Bedford Music Hub logo

Privacy & Cookie Policy

In order to deliver services to the citizens and communities in Bedford Borough, it is necessary for the Council to collect, gather and process personal data about residents, staff and other individuals. Bedford Borough Council is committed to protecting your personal data when you use its services and/or correspond with it.

The Council has registered as a Data Controller with the information Commissioner’s Office. This registration can be viewed on the ICO website https://ico.org.uk/ Registration Number Z5916725

As a Data Controller, the Council sets out the purposes and methods for processing information and ensures safeguards over any personal and special category information it processes.

Information collected by our website

What we collect

For the purpose of making an enquiry or submitting an application, our website may collect the following information. Your name and appropriate contact information including email address, address, preferences and interests. Other information relevant to our service may also be requested.

In relation to online instrumental hire payments, Bedford Borough Council will process your personal data for the following processing purposes:

Your first and last name and instrument details will be stored in the cloud on our hosted system and passed over to our secure card portal, where you will be asked to provide your card details. The information provided to allow us to take payment will be stored on our secure card portal and on our hosted system Granicus for 18 months to allow for chargebacks and refunds as necessary.

Bedford Borough Council is processing this personal data by virtue of the following Lawful Basis: Consent of the data subject.

What we do with the information collected

We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with more information for the product(s)/service(s) you have requested. If you are using our service, we will store your information securely in our office system. When you cease using our service, we will delete your information within the time-period of 2 years. We may use the information to improve our products and services. We may periodically send promotional emails about new products, special offers or other information that we think you may find interesting, using the email address you have provided. From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. We may contact you by email, phone or mail. We may use the information to customise the website according to your interests.

Controlling your personal information

Your personal data will be held by/for the Council within the UK or the EU. We have a range of measures to protect the personal data you provide. These include: cyber security; physical security of the Council’s buildings and training on Data Protection for staff.

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We only pass on your personal details for the purpose of your entry, such as a partner from our website (https://bedfordmusichub.org.uk/our-partners/). We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties that we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.

Bedford Borough Council is the Data Controller processing your information, who can be contacted as follows:

Information Governance, Bedford Borough Council, Borough Hall, Cauldwell Street, Bedford, MK42 9AP

Email: [email protected] Telephone: 01234 267422

If you wish to enquire about your rights as a data subject, whether you wish to request a copy of your own information that Bedford Borough Council holds, request for data portability; rectification or erasure of your data for any reason or objection to any processing, please contact the Council’s GDPR Data Protection Officer email: [email protected] or send to the above address.

Alternatively, if you are unhappy in the way Bedford Borough Council has handled the processing of your information in any way, you have the right to contact the UK’s Supervisory Authority: The Information Commissioner’s Office who can be contacted: by webform: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/email/ by email: [email protected] or by telephone: 0303 123 1113

Security

Website Security

We are 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.

Our website may contain 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.

An introduction to cookies

A cookie is a small file that asks permission to be placed on your computer 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.

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 our website.

Cookies deployed by our website:

  • ensure that functionality operates as intended
  • remember your choices and preferences during and between visits
  • allow you to share pages via social network widgets like Facebook, Twitter and AddThis
  • allow you to interact with our website by leaving comments or opinions
  • post enquiries via our anti-spam enquiry form
  • track your visit for statistical analysis, allowing us to improve the usability, speed and security of our website

Cookies are not deployed to:

  • collect any personal identifiable information (without your express permission)
  • collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
  • pass data to advertising networks
  • pass personally identifiable data to third parties
  • pay sales commissions

Your consent for cookie deployment by our website.

Upon your first visit to our website, you may have noticed our banner alerting you to the use of cookies by our website. In compliance with the 2011 EU Cookie Law, our website operates on an Implied Consent basis. This means that we will assume that you have opted-in for our website to deploy cookies until you choose to deactivate them within your browser settings or via the instructions below. By default, the majority of popular web browsers automatically permit websites to deploy cookies onto your device. Below you can learn more about the specific cookies deployed by our website, and how they can be disabled. For more information on the EU Cookie Law in the UK, we recommend visiting the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) website where you can find the latest information, guidelines and advice on the EU Cookie Law.

Cookies used by our website

Analytical Tracking

Our website has Google Analytics installed which allows us to track and compile anonymous visitor statistics. The information collected ranges from simple traffic volume to the type of browser you are viewing our website with. This information is valuable to us not just for marketing analysis and quantification, but to improve the usability, security and load speed of our website content. Google Analytics is a popular, secure, flagship webmaster product from Google. The privacy and security of Google Analytics data is a high priority at Google that you can read more about on the Google Analytics Data Safeguarding page. Google also offer a Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on that will allow you to automatically Opt-out of all websites that track your activity via Google Analytics. No personal information is collected by Google Analytics.

As mentioned above, upon your first visit our website displays a banner at the top of the page alerting you about cookies being deployed by our website. In order for our website to remember your choice of opting-in, we store an anonymous cookie to remove the alert banner for 28 days. To prevent this cookie from being stored, simply do not accept and close the alert. If you have already accepted the alert and you wish to remove the cookie, please clear your cookies within your browser settings.

Enquiry Forms

Visitors can choose to contact us via enquiry form(s) on our website. In order to prevent spam enquiries, we protect our forms with a CAPTCHA challenge to ensure the submission is from a living person, rather than a computer bot. This CAPTCHA challenge creates a cookie that is used only to check the input response from the user is correct. The CAPTCHA cookie does not store any other information from your enquiry.

Google Maps/Places

Our website may have our Google Maps/Places profile embedded within an iframe. Google Maps creates cookies that enable the functionality of their powerful mapping software. No personal information is stored or shared on the cookies deployed by Google Maps/Places

How to disable cookies

Most modern browsers allow you to control your cookie settings for all websites that you browse. You can disable cookie deployment completely by editing your browser settings, however, in doing this you may be limiting the functionality that is displayed on our website. To learn how to disable cookies on your preferred browser we recommend reading this advice posted by Google.

If you are concerned about cookies tracking your movements on the Internet then you may be concerned about spyware. Spyware is the name given to a particular band of cookies that track personal information about you. There are many antispyware programs that you can use to prevent this from happening. Learn more about antispyware software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware.

As mentioned earlier on this page you call also disable Google Analytics on all websites by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Changes to this notice

We keep this Privacy Notice under regular review and we will place any updates on its Internet site. This Notice was last updated in May 2022.

Last updated on: 16th May 2022