Welcome to Switchplane Ltd's (Switchplane) privacy and cookies notice. Switchplane respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) as well as where we interact in the course of our business and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Website Privacy Notice
Welcome to Switchplane Ltd's (Switchplane) privacy notice. Switchplane respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) as well as where we interact in the course of our business and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Please also use the Glossary to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy notice.
This notice is provided for your information. It explains how we collect and use your personal data, and sets out your rights under UK data protection law. You do not need to agree to anything to read this notice - it is here to keep you informed.
We keep our privacy notice under regular review and may update it from time to time, so please ensure you regularly check back to review it.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
1. Important information and who we are
Purpose of this privacy notice
This privacy notice aims to give you information on how Switchplane collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you sign up to our newsletter, free marketing advice or social media top tips or downloadable content, utilise our 'contact us' form or take part in a competition. This privacy notice also provides information as to how Switchplane collects and processes your personal data during the course of our business, including any data you may provide at exhibitions, networking events and by telephone, email or post.
This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.
Controller
Switchplane Ltd is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as "Switchplane", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy notice).
We have appointed a data privacy manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the data privacy manager using the details set out below.
Contact details
|
Field |
Details |
|
Full name of legal entity |
Switchplane Ltd |
|
Data Privacy Manager |
Donna Fielder, COO |
|
Email address |
data@switchplane.com |
|
Telephone number |
01323 505 980 |
|
Postal address |
Switchplane Ltd, 24 Broad Road, Eastbourne, BN20 9QU |
Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
2. The data we collect about you
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, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you, depending on the services we provide to you, which we have grouped together as follows:
- Identity Data includes first name, last name or company, photograph, driving licence and other identification document.
- Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
- Financial Data includes bank account payment card details; payroll information.
- Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
- Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
- Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, criminal convictions and offences, feedback and survey responses.
- Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
- Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.
We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.]
3. How is your personal data collected?
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
- Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you apply for our services; subscribe to our service or publications; request marketing to be sent to you; leave a comment on our website; enter a competition, promotion or survey; or give us some feedback.
- Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy at the end of this privacy notice.
- Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive Technical Data from analytics providers such as Google Analytics (based in the US); advertising networks; and search information providers. We may receive Identity and Contact Data from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register, from events such as business cards or attendee lists, and from data brokers or aggregators.
If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with our services). In this case, we may have to cancel a service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
4. How we use your personal data
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to perform a contract with you to provide the services we have agreed to or are about to agree to;
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests.
- Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
- We rely on your consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us
Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.
Purposes for which we will use your personal data
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so.
|
Purpose / Activity |
Type of data |
Lawful basis |
|
To register you as a new customer |
Identity; Contact |
Performance of a contract with you |
|
To process and deliver your order including managing payments, fees and charges and recovering money owed |
Identity; Contact; Financial; Transaction; Marketing and Communications |
Performance of a contract with you; Legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us) |
|
To manage our relationship with you including notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy notice, asking you to leave a review or take a survey, and service announcements |
Identity; Contact; Profile; Marketing and Communications |
Performance of a contract with you; Legal obligation; Legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our services) |
|
To engage with you on our website, such as responding to your enquiry or in the comments section of our blog |
Identity; Contact |
Legitimate interests (communicating with you and providing assistance); Performance of a contract with you; |
|
To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey |
Identity; Contact; Profile; Usage; Marketing and Communications |
Performance of a contract with you; Legitimate interests (to study how customers use our services and to develop our business) |
|
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) |
Identity; Contact; Technical |
Legitimate interests (running our business, IT services, network security, fraud prevention); Legal obligation |
|
To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure the effectiveness of our advertising |
Identity; Contact; Profile; Usage; Marketing and Communications; Technical |
Legitimate interests (to study how customers use our services, develop them, grow our business and inform our marketing strategy) |
|
To use data analytics to improve our website, services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences |
Technical; Usage; Contact; Identity; Marketing and Communications |
Legitimate interests (to define types of customers, keep our website updated and relevant, develop our business and inform our marketing strategy); Consent |
|
To send you relevant marketing communications and make personalised suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you based on your Profile Data |
Identity; Contact; Technical; Profile; Usage; Marketing and Communications |
Legitimate interests (to carry out direct marketing, develop our products/services and grow our business); Consent, having obtained your prior consent to receiving direct marketing communications |
|
To gather CVs and other information for the recruitment process |
Identity; Contact |
Legitimate interests (to grow our business) |
Automated decision-making
We do not use any software to make automated decisions about you when you visit our website or engage in our services.
Direct Marketing
You will receive marketing communications from us where you have opted to do so or where you have requested information from us or purchased services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.
We may also analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view which products, services and offers may be of interest to you so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications.
Third-party marketing
We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any company outside Switchplane Ltd for marketing purposes.
Opting out of Marketing
You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out or unsubscribe links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.
We will need to maintain a restricted record of Contact and Identity Data where you have opted out of receiving marketing and this is to prevent any future marketing being carried out and, unless otherwise informed, no other processing shall be carried out in relation to this information.
Cookies
We use cookies to operate our website. For more information about the cookies we use and how to change your cookie preferences, please see our cookies policy at the end of this privacy notice.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
5. Disclosures of your personal data
We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above.
- External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
- Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
6. International transfers
We may use external third parties who are based outside the United Kingdom (UK) and their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
- UK adequacy regulations apply in respect of the country setting out in law that the legal framework in that country, territory, sector or international organisation has been assessed as providing ‘adequate’ protection for individuals’ rights and freedoms for their personal data.
- Specific contractual clauses approved by the UK are in place which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK. This will be either an International Data Transfer Agreement or the International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses for international data transfers. Please contact the data privacy manager if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
7. Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. 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.I guess
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
8. Data retention
How long will you use my personal data for?
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 of up to seven years for applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements, in the event of a complaint, if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact Data, Work Data, Identity Data, Financial Data and Transaction Data) for seven years after you cease being customers for e.g. tax purposes.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see 9. Your Legal Rights below for further information.
In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
9. Your legal rights
You have the right to:
- Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a 'data subject access request'). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
- Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
- Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
- Request restrictionof processing of your personal data in certain scenarios, for example where you want us to establish the data's accuracy, or where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it for legal claims.
- Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data.
- Make a complaint at any time to us and to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). However, we would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact Donna Fielder, COO / Data Privacy Manager: data@switchplane.com
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Time limit to respond
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
10. Glossary
Lawful Basis
Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service and the most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests.
Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.
Third Parties
External third parties include:
- Service providers acting as processors based in the United Kingdom who provide IT and system administration services.
- Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors, credit reference agencies and insurers based in the United Kingdom who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
- HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
- Survey development and distribution platforms, acting as a processor, such as SurveyMonkey, based in the US and within the EEA who provide online survey development services; Mailchimp which is based in the US; Amazon Web Services which has a global network of locations.
- Social media platforms acting as processors or joint controllers.
This version was updated September 2026
Switchplane Cookies Policy
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive.
Cookies we use
We use the following types of cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies. These are required for the operation of our website and do not require your consent. These essential cookies are always enabled because our website won’t work properly without them. They include cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website. You can switch off these cookies in your browser settings but you may then not be able to access all or parts of our website.
- Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website. These require your consent before being set.
- Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website and enable us to personalise our content for you. These require your consent before being set.
- Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. These require your consent before being set.
The individual cookies we use are set out in the table below:
|
Cookie |
Purpose |
Further information |
|
HubSpot |
HubSpot is a third-party marketing and sales software tool. HubSpot uses analytical and performance cookies which allow us to learn how users that complete our contact form have moved around our website. |
HubSpot Privacy Policy |
As well as cookies we may use pixels. Pixels are similar to cookies, but are relevant in a social media context (such as Facebook) and for emails. A pixel is an analytics tool which measures the effectiveness of advertisements and enables us to provide advertisements which are relevant to you, it also helps us measure the effectiveness of our communications, improve the relevance of the information we send, and better understand our audience's interests.
Choices about cookies we use
When you first visit our website, we will ask for your consent to set non-essential cookies via our cookie consent tool. You can update your preferences at any time via the cookie settings link at the bottom of our website.
However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.
Third Party Cookies
Please note that the following third parties (including advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. To deactivate the use of third-party advertising cookies, you may visit the consumer page to manage the use of these types of cookies.
|
Cookie |
Purpose |
Further information |
|
|
These cookies are used to identify users, track users' activity and store users' preferences. |
Google Cookies Policy |
|
Google Analytics |
These cookies are used to record who visits our site, their activity on the site, and their location. |
Google Analytics Cookie Usage Guide To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit |
This version was updated in September 2026
Website Privacy Notice
Welcome to Switchplane Ltd's (Switchplane) privacy notice. Switchplane respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) as well as where we interact in the course of our business and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Please also use the Glossary to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy notice.
This notice is provided for your information. It explains how we collect and use your personal data, and sets out your rights under UK data protection law. You do not need to agree to anything to read this notice - it is here to keep you informed.
We keep our privacy notice under regular review and may update it from time to time, so please ensure you regularly check back to review it.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
1. Important information and who we are
Purpose of this privacy notice
This privacy notice aims to give you information on how Switchplane collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you sign up to our newsletter, free marketing advice or social media top tips or downloadable content, utilise our 'contact us' form or take part in a competition. This privacy notice also provides information as to how Switchplane collects and processes your personal data during the course of our business, including any data you may provide at exhibitions, networking events and by telephone, email or post.
This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.
Controller
Switchplane Ltd is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as "Switchplane", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy notice).
We have appointed a data privacy manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the data privacy manager using the details set out below.
Contact details
|
Field |
Details |
|
Full name of legal entity |
Switchplane Ltd |
|
Data Privacy Manager |
Donna Fielder, COO |
|
Email address |
data@switchplane.com |
|
Telephone number |
01323 505 980 |
|
Postal address |
Switchplane Ltd, 24 Broad Road, Eastbourne, BN20 9QU |
Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
2. The data we collect about you
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, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you, depending on the services we provide to you, which we have grouped together as follows:
- Identity Data includes first name, last name or company, photograph, driving licence and other identification document.
- Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
- Financial Data includes bank account payment card details; payroll information.
- Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
- Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
- Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, criminal convictions and offences, feedback and survey responses.
- Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
- Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.
We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.]
3. How is your personal data collected?
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
- Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you apply for our services; subscribe to our service or publications; request marketing to be sent to you; leave a comment on our website; enter a competition, promotion or survey; or give us some feedback.
- Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy at the end of this privacy notice.
- Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive Technical Data from analytics providers such as Google Analytics (based in the US); advertising networks; and search information providers. We may receive Identity and Contact Data from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register, from events such as business cards or attendee lists, and from data brokers or aggregators.
If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with our services). In this case, we may have to cancel a service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
4. How we use your personal data
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to perform a contract with you to provide the services we have agreed to or are about to agree to;
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests.
- Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
- We rely on your consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us
Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.
Purposes for which we will use your personal data
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so.
|
Purpose / Activity |
Type of data |
Lawful basis |
|
To register you as a new customer |
Identity; Contact |
Performance of a contract with you |
|
To process and deliver your order including managing payments, fees and charges and recovering money owed |
Identity; Contact; Financial; Transaction; Marketing and Communications |
Performance of a contract with you; Legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us) |
|
To manage our relationship with you including notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy notice, asking you to leave a review or take a survey, and service announcements |
Identity; Contact; Profile; Marketing and Communications |
Performance of a contract with you; Legal obligation; Legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our services) |
|
To engage with you on our website, such as responding to your enquiry or in the comments section of our blog |
Identity; Contact |
Legitimate interests (communicating with you and providing assistance); Performance of a contract with you; |
|
To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey |
Identity; Contact; Profile; Usage; Marketing and Communications |
Performance of a contract with you; Legitimate interests (to study how customers use our services and to develop our business) |
|
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) |
Identity; Contact; Technical |
Legitimate interests (running our business, IT services, network security, fraud prevention); Legal obligation |
|
To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure the effectiveness of our advertising |
Identity; Contact; Profile; Usage; Marketing and Communications; Technical |
Legitimate interests (to study how customers use our services, develop them, grow our business and inform our marketing strategy) |
|
To use data analytics to improve our website, services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences |
Technical; Usage; Contact; Identity; Marketing and Communications |
Legitimate interests (to define types of customers, keep our website updated and relevant, develop our business and inform our marketing strategy); Consent |
|
To send you relevant marketing communications and make personalised suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you based on your Profile Data |
Identity; Contact; Technical; Profile; Usage; Marketing and Communications |
Legitimate interests (to carry out direct marketing, develop our products/services and grow our business); Consent, having obtained your prior consent to receiving direct marketing communications |
|
To gather CVs and other information for the recruitment process |
Identity; Contact |
Legitimate interests (to grow our business) |
Automated decision-making
We do not use any software to make automated decisions about you when you visit our website or engage in our services.
Direct Marketing
You will receive marketing communications from us where you have opted to do so or where you have requested information from us or purchased services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.
We may also analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view which products, services and offers may be of interest to you so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications.
Third-party marketing
We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any company outside Switchplane Ltd for marketing purposes.
Opting out of Marketing
You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out or unsubscribe links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.
We will need to maintain a restricted record of Contact and Identity Data where you have opted out of receiving marketing and this is to prevent any future marketing being carried out and, unless otherwise informed, no other processing shall be carried out in relation to this information.
Cookies
We use cookies to operate our website. For more information about the cookies we use and how to change your cookie preferences, please see our cookies policy at the end of this privacy notice.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
5. Disclosures of your personal data
We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above.
- External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
- Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
6. International transfers
We may use external third parties who are based outside the United Kingdom (UK) and their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
- UK adequacy regulations apply in respect of the country setting out in law that the legal framework in that country, territory, sector or international organisation has been assessed as providing ‘adequate’ protection for individuals’ rights and freedoms for their personal data.
- Specific contractual clauses approved by the UK are in place which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK. This will be either an International Data Transfer Agreement or the International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses for international data transfers. Please contact the data privacy manager if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
7. Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. 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.I guess
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
8. Data retention
How long will you use my personal data for?
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 of up to seven years for applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements, in the event of a complaint, if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact Data, Work Data, Identity Data, Financial Data and Transaction Data) for seven years after you cease being customers for e.g. tax purposes.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see 9. Your Legal Rights below for further information.
In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
9. Your legal rights
You have the right to:
- Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a 'data subject access request'). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
- Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
- Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
- Request restrictionof processing of your personal data in certain scenarios, for example where you want us to establish the data's accuracy, or where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it for legal claims.
- Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data.
- Make a complaint at any time to us and to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). However, we would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact Donna Fielder, COO / Data Privacy Manager: data@switchplane.com
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Time limit to respond
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
10. Glossary
Lawful Basis
Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service and the most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests.
Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.
Third Parties
External third parties include:
- Service providers acting as processors based in the United Kingdom who provide IT and system administration services.
- Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors, credit reference agencies and insurers based in the United Kingdom who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
- HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
- Survey development and distribution platforms, acting as a processor, such as SurveyMonkey, based in the US and within the EEA who provide online survey development services; Mailchimp which is based in the US; Amazon Web Services which has a global network of locations.
- Social media platforms acting as processors or joint controllers.
This version was updated September 2026
Switchplane Cookies Policy
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive.
Cookies we use
We use the following types of cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies. These are required for the operation of our website and do not require your consent. These essential cookies are always enabled because our website won’t work properly without them. They include cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website. You can switch off these cookies in your browser settings but you may then not be able to access all or parts of our website.
- Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website. These require your consent before being set.
- Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website and enable us to personalise our content for you. These require your consent before being set.
- Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. These require your consent before being set.
The individual cookies we use are set out in the table below:
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Cookie |
Purpose |
Further information |
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HubSpot |
HubSpot is a third-party marketing and sales software tool. HubSpot uses analytical and performance cookies which allow us to learn how users that complete our contact form have moved around our website. |
HubSpot Privacy Policy |
As well as cookies we may use pixels. Pixels are similar to cookies, but are relevant in a social media context (such as Facebook) and for emails. A pixel is an analytics tool which measures the effectiveness of advertisements and enables us to provide advertisements which are relevant to you, it also helps us measure the effectiveness of our communications, improve the relevance of the information we send, and better understand our audience's interests.
Choices about cookies we use
When you first visit our website, we will ask for your consent to set non-essential cookies via our cookie consent tool. You can update your preferences at any time via the cookie settings link at the bottom of our website.
However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.
Third Party Cookies
Please note that the following third parties (including advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. To deactivate the use of third-party advertising cookies, you may visit the consumer page to manage the use of these types of cookies.
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Cookie |
Purpose |
Further information |
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These cookies are used to identify users, track users' activity and store users' preferences. |
Google Cookies Policy |
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Google Analytics |
These cookies are used to record who visits our site, their activity on the site, and their location. |
Google Analytics Cookie Usage Guide To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit |
This version was updated in September 2026