Privacy Policy

You can unsubscribe by clicking the link in our emails where indicated or emailing fusionskills@cityoflondon.gov.uk. We promise to keep your details safe and secure. We will not share your details to any third parties without your permission. Find out more about how we use personal information in our Privacy Policy. 

Privacy policy

This website belongs to the City of London Corporation who are leading the work around Fusion. This privacy policy explains how we will use the personal information we collect via this site. We are committed to protecting your privacy and we take all reasonable precautions to safeguard personal information. This website may contain links to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

  1. What kind of information do we collect?

Sign-up details: If you register or sign up for events, newsletters or publications on the site, we will ask you for personal information such as your name, email address, occupation and country you are based in.

  1. What do we do with information we collect and what is our legal basis for this?

Third party processors: As is indicated below, we may use third party platforms and processors to deliver newsletters, process applications, event registrations, tickets or publication sales, payments, surveys, and any request to update your data contact preferences. In using these third parties we are pursuing our legitimate interest to use third party technology to achieve greater efficiency within our organisation. To balance our interests against yours, we have taken steps to ensure these third parties maintain appropriate technical and organisational measures to keep your personal information secure.

Sign-up details: If you sign-up for us to send you newsletters, publications and other relevant information, we will use your personal information to send these to you. Our legal basis for doing this is your consent. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time. You can unsubscribe by clicking the link in our emails where indicated or emailing fusionskills@cityoflondon.gov.uk. We promise to keep your details safe and secure. We will not share your details to any third parties without your permission.

Events: If you register to attend one of our events we will use your personal information to process your application to attend the event, take payment, if any, for our administration and management of the event and to send you any updates or information regarding the event. Our legal basis for doing so is to fulfil the agreement with you for your attendance.

We use Eventbrite as registration systems for many of our events and their servers are based in the United States (U.S.) and may store and process your information outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Both Eventbrite comply with the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework. See the Eventbrite privacy policy for more information.

Feedback and surveys: We may conduct feedback/surveys from time-to-time to inform our work around Fusion. If you agree to give us feedback or complete a survey, we will use the information to improve our work and activities. If you agree to participate in any survey that will form part of any research project, we will tell you at the time you take part how your information will be used for the particular research project or programme, and how long it will be kept for.

Research: If you agree to take part in any research, we will use your information for the purpose of that research project or programme. Full details of how your personal information will be used will be given to you at the time you agree to participate; this could include to inform the development of a new prize, project, programme or other initiative, being incorporated into reports or other research outcomes, and may include being publicly displayed on web pages relating to the particular research project or programme.

For all kinds of information collected: Please make sure that any personal details you provide are accurate and up to date and let us know about any changes. Please get consent first before giving us anyone else’s information.

The nature of our work means we often work in partnership with other organisations, however, we will not share your information with any other organisation unless we have your permission first, or unless we have a legitimate interest to do so (see section 5 below).

We may also use your information to carry out analysis and research to improve our publications, events and activities, customise our website and its content to your particular preferences, notify you of any changes to our website or to our activities that may affect you, to prevent and detect fraud and abuse, and to protect other users.

However, you choose to engage with or support us, we may retain your information for our own legitimate business interests for statistical analysis purposes, in order to review, develop and improve our business activities. In this situation, we will only keep any personal information if it is necessary to do so, and will always put in place appropriate safeguards, including where possible anonymising or minimising the data retained.

  1. How long will we keep your information for?

General principle: We will only keep any personal information that you provide to us for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which you gave us the information and we will securely delete information when it is no longer needed for that purpose, as explained in more detail below.

Events: If you attend one of our events, we will use your information for the purpose of the event and will only contact you for any other purpose if you have said we can. We will retain your personal information collected for the purpose of the event for 3 years for evaluation and business development purposes to help us understand our audience and reach, and to improve future events.

Research: If you agree to take part in any research your personal information will be kept for as long as it is of value to the research work and the wider research community, and for as long as may be specified by any external research funder, patent law, legislative and other regulatory requirements. Full details of how long your personal information will be used and stored for will be given to you at the time you agree to participate.

  1. Marketing

If you sign up to our mailing list we will use your details to keep you informed about latest news, blogs, programme updates, research, publications, event details, jobs and funding opportunities, and may request feedback, including our annual audience survey.

We use third party providers to deliver our e-newsletters. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. We currently use Mailchimp, whose servers are hosted in the USA, but do comply with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. If you want to know more about how your information will be stored and processed see the privacy policies for MailChimp.

If you no longer want to receive marketing communications from us, you can unsubscribe from our mailing list at any time by please clicking the unsubscribe link, at the bottom of our emails or by emailing fusionskills@cityoflondon.gov.uk detailing your name, email address and your wish to withdraw from the emailing list.

  1. Who else has access to your information?

We may share your information with our partners and companies who help us to operate this site, and if you register to attend an event or apply to one of our programmes or indicate interest in any other activity detailed on the site, we may share your details with the companies/organisations and individuals who help us to fund, organise and operate the events, grant programmes and other activities. Our legal basis for doing this is to pursue our legitimate interest of being able to work collaboratively with other organisations to operate and administer the event, programme or activity. Some of these organisations may process your information in countries outside the EEA, such as the United States, where data protection laws are not the same as in the EEA. Rest assured that we will always ensure any transfer is subject to appropriate security measures to safeguard your personal data. Where transfers are necessary to countries where data protection has not yet been declared to be adequate, we rely on GDPR Article 49(1)(c) for these transfers. Full details of these organisations, confirmation of where they would process your personal information, and details of the steps we have taken to safeguard your personal data will be provided as part of the online data collection process.

We may disclose your personal information to law enforcement agencies if required by law (in which case our legal basis for doing this is for compliance with a legal obligation), or to protect or defend ourselves or others against illegal or harmful activities (in which case, our legal basis for doing this is the pursuit of these legitimate interests).

  1. Security

We take steps to protect your personal information and follow procedures designed to minimise unauthorised access or disclosure of your information. Ultimately you are responsible for all activity on the site and must contact us immediately if you are aware of any unauthorised use of your details or other security breach.

  1. Contacting us, exercising your rights and complaints

You are legally entitled to know what personal information we hold about you and how that information is processed, which includes the right to:

  • know what information we hold about you
  • ask us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
  • ask us to delete your personal information
  • ask us to stop using your personal information or restrict how we can use it, for example if you feel it is inaccurate or no longer needs to be used by Nesta
  • to object to us using of your personal information
  • to object to any automated decision making that we may do using your personal information

If you wish to know what information we hold about you, or wish to exercise any of your other rights as detailed above, or have any complaint about how we are using your personal information, then please email us using fusionskills@cityoflondon.gov.ukor write to us at Education Unit, Department for Community & Children’s Services, City of London, Guildhall, London EC2V 7HH and provide enough information to identify yourself (e.g. name and address or any registration details).

If our information is incorrect or out of date, please provide us with information to update it. If you want us to delete, restrict or stop using any information we hold about you, please explain the reasons why you are asking this. If you are unhappy with how we are using your information, again please explain to us the reasons and we will investigate the matter.

You can also write to the same address if you have a complaint about this policy.

If you are unhappy with how any data rights request or complaint has dealt with you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner:

  • On the ICO website;
  • By mail at Wycliff House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF, or
  • By calling the helpline on 0303 123 1113.
  1. Changes to the privacy policy

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes that relate to information we already hold about you, where practicable. You should check this policy occasionally to ensure you are aware of the most recent version that will apply each time you access this website.