Privacy policy

1. General

To engage with Nwes services you will be asked to supply personal information for us to authenticate your identity or to provide you with services.

In order to deliver such services, we will need to process and store your personal information and may need to transfer it to relevant partner(s) for processing both inside and outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).

By submitting your personal information, you consent to such processing and transfers in connection with such offers or services and for any other purposes to which you consent at the time you provide the information or as provided in this privacy policy.

 

2.    Data Protection

Nwes Group is registered in accordance with and seeks to comply with the UK Data Protection Act 2018 (GDPR).

We follow appropriate security procedures in the storage and disclosure of personal information to prevent unauthorised access by third parties. We also require those parties to whom we transfer personal information to comply with the same.

However, the Internet is not a totally secure medium and you acknowledge and agree that Nwes Group shall not be responsible for any unauthorised use, distribution, damage or destruction of personal data, except to the extent we are required to accept such responsibility by the Data Protection Act 2018 (GDPR).

All personal details are held in the strictest confidence and in line with the Nwes Group Privacy Policy.

Types of data:

  • Information from your browser/computer

We use Google Analytics and other software to provide information such as broken links on the website, number of website visits, page views, and information on what browsers and devices people are using to access our services. The software also detects location data using IP addresses. This data is not linked to any personal data and is just used to allow us to monitor trends and the performance of our website.

  • Information you send us via email

If you enter into any correspondence via email to report a problem or ask a question, then we will retain the personal information you send us for the purposes of dealing with your enquiry and will not share the data with any third parties.

  • Our online enquiry form

On our online enquiry form we ask for details such as address, telephone, email and area of need. This is solely for being able to contact you to discuss our support.

  • Our online loan form

On the online loan form we ask for details such as address, email and financial outgoings. This data is used to assess your eligibility for a loan and your permission to undertake a credit search. Your data will not be used for any other purpose other than the processing of the loan enquiry, it will be shared with the Lender i.e. Start Up Loans/Croydon Loan Fund, Street UK whose platform we use to process loans. All loan documents will be stored securely on our server and will be held for the term of the loan. For any loan enquiries that do not proceed, all documentation including credit search will be destroyed after 3 months of the enquiry

  • Data encryption

Our website uses an SSL certificate which makes sure that there is an encrypted connection between the web browser and the server. This means that any personal information that’s entered on the website is encrypted when being transferred to the web server.

 

  • Protection against cyber attacks/hackers

We have a firewall on our web server which is designed to inspect incoming traffic, weed out any malicious attacks and provides a first line of defence between a potential hacker and the data that we are hosting.

We have carried out penetration testing where we get a third party company to attempt to hack the website. They report back if there are any vulnerabilities in the site (which there are none).

 

3.    Scope of this policy

This Policy only applies to the use that we make of data provided to us via the Internet, SMS, in person and email.

4.    Why we need to collect information from you

We use your information to:

  • Deliver our services (Business Advice, Business Training, Tenancy, Finance – Grants and Loans)
  • To effectively communicate with you
  • To respond to your enquiries
  • To make our website and other social media content available to you
  • To verify your identity
  • To assess your eligibility for any of our Loan or Grant programmes, including assessing lending risks and obtaining a credit reference
  • Carry out personalised marketing and communications (if you have opted to receive these). We may use the information we collect about you to notify you from time to time about important new features and changes to our services or items we think you’ll find of
  • Obtain feedback from you on our
  • Monitor the usage of the website, performance and trends so that we can improve our services
  • To enable us to manage service interactions with you
  • To ensure compliance with our contractual obligations, including auditing and reporting, we have in providing our service to you
  • Where we have a legal right or duty to use or disclose your information (for example in relation to an investigation by a public authority or in a legal dispute)
  • Test new systems and check upgrades to existing systems to improve our service delivery
  • Help improve our products and services, for quality control, security, internal record keeping and other business needs

Certain types of personal information, such as gender and ethnicity, are used only as part of our contractual reporting requirements, for the purposes of monitoring and promoting equal opportunities.

5.    The lawful basis for processing your personal information

Legitimate interest

We may collect, hold and process your personal data on the basis of legitimate interest where it is necessary in order for us to fulfil our needs as a business and to be able to provide you with our services, including, but not limited to:

  • To send you information about your loan
  • To provide details of the benefits available as part of the loan agreement
  • Protecting customers, employees and other individuals and maintaining their safety, health and welfare
  • Promoting, marketing and advertising our products and services
  • Understanding our customers’ behaviour, activities, preferences, and needs
  • Improving existing products and services and developing new products and services
  • Complying with our legal and regulatory obligations
  • Preventing, investigating and detecting crime, fraud or anti-social behaviour and prosecuting offenders, including working with law enforcement agencies
  • Handling customer contacts, queries, complaints or disputes
  • Protecting Nwes Ltd, its employees and customers, by taking appropriate legal action against third parties who have committed criminal acts or are in breach of legal obligations to us and our staff
  • Effectively handling any legal claims or regulatory enforcement actions taken against us
  • Fulfilling our duties and obligations to our customers, staff, colleagues, shareholders and other stakeholders

Subject to what we say below, we will not pass on your personal details to any third party, including site sponsors or advertisers, without your consent. In order to provide services to you we will need to provide your data to our funders and service providers.

We may provide aggregate statistics about our users, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to our third-party partners (if any), but these statistics will not contain any information about you from which you could be identified.

6.    Security and possibility of international transfer

Please note that countries outside the EEA may not have the same level of protection as countries within the EEA, but we always demand that those parties to whom we transfer data adhere to the same security procedures that we follow ourselves.

By submitting your personal information, you consent to such processing and transfers in connection with such orders, offers or services and for any other purposes to which you consent at the time you provide the information.

7.    Use of cookies

Since 26 May 2011, the law has stated that cookies can only be used by a website with the specific consent of its users. Cookies are small pieces of information that are issued to your computer when you enter a website. They are stored by your browser on your computer’s hard drive and can be used for a wide range of purposes, such as identifying your computer’s previous visits to this website, and to ascertain the most popular features of this website.

Like many other websites, the Nwes Group website uses cookies. In general, we always try to use cookies only where it is strictly necessary for the provision of our service as requested by our users. For example, cookies can make it possible for us to identify and log in registered users of this website.

We also use cookies to develop a clearer picture of which parts of the website are the most popular to our visitors, and your preferences. You are not obliged to accept cookies and you may amend your browser’s settings to prevent it from accepting cookies.

8.    Links and third party advertising

Any links on the website may take you to third party sites over which we have no control. Similarly, advertisements appearing on this website may be posted by third parties who may use their own cookies and have their own privacy policies. When linking to another website you should read the privacy policy stated on that website.

This privacy policy covers the use made of cookies and personal data by Nwes Group and does not cover the use made of cookies and personal data by any third parties.

9.    Data Retention

The table below provides information on how long Nwes Group keeps personal data that is collected for different purposes when using our Services.

Type of Personal Data Retention Period
Business Support
Enewsletter Sign up Until the person unsubscribes
Contact us form Enquiries 6 months since the enquiry was made and support was not given
Funded Applicants – Loans Loan Accounts are reviewed regularly and destroyed where the loan has been repaid after 6 years
Funded Applicants – ERDF Grants please visit ERDF Privacy Policy https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ystem/uploads/attachment_data/file/705889/ESIF-GN-1- 034_ERDF_Summative_Assessment_Guidance_Appendices_ v1.pdf
Funded Business Support 2 years after the end date of the relevant programme you have received support under
Start and Grow Platform One year since last log-in
Tenancy/Property
Enewsletter Sign up Until the person unsubscribes
Contact us form Enquiries 6 months since the enquiry was made and no tenancy agreement was entered into
Tenant/Virtual Tenant/Conference User We will retain all documents whilst you are in agreement with Nwes Group and financial records 6 years after the end date of your tenancy
Contact us – Careers We will process and store your data for assessing your suitability for employment and will be kept for 6 months.

10 Feedback, comments and suggestions

If you have any queries about our Privacy Policy or any queries about the protection of personal information We hold about you, please do not hesitate to contact us: Our address is Nwes Group, Rouen House, Rouen Road, Norwich  NR1 1RB. Telephone: 01603 227840. Email: datacompliance@nwes.org.uk.

 

If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you should not submit your personal information on this website.

 

 

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Speak to the Team

Speak to the Nwes team today with any questions you have.

General Enquiries: 01603 227840

Property Enquiries: 08454 374465

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