1. Introduction

This website is owned and run by Equality Solutions Group Limited (the Firm), which is the holding company for the EQS Group (the Group), and we are the controller of any personal information you supply us when you use our website or contact us.

This privacy notice explains how we collect and use your personal information.

Our website may hold links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of those websites unless they are also managed by the Group.

The Firm is registered with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – registration number ZB013707
This document was created in June 2022, reviewed in August 2023, updated in January 2024, and will be reviewed annually, unless there are amendments to legislation and guidance in the interim that require this document to be reviewed sooner.

2. What type of information do we collect about you?

We currently collect and process some or all the following information when you interact with our websites, talk to us on the phone, or write to us:

• Name

• Email and IP address

• Correspondence (online or otherwise – and may include recruitment information that you might provide us with if you apply for a role with us)

• Details of your visits to our website (including but not limited to traffic data, location data, content viewed, content interacted with).

3. How we get your information

The personal information that we process when you interact with our website is provided to us directly by you or by someone acting on your behalf, usually by one of the following methods:

• An email enquiry
• A form submission through our website
• A telephone conversation
• Written correspondence

4. How we use your information

We may process your personal information for several different purposes, and we must have a legal ground for each purpose, and so rely on the following:

• We need your personal information because it is necessary to enter into or perform a contract (i.e., you request technical support on the use of the Firm’s platform).
• We have a genuine business need to use your information (e.g., to keep a record of the decisions we make about an application, to keep business records, conduct strategic business analysis, review our business planning and / or develop and improve our products and services). When using your personal information in this way, we will always consider your rights and interests.
• We have legitimate interests to use your personal information. 

During your interactions with us, there may be the rare times when we must ask you to disclose special categories of information (commonly known as ‘sensitive data’) e.g., about your health, or a disability, so we can provide the correct advice and support to you.

If we do so, we must have an additional legal ground for processing. We will rely one of the following:

• We have your explicit consent (e.g., we have asked, and you have agreed, to supply the information).
• It is in the substantial public interest (e.g., to prevent and detect fraud).
• To establish, exercise or defend legal rights (e.g., legal proceedings are being brought against us or we want to bring a legal claim ourselves).

5. Sharing your information

We may share your information with other companies within the Group, to allow us to fulfil orders and provide the services you have requested.

We will not transfer your information outside of the EEA without ensuring that adequate protections are in place.

The information you have provided us may also be shared with other third parties for some or all the following reasons:

• To provide services (e.g., to firms that help run the traffic through our website, or to redirect you to one of our subsidiary firms to provide you with assistance).
• If we must disclose your information to comply with a legal obligation (including, but not limited to, exchanging information with firms for the purposes of fraud prevention and credit risk reduction).
• We may share your information with our bankers and financiers (and their advisers) to support the Group in its financial aims and responsibilities.

6. How we store your information

Your information is stored securely and only accessed by appropriate individuals within the Group. We will keep your information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice and to fulfil our legal and regulatory obligations.

For email enquiries we will keep your information for one year after the enquiry has been resolved, after which it will be removed from our systems.

When we capture your personal information through our website, we do so over a secure link using recognised industry standard technology (SSL) which encrypts the data (This can be seen by a padlock symbol on the screen or the prefix ‘https’ on our website address).

We have strong internal security measures including suitable firewalls, internal antivirus, and malware monitoring tools, and we regularly conduct vulnerability scans to protect our systems.

We have a separate document on our use of ‘cookies’ on our website and for further information we encourage you to read this using the link on our website.

7. Your data protection rights

Under data protection law in the UK, you have several rights, including (but not limited to):

• Right of access – you can ask us what information we hold about you and request copies of it.
• Right to rectification – you can ask us to rectify or update any of your information that you think is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to erasure – you can ask us to erase your personal information, in certain circumstances.
• Restriction of processing – you can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information, in certain circumstances.
• Right to object to processing – you can object to the processing of your personal data, in certain circumstances.

We will not ask you to pay any charge for exercising your rights and we will respond to any request under your rights within one month of receipt if we can.

Please contact the Group Data Protection Office (DPO) using the information provided in section 8

8. Our contact details

The Group have appointed Jon Sinclair as Data Protection Officer, and it is his responsibility to ensure that we meet our obligations under the UK Data Protection legislation.

If you have any questions or require further information about your data, how to exercise your rights, or to complain about how we have managed your data then the Group Data Protection Officer can be contacted using email, telephone or in writing:

Telephone: 0191 737 1011

Email: DPO@e-q-s.local

Address: 9 Apollo Court, Koppers Way, Monkton Business Park South, Hebburn, Tyne and Wear, NE31 2ES

9. How to complain

If you have any complaints about the way, we manage your personal data then please contact the Group Data Protection Officer using the contact details in section 8

You can also complain to the UK independent data protection organisation – the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – if you are unhappy with how we use your data. The ICO’s address is:

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

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
Livechat: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/livechat
Website: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/