesssLDN member organisation, we will only contact you where you explicitly express your consent for us to do so, for example with details used when submitting a contact form on our website, by signing up for an event or by applying for a job with us either directly or through a recruitment agency.

In any instance, you have the right to request we stop sending you communications. You can do this by visiting the preferences portal (link in the footer of any marketing email we send you) or get in touch with your member manager or our marketing department.

Sharing your information

In order to carry out our business activities, we may share your information with selected third parties including:

• Online tools we use to run our business including our event management and booking tool, marketing automation system and CRM. From time to time this may include the support teams offered by these tools. We will ensure that appropriate contracts with these parties are in place and they only process your information in accordance with our instructions and data protection legislation
• If you attend one of our events, we will share lists of basic attendee information (name, Job title, company) with other delegates and event partners and in certain situations we will share details with event venues for access, catering or security purposes. If you attend one of our virtual events on Zoom, we will download attendee lists following the event which will contain your basic contact details (name, email, job title and company). This is to facilitate event management and marketing of future such events
• We may also share your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect our rights, property, or safety of our customers, or others
• In the event we need to transfer any information to a country not recognised as providing equivalent protection, we will use additional safeguards approved by UK regulators. 
• In the case of BusinesssLDN staff, with our payroll provider, pension provider and benefits company.

Security and storage of your personal information

We will take all steps necessary to ensure your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Access to your details will only be granted to BusinesssLDN staff who require such details to discharge their duties, for example member managers, our marketing department or events team.

We will generally keep personal information about you no longer than is needed for us to carry out the functions described in this policy. We will usually delete personal information that we collect related to our events after a certain amount of time, typically 2 years. However, we may retain some information (such as attendance records) for longer where it is in our legitimate interests to do so, for example if you are part of a BusinessLDN member organisation to facilitate account management and preparation of member engagement reports.

In some circumstances we will anonymise rather than securely dispose of your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you). We may retain this anonymised data to allow us to analyse our business performance, for example by charting event attendance trends.

The legal basis for obtaining, holding and using your information

Data protection regulations set out the circumstances in which we are able to legally obtain, hold and use your information. These are:

• For BusinesssLDN’s legitimate interest. We have a legitimate interest to provide agreed services to our members
• In the case where we have entered into a contract with you, for example if you book a ticket to one of our events or if you enter into a sponsorship contract with us
• When we have a legal obligation to process information
• When we have your explicit consent and agreement to process your information, for example under special categories of information (see below)
• In the case of recruitment of staff, it is in our legitimate business interest to make effective decisions regarding hiring of suitable candidates for a contract

Data protection law recognises certain ​“special categories” of personal information, which includes information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, for uniquely identifying a person, information concerning health, and information concerning a person’s sexual orientation. 

These special categories are considered particularly sensitive and so we will only collect and use this information where you have given us your explicit consent. For example, you may choose to tell us about your health condition before attending one of our events, or your political opinions as part of a campaign. We will only use this information for the particular event or campaign and not for any other purposes and will be retained in line with our data deletion policy. 

We may also ask you to complete a form containing a section on diversity, to allow us to monitor and report statistics about the diversity of our membership and attendees at our events. If you provide your consent, we may use this information to contact you in order to improve diversity in our membership, committees, events and other activities.

Your rights

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

• Your right of access — You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
• Your right to rectification — You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
• Your right to erasure — You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
• Your right to restriction of processing — You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
• Your right to object to processing — You have the the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights.

To exercise these rights please contact:

Muniya Barua, Deputy Chief Executive

muniya.​barua@​businessldn.​co.​uk

or by post to: BusinessLDN, 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 – 71 City Road, London, EC1Y 1HQ.

We shall respond to you within a month.

If you are subsequently unhappy with how we deal with your request, you can complain to the Information Commission Office.

The ICO’s address: 

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://​www​.ico​.org​.uk