Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal information Happy People Learning Centre collects about you, why we collect it, what we do with it and the rights you have over it. It applies to this website and to everything we do as a training provider, including courses, NVQ assessments, health and safety tests and CITB test bookings.

We are the data controller for that information. Happy People Learning Centre is owned by HPL Recruitment Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company registration number 09128377, VAT registration number 345111927, whose registered office is 27 Freetrade House, Lowther Road, Stanmore, HA7 1EP.

We handle your information under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under registration number [ICO REGISTRATION NUMBER].

You can reach our Data Protection Officer at hello@hplcentre.com, or by post at the address above.

The information we collect

Most of what we hold you give us yourself, when you buy a course, book a test, create an account, complete an enrolment form, contact us or subscribe to our newsletter. Some of it reaches us from an employer or contractor who is arranging training for you, and some is generated as you use the site.

Depending on what you do with us, we may hold:

• Your name, email address, postal address and telephone number
• Your account details, including how you signed in and when you last did
• What you bought, what you paid, whether you paid in full or made a first payment, and the invoices and receipts that go with it
• Course bookings, session dates, attendance, assessment records, test scores and answers, and the certificates issued to you
• Date of birth, National Insurance number and nationality, where an awarding body requires them to register you for a qualification
• Evidence you submit for your NVQ portfolio, including photographs, video, references from your supervisor and proof of identity
• Your messages to us, whether by the contact form, email, telephone, WhatsApp or social media, and our replies
• Anything you post publicly in our forum
• Technical information about your visit, such as your IP address, device and browser, and the pages you looked at

Special category information

Some of what an awarding body asks us to collect is what the law calls special category data, which is given extra protection. For us that means information about your ethnicity, and about any disability, health condition or learning difficulty you tell us about.

We collect ethnicity only for equal opportunities monitoring, and we rely on the condition in Schedule 1, Part 2, paragraph 8 of the Data Protection Act 2018, which permits processing for reviewing equality of opportunity or treatment. You do not have to answer.

We collect information about a disability, health condition or learning difficulty so that we and the awarding body can make reasonable adjustments to your training and assessment. We rely on your explicit consent for this, under Article 9(2)(a) of the UK GDPR, and you can withdraw that consent at any time by emailing hello@hplcentre.com.

Why we use your information, and our lawful basis

We must have a lawful basis for everything we do with your information. Ours are these:

• To enrol you on a course, arrange your assessment, book your test and deliver what you have paid for - because it is necessary to perform our contract with you
• To register you with an awarding body and to have your qualification or card issued - because it is necessary to perform our contract with you
• To take payment, issue invoices, handle refunds and keep our accounting records - performance of our contract, and our legal obligations under tax law
• To answer your enquiries and provide support - performance of our contract where you are a customer, and our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us where you are not
• To send you marketing about our courses - your consent, or, where you have bought from us before, the soft opt-in permitted by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. Every marketing email carries an unsubscribe link
• To keep the site secure, prevent fraud, understand how the site is used and improve it - our legitimate interests in running a safe and effective service
• To handle complaints, appeals and disputes, and to meet requests from awarding bodies, regulators and UK public authorities - our legitimate interests and our legal obligations

Who we share it with

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. We do share it where it is needed to deliver what you bought:

• Awarding bodies and card schemes, such as GQA Qualifications and CITB, so your qualification, test result and CSCS card can be issued. Tell us if you want to know exactly which body holds your record and we will
• Our trainers, assessors and internal quality assurers, who are given only what they need to verify your attendance and assess your work
• VideoTile Learning, which delivers our online health and safety courses on its own platform and emails you your login
• Pearson VUE, through which CITB Health, Safety and Environment tests are booked and sat at our approved test centre
• Our suppliers, who process information strictly on our instructions: Stripe for payments, Auth0 for sign-in, Vercel and Render for hosting, Resend for our emails, Calendly for assessor bookings and Google Workspace for our mailboxes
• Professional advisers, insurers, and public authorities where the law requires it

Where your information is held

Our database and application servers are hosted in the European Economic Area, in Frankfurt, Germany. The UK Government has decided that the EEA offers an adequate level of protection, so no additional safeguard is needed for that.

Some of our suppliers are based outside the UK and the EEA, principally in the United States. Where information is transferred there, it is protected by the safeguards the UK GDPR requires, such as the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, or by the supplier's certification under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

How long we keep it

We keep information only as long as we need it, and then delete it or make it anonymous.

• Payment, invoice and accounting records: six years from the end of the financial year they relate to, which is what HMRC requires
• Learner records, assessment evidence and certification records: for as long as the awarding body requires us to hold them, which is currently [AWARDING BODY RETENTION PERIOD]
• Your account and order history: while your account is open, and for six years afterwards where the records are also accounting records
• Enquiries that do not become a booking: [ENQUIRY RETENTION PERIOD]
• Marketing contacts: until you unsubscribe, after which we keep a record of your address purely to make sure we do not email you again
• Call recordings, where calls are recorded for training and quality purposes: [CALL RECORDING RETENTION PERIOD]

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected if it is wrong, to have it erased, to restrict or object to what we do with it, to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw your consent at any time where consent is what we rely on. You can also object at any time to your information being used for direct marketing, and we will stop.

Some of these rights do not apply in every situation. We cannot, for example, erase an assessment record an awarding body requires us to keep, or an invoice we must retain for tax.

To exercise any of them, email hello@hplcentre.com with your name and what you would like us to do. We will respond within one month. There is no charge, unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

Complaining to the ICO

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information we would like the chance to put it right, so please tell us first. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at any time.

Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Telephone 0303 123 1113. Website ico.org.uk.

Automated decision-making

We do not make decisions about you by automated means alone, and we do not profile you. Your assessment results are decided by a human assessor and, where applicable, by the awarding body.

Cookies

Our website uses a small amount of storage on your device to keep you signed in, remember your basket and remember whether you chose the light or dark theme. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. Our cookies policy explains exactly what is stored and how to control it.

Children

Our courses and this website are intended for adults working in construction. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has given us their information, email hello@hplcentre.com and we will delete it.

Keeping your information safe

We use physical, technical and organisational measures to protect your information: encrypted connections, access limited to the people who need it, and suppliers chosen for their own security standards. We never see or store your card details - payments are handled by Stripe. Please remember that ordinary email is not a secure way to send sensitive information.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our business changes. The date at the top tells you when it last changed. Where a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you.

Contacting us

Happy People Learning Centre, 27 Freetrade House, Lowther Road, Stanmore, HA7 1EP, United Kingdom.

Telephone: 02034885582

Email: hello@hplcentre.com