At Stour Vale Academy Trust, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

We may change this Policy from time to time, so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to info@svat.org.uk or in writing to Stour Vale Academy Trust, c/o Halesowen College, Whittingham Road, Halesowen, B63 3NA. Alternatively, you can telephone 0121 585 5385.

Who are we?

Stour Vale Academy Trust is a multi-academy trust consisting of member schools located in Dudley and Sandwell. Our mission is to provide the best possible education for children and young people.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example, when you complete contact or booking forms or engage with other forms within our site.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, the Stour Vale Academy Trust website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. For example, we use cookies to store your country preference. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better, more personalised service.

It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.

Main Cookies used on our site:

• Google Analytics: These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. For more information on Google Analytics’ privacy policy visit here – http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html
• Google Maps: These are Google Maps third-party cookies, which are unique identifiers to allow traffic analysis to Google Maps.

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

• Notify you of changes to our services;
• Send you communications which you have requested and which may be of interest to you. These may relate to our School Direct and / or other programmes or to working with the Trust;
• Process a grant or job application.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third-party service providers: We currently use Google Forms to collect booking information for our Train to Teach courses. Google’s privacy policy can be found here.

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us.

We will not contact you for marketing purposes (e.g. to share information about our School Direct and / or other programmes) by email, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted.

You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: info@svat.org.uk or telephone on 0121 585 5385.

How you can access and update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. You have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you so that you can ensure its accuracy. You can do this by the following methods:

Email: info@svat.org.uk
Telephone: 0121 585 5385
Post: Stour Vale Academy Trust, c/o Halesowen College, Whittingham Road, Halesowen, B63 3NA

Right to erasure

Visitors / users of the site should have the ability to request all records of their personal data held by an organisation erased where there is no legitimate reason for that organisation to hold them, unless required to do so by law. This includes where UK GDPR is superseded by other laws governing the details obtained.

To request erasure of your personal data, please contact us by the following methods:

Email: info@svat.org.uk
Telephone: 0121 585 5385
Post: Stour Vale Academy Trust, c/o Halesowen College, Whittingham Road, Halesowen, B63 3NA

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration
of your information

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Profiling

We do not analyse users’ personal information for profiling purposes.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party site and recommend that you check their policy.

Review of this Policy

We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in January 2022.