Privacy Statement

The London Development Agency (LDA) is committed to protecting the privacy of our customers and website visitors. Our relationship with you is valuable and we understand the importance you place on the privacy and security of information that personally identifies you. We take your privacy seriously. Please read the following in order to learn more about our Privacy Policy and information-gathering and dissemination practices.

This Privacy Policy sets out the data processing practices carried out through the use of the Internet and any other electronic communications networks by the LDA. If you have any requests concerning your personal information or any queries with regard to these practices, please contact us at 020 7593 8363 or brownfield@lda.gov.uk.

The LDA provides a variety of on-line offerings, including information about LDA products and services, business information and publicity. While you are not required to provide us with personal data in order to browse our website, we do collect personal information from visitors who register with this website, or use our on-line forms or services, or e-mail us their details.
When we ask you for information, we will comply with the law, including the Data Protection Act 1998. We are a data controller for the purposes of that Act. Our entry in the register of data controllers is Z8832694.

Some areas of our website require you to register with us prior to obtaining access to its content or to certain services. Our registration process requires you to give your name, address, telephone and fax numbers and an e-mail address. We use this information to provide you with the service you have requested or to respond to your enquiries.

Personal data may be required to keep you informed of developments in new or existing activities, guidance services and facilities, promotions, conferences, seminars and training offerings.

From time to time we may offer users the option of participating in contests or surveys. Participation is entirely optional. Any information you provide during the course of a contest or research will be used to improve facilities and services or to award prizes. Additional terms and conditions may apply to contests, which will be notified to prospective applicants.

We may request optional information from you on our registration forms. We request this optional information so that we may serve you better (for example to provide more tailored products and services to you) and so that we may understand our users better (for example through internal research, data analysis, market research and product research). If additional information is requested, it will be identified as optional.

In the normal course of our business, the LDA supplements the contact information provided by our users with information from third party marketing firms. We use this additional information (for example demographic and census information) to improve our service by, for example, appropriately targeting our offers, promotions, services and events.

Users of our website are offered the opportunity to participate in discussion forums and to post news, comments and other content on our query forms. These services enable users to interact easily with our staff about the functionality of the database and associated web-database.  The query forms provide a way of communicating directly with the LDA maintenance team.

A cookie is a small piece of information sent by a web server to a web browser, which enables the server to collect information from the browser. The only personal information a cookie can obtain is the information that you supply. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. However, cookies enhance our website performance by providing a secure way for us to verify your identity during your visit to our website and to personalise your experience on our site, making it more convenient for you to use.

The LDA website uses cookies to identify you when you visit the website, to keep track of your browsing patterns and to build up a demographic profile. Our use of cookies allows registered users to be presented with a personalised version of the site, to carry out transactions and to have access to information about their account.

You do not need to have cookies turned on to successfully use our service. You can refuse cookies by turning them off on your web browser. However, switching off cookies will restrict your use of our website. If you want to know how to do this please look at the help menu on your browser.

You can find out more about the use of cookies on CookieCentral website.

With or without cookies, our website keeps track of usage data such as the source address of a page request (i.e. your IP address and domain name), the date and time of the page request, the referring website (if any) and other parameters in the URL (e.g. search criteria). We use this data to better understand the use of our website by visitors and to identify user preferences. This information is stored in log files and is used for aggregated and statistical reporting, but is not attributed to you as an individual.

We recognise industry standards and employ security safeguards to protect information from unauthorised access and misuse. We use the most accurate and current information you provide in order to process your request. Furthermore, whenever you transmit sensitive information such as billing or credit card information to us through our website, we provide you access to our secure server that allows encryption across the Internet.

The LDA and its designees (including the local enterprise companies) will be free to copy, disclose, distribute, incorporate and otherwise use the communications in all data, images, sound, text and other things embodied therein for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Users of our website are prohibited from posting or transmitting to or from this site any unlawful, threatening, libellous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic or other material that would violate any law.

We may be required to share the information we learn from you with other parties. We do not sell or rent this information to others but may send personally identifiable information about you to other parties in the following circumstances:

The LDA may share your information with professional advisors, strategic partners, survey and research organisations, the Greater London Authority, local enterprise companies and other individuals and organisations employed by us to perform functions on our behalf. Examples of these functions include the delivery of packages, postal mail, faxes and e-mails, providing marketing assistance in data analysis, handling credit card transactions, fulfilling orders, providing services (including but not limited to careers and employment services) and following up on enquiries (by phone, e-mail, post or fax). These agents may have access to personal information in order to perform their functions, but they may not use it for any other purpose.

We will release personal information where we are required to do so by law, or by the regulations and other rules to which we are subject (including auditing requirements). We may also exchange information with other organisations, agencies and companies for the purposes of fraud protection and reduction of credit risk.

Other than in the above situations, you will receive notice from us when your personal information may be disclosed to third parties and you will have the opportunity to decide not to share that information.

Our website may contain links to other websites which are outside our control and are not covered by this Privacy Policy. If you access other sites using the links provided, the operators of these sites may collect information from you which will be used by them in accordance with their privacy policy, which may differ from ours.

Given that the Internet is a global environment, using the Internet to collect and process personal data necessarily involves the transmission of data on an international basis. Therefore, by browsing this website and communicating electronically with us, you acknowledge and agree to our processing of personal data in this way.

You have a right of access to the personal data held about you, and to request a copy of the information held by us in our records (for which we may charge a small fee). You also have the right to require us to correct any inaccuracies in your information. To obtain a copy of the personal information we hold about you, please write to us at:

Public Liasion Unit
London Development Agency
Palestra
197 Blackfriars Road
London
SE1 8AA

We may review and edit this policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes we will notify you by posting a prominent announcement on our web pages.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this policy, or have any concerns about our website practices, or believe that we are not adhering to our privacy policy, please contact us. Should you at any time wish us to remove your personal details from our database please contact us by post, fax or e-mail.