At Sequel, we take your privacy seriously and want to be clear about how we use your personal information.

Personal information, also known as personal data, is any information that identifies you or could reasonably be linked to you, such as your name, contact details or information about your interactions with us.

This policy explains how we collect, use, protect, share and retain this information when you visit our website, contact us or interact with our marketing communications.

We handle your information in accordance with applicable UK data protection and privacy law.

Who we are
Sequel Group Limited is a specialist internal communications and employee engagement agency.

We’re registered as a limited company in England and Wales under company number 00934848. Our registered office address is 79 Essex Road, London, N1 2SF, United Kingdom.

For the personal information covered by this policy, Sequel Group Limited is the data controller. This means we’re responsible for deciding how and why that information is used.

We’re registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under registration number Z9528132.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we use your information, please contact us at privacy@sequelgroup.co.uk.

What information we collect
We collect business contact information when you contact us, subscribe to our marketing communications or otherwise get in touch. We may also collect this information from other sources, such as publicly available professional profiles, business contact databases and referrals.

You can browse our website without giving us your contact details, although we may collect limited technical and usage information automatically.

Depending on how you interact with us, the personal information we collect may include:

• Contact and business information, such as your name, email address, phone number, organisation and job title
• Technical information, such as your IP address, browser, device and time zone
• Website usage information, such as the pages you visit, how long you spend on them and the links you click
• Cookie information, where cookies or similar technologies are used. Where consent is required, we’ll only use these after you’ve agreed
• Marketing interaction information, such as whether you open an email, click a link or unsubscribe

You can find more information about the cookies we use and how to manage your choices in our Cookie policy.

How we use your information
We use personal information to:

• respond to enquiries and provide information about our services
• understand how people use our website and improve our website, content and services
• maintain the security and technical functionality of our website
• send marketing communications where you’ve consented or we’re otherwise allowed to do so
• understand how you interact with our marketing communications so we can improve what we send and make it more relevant to you
• meet legal or regulatory requirements and protect our legal rights

You can ask us to stop using your information for direct marketing at any time by using the unsubscribe option in the message or contacting us at hello@sequelgroup.co.uk.

Legal basis for processing
Data protection law requires us to have a valid reason for using your personal information.

Depending on the circumstances, we may rely on:

• Consent – where you’ve clearly agreed to us using your personal information for a specific purpose, such as receiving optional marketing communications or accepting non-essential cookies and similar technologies, using analytics tools or email tracking where consent is required
• Legitimate interests – where we have a genuine business reason to use your information and have checked that this does not unfairly affect your rights. This may include replying to enquiries, understanding how visitors use our website, improving our services, protecting our systems and analysing engagement with our marketing communications, including profiling, to make what we send more relevant to you
• Legal obligation – where we need to use your information to meet a legal or regulatory requirement

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we consider why we need to use your information, whether using it is necessary and how it may affect you.

How we share your information
We don’t sell, rent or trade your personal information, we only share personal information where we need to. Depending on the circumstances, this may include with:

• service providers that support us with website hosting, IT, analytics, CRM and email communications
• professional advisers, where we need their support
• public bodies and authorities, where we’re required to share information by law or to protect our legal rights

We only share the information needed for the relevant purpose and take steps to make sure it’s appropriately protected.

International transfers
Some of the organisations and technology providers we use may process or store personal information outside the UK. Where this happens, we make sure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as UK adequacy regulations or approved contractual safeguards.

You can contact us at privacy@sequelgroup.co.uk if you’d like more information about how we protect personal information transferred outside the UK.

How we keep your information safe
We take appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal information from accidental loss, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure or alteration.

These include:

• encryption and other controls to protect information sent to and from our website
• access controls that limit personal information to authorised people who need it for their role
• multi-factor authentication on relevant systems
• regular security maintenance, monitoring and reviews
• security awareness training for our team
• supplier assurance activities for key service providers
• secure retention and disposal processes

Our security arrangements are managed through our Information Security Management System, which is independently certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022.

We also follow the principle of data minimisation. This means we only collect and keep the personal information we need for the purposes explained in this policy.

Although we take reasonable precautions, no information sent over the internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure. If you have any concerns about sharing information with us online, please get in touch with us at privacy@sequelgroup.co.uk and we can talk through the available options.

If a personal data breach affects your information, we’ll notify you and the Information Commissioner’s Office where required by law.

Automated decision-making
We don’t use computer systems or AI to make important decisions about you without a person being involved where those decisions could affect your legal rights or have another similarly significant impact on you.

If this changes, we’ll update this policy and clearly explain how the system works, how it could affect you and what rights you have.

How long we keep your information
We only keep personal information for as long as we need it, taking into account why we collected it and any legal, regulatory or business requirements.

Different types of information are kept for different periods. For example, we may keep enquiry and contact information for a period after our last meaningful contact, marketing information for as long as we have an appropriate reason to use it, and website analytics information in line with the retention settings used within our analytics tools.

Some information may be kept for longer where there is a legal requirement or another clear reason to do so.

When we no longer need your information, we’ll securely delete or anonymise it.

Your rights
Depending on how we use your personal information, you may have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the information we hold about you
• ask us to correct anything that is wrong or incomplete
• ask us to delete your information in certain circumstances
• ask us to limit how we use your information in certain circumstances
• ask us to stop using your information in certain ways, where this right applies
• ask us to transfer information you have given us, where the right to data portability applies
• withdraw your consent at any time where we rely on it

You also have the right to object where we rely on legitimate interests to use your personal information.

These rights don’t apply in every situation. Sometimes data protection law allows or requires us to continue using or keeping your information.

Please note that withdrawing your consent won’t affect anything we did before you withdrew it.

To use any of these rights, just email us at privacy@sequelgroup.co.uk.

Once we receive your request, we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can and no later than one month. We may ask for a little more information to confirm who you are or make sure we understand what you’re asking for.

If your request is particularly complex and we’re allowed more time to respond, we’ll let you know within the first month and explain why.

How to make a data protection complaint
If you have any concerns about how we’ve handled your personal information, please email privacy@sequelgroup.co.ukso we can look into it.

You don’t need to use a particular format. Just give us enough information to understand what has happened and what you’re concerned about.

Once we hear from you, we’ll acknowledge your complaint, look into it without unnecessary delay, contact you if we need any more information and let you know what we find.

We hope we’ll be able to resolve your concerns, but you also have the right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Accessibility
We want this policy to be accessible to everyone. If you’d like it in an alternative format (such as large print or plain text) please contact us at hello@sequelgroup.co.uk.

Changes to this policy
We may need to update this policy from time to time, for example if the law changes, we introduce new services or the way we use personal information changes.

We’ll always publish the latest version on this page and update the version number and date. If we make an important change that could affect you, we’ll take reasonable steps to let you know.