Our privacy policy

Keeping your data safe

At Slate and Mortar, we are committed to keeping your personal data safe and secure and handling it in accordance with our legal obligations. This Privacy Policy sets out in detail the purposes for which we process your personal data, who we share it with, what rights you have in relation to that data and everything else we think is important for you to know.

Who are we?

Slate and Mortar is an independent video production company. At Slate and Mortar, we produce videos for clients and partner with organisations to make video content for broadcast, online and for social media purposes and other similar purposes.

This policy applies to any personal information handled by Slate and Mortar.

Who’s in control?

Slate and Mortar ask for contributors and participants consent for all services we provide. When working with contributors and participants to produce films we ask for consent to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. Each individual must provide “clear affirmative action” that they consent to the video content, materials being created for the specific purpose. Slate and Mortar will expressly obtain active consent from an individual that the footage is to be used for each specific purpose. Further, at the time of obtaining consent, Slate and Mortar will explain to individuals that they are able to withdraw consent at any time but also that this would not render processing on the basis of consent prior to withdrawal to be unlawful. Individuals must also be able to easily and freely withdraw consent at any time and use their right to be forgotten. If consent is withdrawn, Slate and Mortar will be able to provide a legitimate interest statement for its own requirements for Slate and Mortar led projects. For all client-led projects, commissions and corporate work where Slate and Mortar is being paid to create a film for another party/client/ business we ask that clients offer a legitimate interest statement to Slate and Mortar on request. In this respect, the legitimate interest is held by our client the onus will be on our client to offer transparency and action to participants and contributors associated with the films we make for this purpose. Clients will offer Slate and Mortar an indemnity for this purpose.

Legitimate Interest for Businesses

When providing services to a client, Slate and Mortar will ask that they require the necessary consent and offer all and every needed indemnity and protection to Slate and Mortar in respect to all contributors, participants and subjects, in the instance where consent is subsequently withdrawn from the individual.

The client/commissioner of Slate and Mortar will have a lawful ground for the processing of a business having a “legitimate interest” in the video content even when individuals might withdraw their consent. Slate and Mortar will rely on the onus for the legitimate interest to be solely with the business/ client/ commissioner that employs, instructs/partners with Slate and Mortar. For all purposes aforementioned, Slate and Mortar will have a legitimate interest in the video content created as they have been expressly commissioned to create this content for the business or client.

On commission of work, Slate and Mortar will confirm that the business/client/commissioner commissioning Slate and Mortar for any and all of its services have a “legitimate interest” in continuing to process personal data.

For Slate and Mortar led productions, projects and work, Slate and Mortar have a “legitimate interest” in continuing to process personal data where:

i) there is a real business interest being pursued in continuing to process the personal data;

ii) the processing is absolutely necessary in order for the business to pursue that interest (i.e. the interest cannot be pursued in another way which is proportionate); and

iii) the processing is balanced against the impact such processing will have on the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects.

Slate and Mortar requires that under the GDPR, the commissioners/ business/ organisation commissioning the services and work of Slate and Mortar show that they have considered the impact their control or processing will have on individuals and that they have put preventative measures in place to limit such impact.

It is important that you understand who is responsible for keeping your data safe. We collect your personal data with your express consent for purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who has ultimate responsibility within Slate and Mortar for making sure your data is treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the law. Our DPO can be contacted by emailing info@slateandmortar.com

What data do we collect and where from?

We collect some data directly from you when you become a contributor on one of our client commissions. This data includes the following:

your full name;
your email address;
Your Company/organisation/trading name (if you choose to provide it)
Landline and mobile numbers (if you choose to provide them)
Mailing and billing addresses (if you choose to provide them)
Social media handles (if you choose to provide them)
Titles (if you choose to provide them)
Photos (if you choose to provide them)
Testimonials (if you choose to provide them)
Payment methods (encrypted)
Forms and survey responses
your date of birth; (if you choose to provide it)
your gender (if you choose to provide it);
your postcode and address (if you choose to provide them)
ethnicity and cultural background (if you choose to provide it)
the borough where you live (if you choose to provide it)
School, college or university (if you choose to provide it)
place of employment (if you choose to provide it)

We collect information about how you use the Slate and Mortar website and social media and similar technology. This includes your viewing history, IP addresses, device identifiers and information about how long you have stayed on certain pages or what pages you have clicked on (Behavioural Data).

We collect information from you on your consent forms to be filmed or recorded on video, film and audiovisual for the purposes of a specific project, film, production, programme, online content.

We will collect personal information from job applications (such as your CV, the application form itself, cover letter and interview notes and recordings).

We also collect anonymised publicly available information from social networking sites such as Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter and others similar, for example, likes, shares, tweets and posts about Slate and Mortar. This information is provided to us by a third party and is fully anonymised so we cannot see who has posted the information. This information is used for internal analysis purposes.

Other means of processing information:

Social Media:

We collect publicly available information from Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn profiles, when users mention our Twitter handle/Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn address, comment on or retweet our posts. We collect posts, handles, names and follower count.

We process this information, under the lawful basis of Legitimate Interest – tracking engagement.

We will use this information to manage our Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn profiles, assess impact and recognise potential collaborators and prospects.

Emails:

We collect information from emails sent to our team members. We collect names, job titles and contact details of contacts that may qualify as leads or can contribute to our policy work.

For clarity and transparency, we refer to Data as information on an individual and footage, photography, audio and/ or visual recordings with the individual featured directly and in the forefront in this Data.

What do we use your data for?

It is important that you understand how and why we use the personal data that we collect about you. This section sets out the different purposes for which we process personal data and which types of personal data we need for each purpose.

Providing you with our services

We use your Data to confirm that we have received express consent from you to be the subject in the video content we create.

We use your Data to provide you with Slate and Mortar services that you request from us.

We use your Data to contact you occasionally with messages about services you have that you may be interested in.

We use your Voluntary Data to enable us to respond to queries, or comments that you have and to make sure that these are appropriately dealt with. If Voluntary Data you provide includes any special categories of personal data (such as information about your health, race or religion), you must make sure before you provide this that you are happy for us to use that Voluntary Data for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

Improving our services

We use Data to help us monitor, analyse and improve Slate and Mortar services. We use this data to help us understand and make sure that we are providing you with the best possible services.

Marketing and advertising

We use Data for marketing and advertising purposes.

Profiling

We use and combine all the data that we hold about you in order to build up a picture of you and the types of products and services which might be of interest to you (your Profile).

We use the data to:

enable us to assess our performance and to improve our products and services
inform our marketing and promotional activities;

Archiving

Slate and Mortar capture footage and expressly asks its clients, commissioners whether they need us to store this footage and archive it for future client-specific purposes. We will work with our partners and clients to comply with their own specific GDPR policies and will observe these in order to remain consistent with their obligations to individuals.

We keep consent forms on file as evidence of receipt of active consent from all participants and contributors. These are kept during the course of the project that they relate to and for up to two years after this time, depending on whether they are still relevant to showing that Slate and Mortar have asked for active consent.

We will delete or anonymise your data held in the archive where we consider it is no longer of value or interest.

How do we use your data for marketing and advertising purposes?

At Slate and Mortar, our services are entirely funded by commissions from clients. Marketing and advertising are therefore key parts of our activities. This section sets out the various different types of marketing and advertising that we carry out and how your data is used for each type of activity.

Email marketing

We will use your email address to send you email marketing (including our newsletter, information about services, events and screenings) where you have signed up to receive this from us.

You can opt-out of receiving marketing emails at any time by either following the instructions to unsubscribe in any of our email marketing communications or by changing your preferences. It may take up to 48 hours for your change in preference to take effect and the change will not affect any marketing emails which have already been scheduled to be sent in the future.

If you opt-out of email marketing, we will still need to send you service communications by email from time to time, such as information about changes to our services.

Personalised advertising

We sometimes use your name or the name of your organisation to personalise advertisements. This means that you may hear your first name in an audio/video advertisement or see your name in a text advertisement.

If you have opted out of targeted advertising the advertisements you see will not be tailored to you, but they may still be personalised with your name.

You can opt-out of personalised advertising at any time by changing your preferences. It can take up to 72 hours for the change to take effect. Some advertising campaigns are also set up to run for a particular time and we are unable to change these settings once they are set up.

If you opt-out of personalised advertisements without opting out of targeted advertising, you will still see targeted advertisements from Slate and Mortar but they will not be personalised with your name.

Promoting our own services on other platforms

We also promote our own content and features via third-party platforms, such as social media sites.

Our content might appear on third-party sites based solely on your behaviours on these sites (for example, after liking our brand or its content on Facebook), or the behaviours of those within your networks (for example, a friend within your Facebook network likes our brand or its content on Facebook, so it appears in your News Feed). These branded messages are controlled by the third-party site, but you may be able to update your preferences to stop these messages from appearing in future.

Third-party service providers

We use third-party processors to collect, export, process and store personal data on our behalf. All our processors are compliant with the General Data Protection Regulations and you can view their websites for further detail:

Google LLC (California, US)
Xero (Wellington, New Zealand)

What is our legal basis for using your data?

Data protection law says that we have to tell you the legal basis that we rely on to process your personal data for the purposes that we have notified to you. This section tells you what that legal basis is in relation to each of the purposes set out above.

With the exception of email marketing, we process your personal data for all of the purposes identified under and above on the basis that it is in our legitimate interests, or the legitimate interests of third parties with whom we share your data, to carry out these activities. Further information about what those interests are is set out below.

Slate and Mortar Purpose:

We are providing you with our video services
We are producing video content for your organisation

Legitimate interests: To ensure that Slate and Mortar complies with the law and its policies of consent, to ensure we can create films and videos for our clients and to help us deliver our remit to provide the best video content to clients and participants.

Purpose: Improving our services

Legitimate interests: To make sure that we continue to improve our service and provide our clients and participants with the best and most effective service possible.

Purpose: Advertising

Legitimate interests: To provide advertising that is relevant to you to ensure that you have the best experience possible of using Slate and Mortar, as well as to generate more commissions for Slate and Mortar so that we can grow and expand this independent production company.

Purpose: Profiling

Legitimate interests: To provide a customised experience of Slate and Mortar to ensure you have the best experience possible of using our services as well as to generate more commissions.

You have the right to object to us processing your personal data for the purposes set out above. Unless we can show that we have a compelling legitimate reason to continue processing your personal data, we will stop processing it.

In respect of the use of your email address for email marketing purposes, we process this on the basis that we have your consent to do so. You can withdraw your consent at any time by following the instructions to “unsubscribe” in any email marketing communications.

Freedom of information

We are required under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to provide certain information in response to Freedom of Information requests. In order to respond to requests, we will need to collect your name, address, email address, phone number and information about your request, including any additional personal data you choose to share with us when you make your request. We will use this personal data to respond to your request and will retain it for administrative purposes in line with the section headed below.

How long do we keep your data?

We will keep all your personal data retained for a period of two years from submission, after which it is anonymised. You can close your subscription to our newsletter and remove your consent to be in one of our films at any time. If you do this, we will anonymise all your Account Data as soon as we can after you have closed your account. All other information about you, such as Behavioural Data, will also be fully anonymised.

We may need to keep your data after account closure for limited purposes, for example, if we need your data in order to respond to any complaints or claims that you make. If this is the case, we will only keep the data for as long as we need to in order to fulfil those purposes.

We keep information relating to any service errors or interruptions you have experienced for between 15-30 days.

Any Voluntary Data you submit will be retained for a period of two years from submission, after which it is anonymised. Once anonymised, we will destroy all paper copies of your data.

Data retention

We will retain some personal data categories in order to comply with legal requirements. Otherwise, we will remove information that is not required for our processes.

What rights do you have?

You have a number of rights under data protection law. These rights and how you can exercise them are set out in this section. We will normally need to ask you for proof of your identity before we can respond to a request to exercise any of the rights in this section and we may need to ask you for more information, for example, to help us to locate the personal data that your request relates to.

We will respond to any requests to exercise your rights as soon as we can and in any event within one month of receiving your request and any necessary proof of identity or further information. If your request is particularly difficult or complex, or if you have made a large volume of requests, we may take up to two months to respond. If this is the case we will let you know as soon as we can and explain why we need to take longer to respond.

A right to access your information

You can access all of your Data by emailing info@slateandmortar.com

You also have a right to ask us to send you a copy of your Data and all other personal data that we hold about you (subject to some exceptions). A request to exercise this right is called a “subject access request” and must be made in writing to: info@slateandmortar.com

A right to object to us processing your information

You have a right to object to us processing any personal data that we process where we are relying on legitimate interests as the legal basis of our processing. This includes all of your personal data that we process for all of the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, with the exception of our use of your email address to send you marketing communications with your consent (but you can withdraw your consent to this at any time). Slate and Mortar will keep a logbook of any complaints or breaches of data.

If we have compelling legitimate grounds to carry on processing your personal data, we will be able to continue to do so. Otherwise, we will cease processing your personal data.

You can exercise this right by emailing info@slateandmortar.com

Remember that you can always delete your account to receive our newsletter at any time.

A right to ask us not to market to you

You can ask us not to send you direct marketing or advertising. You can do this by opting out of the advertising you no longer want to receive. In relation to email marketing, you can also opt-out by using the “unsubscribe” option in any of our email marketing communications.

Please note that it can take a short time for opt-out requests to take effect. The time taken to opt-out of each type of marketing and advertising is detailed above.

More information about opting out of marketing and advertising is provided above.

A right to have inaccurate data corrected

You have a right to ask us to correct inaccurate data that we hold about you. If we are satisfied that the new data you have provided is accurate, we will correct your personal data as soon as possible.

You can update your own personal data at any time.

A right to have your data erased

You have a right to ask us to delete your personal data in certain circumstances, for example, if we have processed your data unlawfully or if we no longer need the data for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

We will fully anonymise any personal data we hold about you when you close your account, as set out above. This means that it will no longer identify you and ceases to be “personal data”.

If you ask us to delete your personal data we will fully anonymise your personal data as set out above.

If you would like to make a request to exercise this right, please email info@slateandmortar.com If we are required by law to comply with your request, we will fully anonymise your data so that it is no longer personal data and cannot be used to identify you.

A right to have the processing of your data restricted

You can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data in some circumstances, for example, if you think the personal data is inaccurate and we need to verify its accuracy, or if we no longer need the data but you require us to keep it so that you can exercise your own legal rights.

Restricting your personal data means that we only store your personal data and don’t carry out any further processing on it unless you consent or we need to process the data to exercise a legal claim or to protect a third party or the public.

How can you contact us?

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy and/or our processing of your personal data, you can get in touch with our Data Protection Officer using: info@slateandmortar.com

What if you have a complaint?

You have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which regulates data protection compliance in the UK if you are unhappy with how we have processed your personal data. Slate and Mortar will keep a logbook of any complaints or breaches of data

What if this policy changes?

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes we make will be posted on this page.

Aged 16 or under

Please note that you need to be 18 or over to receive services from Slate and Mortar. As we sometimes engage and work with young people that are under 18 we ask for parents/ guardians to provide consent for their dependents. In these cases, if you are aged 16 or under, please speak to your parent/guardian to get their permission before you provide any personal information to Slate and Mortar because without this consent, you are not allowed to provide us with personal information. We may also ask for your parent/guardian’s contact details so that we can check they are happy for you to engage with Slate and Mortar.

Parents provide information about themselves and their dependents when completing our release forms in order for their dependents to be involved with our services.

If we have been commissioned by a school, college or community group, we will ask for them to provide us with all consents for participants to be involved in our productions. The onus of responsibility will be on our client to provide these to us before we are able to commence our services.

Does Slate and Mortar privacy policy apply to third-party websites or social networking sites?

This policy only applies to our use of your information via Slate and Mortar only. Therefore, it does not apply to third party websites to which Slate and Mortar or might provide links or on which Slate and Mortar content is embedded.

Equally, it is important to note that when you access Slate and Mortar via a social networking site, such as Facebook or Twitter, that site may also collect and use your information. So, we would advise you to check the privacy policies for those social networking sites and applications to see how your information is being used.

Security Measures

Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Unfortunately, the sending of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our utmost to protect your information, we cannot guarantee the security of your data sent to the digital products and services within Slate and Mortar; any sending of information is therefore at your own risk.

How do I contact Slate and Mortar if have a question about privacy issues?

If you have any questions or concerns about privacy issues, you can use the form on our ‘Get in touch’ page on https://www.slateandmortar.com/

Access to your information

If you would like to know what personal information Slate and Mortar holds about you, you may make a request to Slate and Mortar for copies of this information. You should be aware that we will need to see proof of identity before processing any such request (known as a ‘subject access request’) and may charge an administration fee of up to £10 to cover our costs in providing you with this information.

All subject access requests should be made in writing and addressed to Slate and Mortar, Stewart House, 4B Church Street, Cleobury Mortimer, Kidderminster, DY14 8BS

Changes to this policy

Our privacy policy may change from time to time. Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page, and, where appropriate, notified to you by email.

Policy updated on 14 July 2021

What is this privacy policy for?

Slate and Mortar is committed to protecting your personal information, being transparent about what data we hold and giving you control over how we use it.

The purpose of this privacy policy is to give you a clear explanation about how Slate and Mortar uses the personal and behavioural information we collect from you when you use our services.

This is the main privacy policy for Slate and Mortar.