Privacy policy

1. Introduction and about us

This privacy notice explains how Ballroom Dancers Federation Limited referred to in this privacy notice as “the BDF” (or “we”, “our”, “us) – collects, uses and shares your personal data.

How we use your personal data depends on whether you interact with us as a BDF Member, a competitor, an adjudicator or official, a volunteer, a ticket buyer or other customer, as a user of our website (www.bdfonline.co.uk) or in some other way.  This privacy notice gives a general overview of how the BDF processes personal data but you may receive more detailed information about data protection (including separate privacy notices) depending on the different ways you interact with us.

BDF is the primary ‘data controller’ of your personal data for the purposes set out below.  The BDF is subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) with effect from 4 May 2019.

2. The categories of personal data we collect

The BDF collects and processes a range of information about you. This includes, for virtually all individuals, your name and contact information (such as your home and/or business address (as applicable), email address and telephone number, and including a parent’s or guardian’s contact details (for example, for competitors who are children, where BDF communications are sent to their parent)), records of communications and interactions we have had with you by various means, basic biographical information including your date of birth and gender (where relevant) and financial information including bank account details (used for accepting payments from you or making them to you, as applicable).

In addition, we will collect the following categories of personal data depending on how you interact with us:

For BDF Members:

  • Membership details;
  • Responses to surveys.

For customers including ticket buyers:

  • Delivery address for products or services, including purchased tickets;
  • Payment information and details of returns or refunds, where relevant; and/or
  • Dietary requirements, access requirements and proof of ID, where relevant for attending BDF events.

For competitors:

  • Contact details;
  • Competition results.

For adjudicators and officials:

  • Accreditations, qualifications and training;
  • Availability, selection and travel information;
  • Reports of couples and events;
  • DBS information (criminal records checks), where applicable; and/or
  • Disciplinary and safeguarding information, where relevant.

For volunteers:

  • Records of activity such as volunteer role(s) and number of hours;
  • Application or registration details for the purposes of volunteering;
  • Reference checks;
  • Disciplinary and safeguarding information, where relevant; and/or
  • Availability information.

For website users:

  • Information provided through our website, including in messages and forms, for example forms for updating communication and marketing preferences.

Our administration of BDF may also require us to process special category data (including data relating to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, health and sexual life) and/or data relating to criminal convictions and offences (together “sensitive personal data”).

3. How we collect personal data

We may collect your personal information in a number of ways, principally:

  • Directly from you, for example when you apply for BDF Membership, purchase our products or services including tickets, attend BDF events, enter a competition, join a training programme as a competitor, provide lecturing or officiating services, and make enquiries on our website, and when you interact with us during your participation in BDF in various other ways;
  • From someone else acting on your behalf, for example when a parent or guardian acting for you as their child or when a ticket buyer names you as their guest at an BDF event;
  • On rare occasions, we may receive information about you from others who are not acting on your behalf (for example, where someone makes a complaint about you which we then investigate);
  • By creating it ourselves, for example when we produce competition reports from watching dancers compete at events; and/or
  • When you make enquiries on our website, or when you interact with us (for example, where you volunteer to assist with a competition, tournament or league organised by us, sign up for our volunteer communications, enquire about a volunteering opportunity).

4. Our basis for processing personal data and the purposes for which we use it

Performance of contracts.  The BDF will process your personal data where this is necessary for the performance of a contract with you, or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract. For example, we need to process personal data in order to comply with the terms and conditions of membership with BDF Members, other terms and conditions relating to the purchase of products or services including tickets, travel funding with professional couples, services contracts with adjudicators and officials, volunteer agreements and the terms and conditions applicable to the use of our website.

Compliance with our legal obligations.  In some cases, the BDF needs to process your personal data in order to comply with its legal obligations. For example, we need to process personal data in order to comply with health and safety legislation, carry out DBS (criminal records) checks on adjudicators, officials and volunteer roles (where relevant) for safeguarding purposes, report certain tax information about our financial arrangements with third parties to HM Revenue & Customs and assist with investigations by police and/or other competent authorities.

Legitimate interests.  In other cases, the BDF has ‘legitimate interests’ in processing personal information about individuals we interact with. We have many such interests, including commercial interests and those with a wider public benefit.  In essence, our principal legitimate interests are in pursuing our mission to get more people competing more often and administering BDF in a way that promotes and safeguards the integrity of our business.  For example, we need to process personal data in pursuit of our legitimate interests in order to:

  • organise competitions and major events, and process and publish results, ratings and rankings data from competitions, including disciplinary data, records of code violations, and other personal data which is necessary;
  • market the BDF’s products and services (including tickets, congresses, training courses and events), and promote dancing across Britain more generally;
  • ensure the security of BDF events, including by recording individuals’ photographs as part of event accreditation processes;
  • operate a customer services team, conduct surveys and seek advice from advisers with the aim of improving the BDF as a whole;
  • keep appropriate records of adjudicators, officials and volunteers.

Where the BDF relies on legitimate interests as the legal basis for processing personal data, it has considered whether or not those interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights or freedoms of the individuals whose data are being processed and concluded that the processing is, on balance, fair.

Consent.  The BDF may also process your personal data on the basis of consent you give, for example to send you certain direct marketing communications.

Processing special categories of data.  Where we process sensitive personal data, other legal bases for processing may apply, including where our processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims (for example, to protect and/or defend our property or rights, or those of other stakeholders), or where coaches or officials provide us with data relating to criminal convictions and offences as part of the DBS disclosure process).

5. Who we may share your data with

Personal information collected and processed by the BDF may be shared with the following recipients, or categories of recipients, where necessary:

  • Someone acting on your behalf, for example a parent or guardian who has agreed for you as their child to take part on BDF events;
  • Our executive committee and volunteers (as applicable), for the purposes of providing particular products or services to you;
  • Competition organisers and officials involved in competitions you are taking part in;
  • (Where you are a volunteer) with our executive committee and other volunteers, for the purposes of volunteer management and administration and any volunteering application or project; and to arrange your accreditation for an event;
  • For competitors, other dance organisations such as the WDC, BDC and BCDC, competition organisers, ratings and rankings organisations such as the DPA.

6. How long we will store your data

We may retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes set out in this privacy notice and/or the BDF’s reasonable requirements.  On expiry of the relevant retention period, your personal data will be deleted, suppressed or anonymised, as applicable, save that we will retain comprehensive details of competitions’ results for archiving purposes in the public interest, or historical or statistical purposes.

7. Your rights in relation to your personal data

Under the GDPR, you have the right to:

  • obtain access to, and copies of, the personal data that we hold about you;
  • require us to correct the personal data we hold about you if it is incorrect;
  • require us to erase your personal data in certain circumstances;
  • require us to restrict our data processing activities in certain circumstances;
  • receive from us the personal data we hold about you which you have provided to us, in a reasonable format specified by you, including for the purpose of your transmitting that personal data to another data controller;
  • to object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to any of our particular processing activities where you feel this has a disproportionate impact on you; and
  • where our processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw that consent, without affecting the lawfulness of our processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us in writing using the contact details below.  Please note that these rights are not absolute and we may be entitled (or required) to refuse requests where exceptions apply.

If you are not satisfied with how we are processing your personal data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can also find out more about your rights under the GDPR (and other data protection legislation) from the Information Commissioner’s Office website available at: www.ico.org.uk.

8. If you do not provide personal data

In some cases described above, the provision of personal data is a contractual requirement, and/or a statutory requirement if you wish to engage with the BDF in a certain way.  In those and other cases, if you do not provide us with certain personal data, we may not be able to work with you or provide our products or services to you (as applicable), or it may adversely affect the provision of our services to you.

9. Cookies

Information may be sent to your computer in the form of an Internet “cookie” to allow the BDF servers to monitor your requirements. The cookie is stored on your computer. The BDF server may request that your computer return a cookie to it. These return cookies do not contain any information supplied by you.

This is necessary to allow the BDF to measure the usability of the systems, which will help to improve the user experience of our websites. Your browser software should however enable you to block cookies if you wish to.

Contact us

If you have any queries about this privacy notice or how we process your personal data, you may contact us:

  • by email: info@bdfonline.co.uk
  • or by post: Data Protection The Ballroom Dancers Federation, Dellwood, Tompsets Bank, Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5LN.

Published May 2019