General

1. We recognise that your personal information is valuable and understand the need to protect your privacy. Please read this Privacy Policy to learn more about how we use the data we collect from you through this website or by other means.

2. If you have any queries about our approach to privacy issues, or if you have any requests concerning your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer, the Whiteoaks Consultancy Ltd, at the address below.

3. We may amend this statement at any time; if we do so, we will post the amended statement here. Hard copies (as amended from time to time) are available from us on request.

Your Data

4. By accessing and using this website, or by submitting or providing information to us by any other method, you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of the information which you provide to us, or which we collect from your use, in accordance with this privacy statement. This information generally falls into the following two categories:

4.1 Personally identifiable information:- information that lets us know the specifics of who you are (including your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, your internet protocol ("IP") address, etc). We request personally identifiable information when you request information from us (whether via the website or otherwise), participate in certain promotional activities, fill out surveys, apply for a job or otherwise correspond with us by telephone, email, fax or letter. In these cases, we will collect the information you submit about yourself.

4.2 Non-personally identifiable information:- information that does not by itself identify a specific individual. We collect such information when you visit this website (including the uniform resource locator of the website that you came from before visiting this website, which pages you visit on this website, and any search terms entered on this website).

5. We will not make personally identifiable information available to any other person for any purpose except (a) as set out in this privacy statement, (b) to comply with all applicable laws and lawful requests from any government or regulatory authority, to operate our systems properly or to protect us and other users; and/or (c) as permitted by applicable data protection laws. This privacy statement is not intended to, and does not, create any contractual or other legal rights.

Why We Collect this Information

6. Our primary goals in collecting information are to provide users of this website and our other services with superior service and a smooth, efficient, and personalised experience. For example, if you request information from us, we will use your personally identifiable information to provide the requested information. We use non-personally identifiable information on an aggregated basis to analyse user behaviour to help us understand how users use this website and to measure interest in the various pages and services. We use this information to improve the content of this website to make it easier to use and more beneficial to its users. We also use your information for internal administration and for marketing (subject to the restrictions set out below) and to comply with our legal obligations.

How We Gather and Use Your Information

7. We gather, hold and use personal information in a number of ways for the proper administration of our business, in order to provide services to you and to answer questions which you may raise. These include the following:-

7.1 Information and advice:- We collect personally identifiable information when you submit a communication to us or request information or advice from us. We use this information to process your submission or request, answer your request and otherwise to communicate with you thereafter.

7.2 Recruitment:- If you wish to apply for employent with us and send us your CV and other personally identifiable information, your application and CV, and the personally identifiable information contained in them, will be used for the purpose of assessing your application for the relevant position and may also be used as part of our equal opportunities monitoring. Any information you send us for the purposes of a job application will not be passed to any third party.

7.3 Surveys and reviews:- We collect personally identifiable information from clients, associates and/or other users who volunteer to complete surveys or submit testimonials. We use this information to improve our services. If you provide us with a testimonial, we will seek your permission to publish it on this website before doing so, unless you provide such permission at the time you provide the testimonial.

7.4 Browsing and Searching:- We may collect certain personally identifiable information when you visit this website or click on the various links for services. We collect this information to help run the website more efficiently, to gather broad demographic information and to monitor the level of activity on the website.

Direct Marketing

8. When you submit your contact details to us, you may be asked whether you would like to receive information about the services offered by Whiteoaks or members of Whiteoaks International. We and the members of Whiteoaks International will only send such information to you by email, SMS (text messaging) or other electronic method if you state that you permit your details to be used for that purpose, in which case we and the members of Whiteoaks International (as appropriate) may contact you in these ways. You may at any time indicate that you wish to stop receiving such information by any method by contacting us by email, phone, fax or post at the addresses below.

Disclosure of your Information

9. From time to time it may be necessary for us to pass your details on to carefully selected third parties, for example third parties who provide services to us to ensure the proper functioning of this website and/or who assist us in providing services to you. Similarly, there may be specific services offered by us or on this website which entail that we necessarily have to provide your details to a third party.

10. On occasion it may be necessary for us to transfer your personal information overseas and in particular outside the European Economic Area (this comprises the member states of the EU plus Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland) when using such information for the purposes set out in this privacy statement - e.g. when sharing information with carefully selected third party partners who are outside the EEA. Where this is the case, you specifically consent to our disclosing this information outside the EEA for such purposes.

Sharing Your Information

11. We do not sell, trade, rent to or share with others the personally identifiable information we collect except as set out in this privacy policy.

12. From time to time, we may be required to provide personally identifiable information in response to a court order, subpoena, or government or criminal investigation. We also reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we in good faith believe may be unlawful. We may release certain personally identifiable information when we believe that such release is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property, and safety of others and ourselves.

13. Whiteoaks or its related entities could merge with or be acquired by another business entity or their respective assets could be acquired. Should such a combination or acquisition occur, you should expect that Whiteoaks would share some or all of your personally identifiable information so that it or its successor can continue serving you, and other users of this website and our services.

Accessing Your Data and Making Sure it is Accurate

14. You have the right to be informed of the information which we hold on you and if you have any queries in this regard please contact the Data Protection Officer, the Whiteoaks Consultancy Ltd at the relevent postal address given on this website. We may request from you a fee of up to £10 to cover our administration charges of supplying this information to you. You also have the right to request us to update any records which we hold about you should the information become inaccurate or out-of-date. If you wish to update your details please let us know by contacting the Data Protection Officer, the Whiteoaks Consultancy Ltd at the postal address below.

The following sections are applicable if you access this website:

Cookies

15. This website may use cookies to track your use of the web and to assist the functionality of the website. A cookie is a small file of text which is downloaded onto your computer when you access the website. This allows us to recognise you as the same user when you come back to the website. A cookie typically contains the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the "lifetime" of the cookie and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number. A cookie does not have the ability to view, capture or disclose any contents of your computer and does not give us the ability to access your computer in any way, other than the storing and retrieval of the cookie file itself.

16. Third parties may place cookies on your browser via this website; such cookies may be used to serve advertisements on the website and to track whether these are clicked on by users, to control how often you are shown a particular advertisement or to tailor content to your preferences. We do not have access to or control of cookies placed by third parties.

17. Some of the pages of the website may also contain electronic images known as "web beacons" (or clear gifs) which allow us to count users who have visited those particular pages. Web beacons contain limited information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the web beacon resides.

18. You have the right to reject any cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser but if you do reject our cookies then you may not be able to use all the interactive features of this website. It is not necessary for any third party cookies to be enabled for the website to be available to you. Further information about how cookies work and how they can be managed (including how you can accept cookies, delete existing cookies and stop new cookies being installed) can be found at www.allaboutcookies.org.

Security

19. This website does not presently provide facilities for the secure transmission of information across the internet. You should be aware that there are inherent risks in transmitting information across the internet.