Public Notice Portal - Brought to you by Britain's Local News Media

Privacy Policy

Welcome to the privacy policy of Public Notices Portal Limited (“PNP”)

Contact: 2nd Floor, 55 Ludgate Hill, London, England, EC4M 7JW
Email: privacy@publicnoticeportal.uk

You can find out more information about what we do here.

PNP respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Purpose of this privacy policy

This privacy policy, together with our Cookie Policy aims to give information on how PNP collects and processes the personal data of individuals in connection with our services, whether the data is collected online or offline, including by telephone or when you write to us. It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using the data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

Controller

PNP is the controller and responsible for your personal data. Sometimes we may be joint controller with a party supplying personal data, for example personal data submitted in a public notice by a local authority. Where this is the case you should be able to access the other organisation's privacy notice via their website. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact PNP using the details set out above.

Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on the date given at the foot of this notice. Historic versions can be obtained by contacting us directly. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please update your personal details as they change.

Third-party links

This website includes links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

Children

This website is not intended for those under 18 and we do not knowingly collect data relating to anyone under that age.

The data we collect 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 identity has been removed and cannot be re-built (anonymous data). We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you as follows:

  • Personal and contact details you give us, such as your name, telephone number, email address or postal address, for example when you register on the website or where you have agreed to receive marketing materials from us or third parties.
  • Profile data such as your username and password for use of the website, detail of your orders for services, any feed-back and survey responses, your interests and preferences, including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
  • Transactional information you give us when you obtain or make enquiries about our services, including financial information, such as bank account and card details when payments are made.
  • Information we obtain if we carry out a credit search in connection with your purchase of our services.
  • Information in public notices submitted to us by third parties for publication and other information we obtain from third parties, such as marketing lists.
  • Data about your use of our website and services, including from third parties whom we may use to operate parts of our business.
  • Technical data obtained from cookies or similar technologies on your devices placed by us or third-party advertising networks, including your IP address, MAC address, login data, location and browser type and version.

We may also collect, use and share anonymised aggregated data relating to our users as a group, which might be derived from your personal data but will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate usage data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. If we combine or connect this aggregated data with your personal data so that you can be identified, then we will treat the combined data as personal data, which will only be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

Unless contained in public notices lawfully submitted to us for publication or you have chosen to provide that type of personal data to us, we do not collect any sensitive personal information about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data), or any information about criminal convictions and offences.

How your personal data is collected

We use different methods to collect data from and about you, including through:

  • Direct interactions. You may give us details of your identity, contact and financial details when you apply for services; create an account; request marketing to be sent to you; or give us feedback or communicate with us by telephone, email, post or otherwise.
  • Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our Cookie Policy for further details. You can manage your preferences by using our site Consent Management Platform.
  • Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
    • Technical Data from the following parties:
      • analytics providers such as Google based outside the UK;
      • advertising networks based inside OR outside the UK; and
      • search information providers based inside OR outside the UK.
    • Contact, financial and transactional data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services, based inside OR outside the UK.
    • Identity and contact Data from data brokers or aggregators based inside OR outside the UK.
    • Identity and contact data from publicly available sources, such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the UK.

How we use your personal data

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

  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

See section 11 below, Meanings, for more detail.

Generally, we do not rely on your consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us. Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with advertising services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

If you log-in to our website using social media, such as Google, Twitter or Facebook, you are giving them permission to share your user details with us, including your name and email address, which will then use to create your user identity for our website.

Purposes for which we may use your personal data

Providing services

We may use your information to:

  • Register users and grant access to our website and services, including delivering a relevant public notice notification service.
  • Carry out identity and financial checks, including checks with credit reference agencies, and otherwise assess your application to receive services.
  • Administer the contract for services we have with you, including notifications of changes and updates.
  • Process and deliver your order for services, including managing and collecting payments or monies owed where appropriate.
  • Manage events and promotions organised by us or third-party partners.
  • Investigate and answer enquiries or complaints

Understanding our customers

We may use your information to:

  • Conduct assessments, surveys and market research in order to manage and improve the operation of our business and our services or develop new services.
  • Send you direct marketing communications (via email, post, or telephone) about products and services we feel may be of interest to you (remember, you can choose not to receive such communications from us at any stage).
  • Understand who our customers are, how they see and use our services and what they want from our services.
  • Use the profile we have of you as a customer, based on the information you have provided and your use of our services, to tailor marketing communications and the services we offer to you.
  • Customise your experience on our website and the services we offer to ensure they are more relevant to your interests and preferences.
  • Analyse user engagement to assess the usefulness and relevance of our services; for example, we may look at user browsing behaviour on our website, and check whether or not our communications to you have been opened.

Supporting and improving our services

We may use your information to:

  • We may use your information to display digital advertising to support our services to you, tailoring it to your interests and preferences. Digital advertising may help us to fund the portal and provide content for free. We and our third-party ad partners may display digital advertising on our sites that is tailored to your interests and preferences so the online adverts you see are more relevant to you. We may work with a number of third-party ad partners to deliver digital advertising on our sites and use cookies and other personal information to personalise the advertising that you see, such as your email address, postcode, and other observed browsing behaviour. We do not share identifiable information about you with third parties.
  • Where we use cookies on our site for advertising purposes, we will always ask for prior consent where required and where you provide your consent the cookie information will be used along with other information we hold about you to display digital advertising that is more relevant to you. It is important to note, however, that where you do not provide your consent for digital adverting you may still see digital advertising on our sites, but this will not be tailored to your interests and preferences.
  • We will conduct analytics and modelling to identify trends and assess our performance and internal processes. We may disclose the insight we gain through such analysis to other businesses e.g., to demonstrate patterns of use to third-party ad partners and others. However, any information shared is either aggregated, anonymised or pseudonymised.

Legal basis for processing

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate. Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purposes for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/ActivityType of dataLawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To register you as a new customer(a) Identity
(b) Contact
Performance of a contract with you
To process and deliver your order including:
(a) Manage payments, fees and charges
(b) Collect and recover money owed to us
(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Financial
(d) Transaction
(e) Marketing
(f) Communications
(a) Performance of a contract (see Meanings below) with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (see Meanings below) eg to recover debts due to us
To manage our relationship with you which will include:
(a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy
(b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey
(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Profile
(d) Marketing
(e) Communications
(a) Performance of a contract (see Meanings below) with you
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (see Meanings below)
(c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our services)
To enable you to participate in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Profile
(d) Usage
(e) Marketing
(f) Communications
(a) Performance of a contract (see Meanings below) with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business)
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Technical
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation)
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
To deliver relevant website content to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the content we serve to you(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Profile
Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation)
To deliver relevant website content to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the content we serve to you(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Profile
(d) Usage
(e) Marketing
(f) Communications
(g) Usage
Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation)
To use data analytics to improve our website, services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences(a) Technical
(b) Usage
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Technical
(d) Usage
(e) Profile
(f) Marketing
(g) Communications
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our services and grow our business)

Promotional offers from us

We may use your identity, contact, technical, usage and profile data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing). You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased products or services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Opting out

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by emailing us at privacy@publicnoticeportal.uk or by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you. Where you opt out of receiving these marketing this will not apply to service messages

Cookies

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see ourCookie Policy.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data 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 you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us. If we need to use your personal data 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 data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Disclosures of your personal data

We may share your personal data with external third parties (see Meanings below) and third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy. We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

We do not seek to transfer your personal data outside the UK and EEA. If it is necessary for processing data in connection with the provision of services to you to transfer data to an External Third Party outside the UK and EEA, then we will ensure that other safeguards are implemented, including the following:

  • we will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data; or
  • we will use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which help to give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.
  • Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a lawful business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and the ICO of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you. 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 our personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to request that any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you is updated or corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
  • Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data 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 data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
  • Object to processing of your personal data 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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. We may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
  • Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:
    • If you want us to establish the data's accuracy.
    • Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
    • Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it because you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
    • You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
  • Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine- readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
  • Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
  • You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at privacy@publicnoticeportal.uk.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your 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 your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Meanings

Lawful basis:

  • Performance of contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
  • Legitimate interest means the interest of our business (or a 3rd party) in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.
  • Comply with a legal obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to.

Third parties:

External third parties

  • Service providers acting as processors based in the UK or overseas who provide IT and system administration services.
  • Professional advisers acting as processors or independent controllers, including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in the UK who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
  • Other third parties such as market researchers or fraud prevention agencies.

About Us

The Public Notice Portal is owned and operated by the News Media Association, the voice of UK national, regional, and local newspapers in all their print and digital forms. NMA members include nearly 900 local and regional news titles which reach 40 million people across the length and breadth of the country each month.

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