PAS and MCS Complaints
Privacy Policy

What is the purpose of this document?

This privacy policy describes how British Assessment Bureau Limited collects and processes your personal data in accordance with the UK GDPR when you make a complaint regarding work carried out by a PAS-certified or MCS-certified client.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements the other policies and notices and is not intended to override them.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law. This 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 data we collect about you

Personal data means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

The categories of this information that we collect, process, hold and share include:

• personal information (name, address, phone number and email address); and
• specific details of your complaint

How is your personal data collected?

Whilst the majority of the personal data we collect will be provided by you, we may also obtain your personal data from third parties during the course of investigating your complaint.

How we will use your personal data

We plan to use your personal data to:

• enable us to carry out investigations into your complaint;
• provide a response and agree appropriate actions; and
• learn from the experience to inform change in our policies and/or procedures.

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. The legal basis for processing your information is because it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interest, namely the resolution of disputes and complaints relating to our PAS-certified or MCS-certified clients.

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 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.

Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, by law you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, as follows:

• 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 have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you 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 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. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
• Object to direct marketing. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time. Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a service purchase, service experience or other transactions.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) 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 a third party. We will provide you, or a third party you have chosen, with 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.
• Right to raise a complaint at any time with the Information Commissioner’s Office. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach your data protection authority so please contact us in the first instance.

Disclosures of your personal data

We may need to share your personal data with other parties in order to resolve your complaint, including certified clients, UKAS (our accreditation body), other certification bodies, scheme owners, Trustmark and the dispute resolution ombudsman.

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 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 any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

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

Contact details

If you want to contact British Assessment Bureau about any matter raised in this privacy policy, you can do so by email at dataprotection@amtivo.com or by post via Data Protection, Amtivo Group Limited, 30 Tower Views, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent, ME19 4UY.