This privacy policy sets out how the Harris Tweed Authority (HTA) collects, uses and protects any information it holds or receives from you.
HTA is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “HTA”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).
The HTA is committed to ensuring that the privacy of its customers, clients, stakeholders and service users is protected. In circumstances whereby the HTA holds information by which you can be identified then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.
The HTA may change this policy from time to time. This policy is effective from 22nd May 2020.
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). We may collect and use the personal data about you:
The HTA requires this information primarily for internal record keeping purposes and to be able to contact you in relation to your association with the Harris Tweed® industry. It is important also that the HTA understands your needs and provide you with a high quality and relevant service. We may on occasion use the information held for the following reasons:
When the HTA use personal information collected from you, it is required to have a legal basis for doing so. There are various different legal bases on which the HTA may rely, depending on what personal information it processes and why. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.
The HTA is committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
The HTA has procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including names, contact details and Harris Tweed® label sales transaction details) for up to six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes. Otherwise, we retain your data for as long as our relationship with you lasts. In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see “Your rights” below for further information.
In some circumstances we will retain your personal data for archiving purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
How we use cookies
A cookie is a small file that asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system. We also make limited use of marketing cookies to provide you with access to our social media page from our website. These enable our social media partners to optimize their advertising.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the HTA website.
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our website. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualise and personalise the ads of its own advertising network.
For further information on cookies and the use of Google Analytics please see our Cookie Policy.
The HTA website contains links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.
We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our service (“Service Providers”), to provide the service on our behalf, to perform service-related services or to assist us in analysing how our service is used.
These third parties have access to your personal data only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.
The HTA will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to any other third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so.
We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).
Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights in certain circumstances. In summary, those include rights to:
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, 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 those rights, please:
We hope that we are able to resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information. If we are unable to resolve any issue to your satisfaction, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioners Office, which may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or telephone: 0303 123 1113.
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact Lorna Macaulay (CEO) in the following ways:
2 Cromwell Street
Stornoway
Isle of Lewis
HS1 2DB