Privacy Policy

We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal information. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us.

London Communications Agency Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales (registration number 03727953). Our services relate to five core areas: consultation and planning permission; corporate and public affairs; social & digital; consumer and lifestyle; and design for print and digital. For further information about us please visit thisisLCA.co.uk.

In providing our services, we collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are subject to the UK data protection laws and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws. Personal information means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.

1. Introduction

The personal information we collect, and the use we make of it, varies depending on our relationship with you. For that reason, this privacy policy distinguishes between our:

• Associates, contacts, enquirers and newsletter subscribers.
• Job applicants.
• Website users.

Please be sure to read the sections of the privacy policy which apply to you.

You can find information about how we collect and use personal data relating to a specific consultation on the website created for that consultation.

2. Personal information we collect about you

We may collect and use the following personal information about you:

Customers

• Your name, job title, employer organisation and contact information (including email address, telephone numbers and postal address).
• Information to enable us to check and verify your identity.
• Your billing, transaction and payment information.
• Information to enable us to undertake credit or other financial checks on you.
• Your contact and customer history.

Suppliers

• Your name, job title, employer organisation and contact information (including email address, telephone numbers and postal address).
• Information to enable us to check and verify your identity.
• Your billing, transaction and payment information.
• Information to enable us to undertake credit or other financial checks on you.
• Your supplier history.

Associates, contacts, enquirers and newsletter subscribers

• Your name, job title, employer organisation and contact information (including email address, telephone numbers and postal address).
• Your contact preferences.
• Other personal information provided by you.

Job Applicants

• Your name, date of birth, gender and contact information (including email address, telephone numbers and postal address).
• Your qualifications, employment history and other information contained in your curriculum vitae or which may have been provided about you by recruitment agencies.
• Other personal information provided by you.

Website users

We use cookies and analytics to determine:

• How you accessed the site including your device’s IP address, operator system, browser type, route of access, the operating system, date, location (city) and time of access,
• How you use our site including which pages you looked at and how much time you spent on each page.

You are not obliged to provide us with this personal information but if you don’t it may delay or prevent us from providing our services to you, ordering goods or services from you, sending you our newsletter, providing you with information about us, responding to your enquiry or considering your job application. It may also affect your experience of our website.

3. How your personal information is collected

We collect most of this personal information directly from you – in person, by telephone, text or email and/or via our website. However, we may also collect information:

• From publicly accessible sources such as Companies House or HM Land Registry
• From credit reference agencies
• From customer due diligence providers
• From employment agencies
• Via cookies on our website

4. How and why we use your personal information

We only handle your personal information where we have a justifiable reason for doing so.  For example:

• To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
• For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract
• Where you have given consent, or
• For our legitimate interests or those of a third party.

The following table gives you details of the reasons, our ‘purposes’ for which we collect and use information about you.

Under data protection law, we need to make sure we have a lawful basis for our activities.  The table includes which lawful basis we rely on and shows where we have assessed we can rely on legitimate business interests.

A legitimate business interest is where we have assessed there is a justifiable business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.

5. Who we share your personal information with

Generally, we do not share your personal information with anyone else. The exceptions are:

• Campaign Monitor which distributes our newsletter by email and receives names and email addresses for that purpose.
• Other third parties we use to help deliver our services to you, for example, payment service providers and holders of political or officer positions within London’s governance.
• Third parties we use to help us run our business, for example, web monitoring companies such as Google Analytics, our IT service providers, credit reference agencies, our insurers and brokers, our bank and other professional advisers.

We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal information and with appropriate contractual arrangements in place.

We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

We may also need to share some personal information with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.

6. Where your personal information is held

Your personal information is securely stored on our servers located at our offices in London, with data backed up to a remote location in the UK.

7. Transferring your personal information out of the UK and EEA

To deliver services to you, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal information outside the UK. These transfers are subject to special rules under UK data protection law. This means we can only transfer your personal information to a country or international organisation outside the UK where:

• there are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for data subjects; or
• a specific exception applies under data protection law.

When we transfer your name and email address to Campaign Monitor, we do so subject to the legal provisions set out in either EU SSCs with UK Addendum or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.

8. How long your personal information will be kept

We will not retain your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this notice. Different retention periods apply for different types of personal information and generally we apply the following retention periods.

• If you are a customer or supplier, we will hold your personal information for seven years after the end of our contractual relationship with you unless we have a legitimate business interest in retaining such information, such as an ongoing relationship or a clear relevance with the work of LCA and its clients.
• If you are an associate or contact, we will keep your information for as long as we believe we have a legitimate business interest in retaining such information, such as an ongoing relationship or a clear relevance with the work of LCA and its clients.
• If you are an enquirer or newsletter subscriber, your information will be retained for as long as is necessary to respond to enquiries or for as long as you wish to continue receiving information from us.
• If you are a website user, we will retain your information for six months from your last visit to our website.
• If you are a job applicant, we will keep your personal information for six months from the date of rejection for a job or, if you are accepted for a job, your personal information will be kept in accordance with our Privacy Policy for Staff.
• If any contact tells us that you object to receiving marketing information from us, we will delete your contact information from such marketing databases.

We may keep your personal information longer to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf or if required to do so by law.

9. Your rights

You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us or see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us (details below in the ‘How to contact us’ section), providing:

• enough information to identify you (we may ask for proof of identity such as a copy of your driving licence or passport); and
• what right you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.

10. Changes to this privacy policy

We may change this privacy policy from time to time so please check it periodically.

11. How to contact us

Please contact us by post, email or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you.

Address: 8th Floor, Berkshire House, 168-173 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7AA

Telephone: 0207 612 8480

Email: gdpr@thisisLCA.com

12. Your Data Protection Rights

If you’re concerned about the way in which we have collected and used your personal information, please contact us and we’ll do our best to resolve this with you.

If you remain unhappy with how we have handles your personal information you have the right to raise a complaint with the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, who can be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone: 0303 123 1113.

Last Updated March 2024