This Privacy Policy was last reviewed in March 2024.
The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) is the independent voice for housing and the home of professional standards. CIH is a registered charity and not-for-profit organisation.
The CIH Awarding Organisation (AO) provides nationally recognised housing qualifications, regulated by The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual), Scottish Qualifications Authority Accreditation (SQA Accreditation), Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment Regulation (CCEA Regulation) and Qualifications Wales (QW). We are dedicated to providing the highest quality, relevant and up-to-date qualifications for aspiring professionals in the sector.
Introduction
CIH AO is committed to protecting your privacy and security. This policy explains how and why we use your personal data, to ensure you remain informed and in control of your information.
CIH AO will ask its customers or potential customers be they training providers, Employers, apprentices, learners, or consultants to “opt-in” to receive information about our products and services. This means you’ll have the choice as to whether you want to receive these messages.
You can choose not to receive information or change how we contact you at any time.
If you would like to speak to the team, please telephone 02476 851700. Rest assured, CIH AO values the confidentiality of your personal data. We pledge never to sell it, and only share it with trusted partners such as the Education and Skills Funding Agency, Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, External Quality Assurance Organisations, and regulatory bodies, when essential for contractual obligations or legal compliance, ensuring the utmost privacy and security of your information.
Who we are?
CIH is the proprietor and administrator of http://www.cih.org (website). This Notice, coupled with our website terms of use and any associated documents referenced therein, establishes the framework under which CIH AO manages personal data via our website or in relation to the dissemination of information, products, and services to you.
We gather data that you voluntarily provide to us. This encompasses information shared during your enrolment in a qualification or apprenticeship program with one of our affiliated training/employer providers, your engagement as a consultant with us, or any communication exchanges with our team.
For instance:
- Personal particulars (such as name, date of birth, email, address, telephone, etc.) submitted during your enrolment in a qualification or apprenticeship program or during your collaboration with us.
- Sensitive Personal Data (including ethnicity, additional training needs).
- Financial particulars (payment data such as credit/debit card or direct debit details, or bank account information).
Your interactions and participation with CIH AO lead to the generation of personal data. This may encompass details of training and qualifications pursued.
On occasion, we receive personal data concerning individuals from external organisations. This could occur, for instance, when we collaborate with other entities such as training providers and employers.
Additionally, we may enlist the services of external organisations to aid us in conducting research and analysis on personal data, which may lead to the creation of new personal data.
We may gather or retain data categorised as Sensitive Personal Data, such as information pertaining to additional learning requirements or ethnicity. This action is undertaken either at the request of official Government agencies or when such information is necessary for assessing additional educational support needs. Should this be the case, we will exercise heightened caution to ensure the protection of your personal data.
In the event of an accident or incident transpiring within our assessment environments or offices, or involving one of our employees, we will maintain a record of the occurrence. Such records may encompass personal data and sensitive personal data.
How do we use personal information?
We only ever use your personal data with your consent, or where it is necessary to enter into, or perform, a contract with you:
- to comply with a legal duty
- to protect your vital interests; this means, for example, keeping you safe from harm
- or for our own (or a third party’s) lawful interests, provided your rights don’t override these
We will only use your information for the purpose or purposes it was collected for.
We use personal data for administrative purposes. This includes:
- Receiving payment (e.g. direct debits or payment card details)
- Maintaining databases of our learners and their educational progress
- Performing our obligations under apprenticeship or training contracts
- Helping us respect your choices and preferences (e.g. if you ask not to receive marketing material, we’ll keep a record of this).
We may carry out research and analysis on the data we hold, to determine the success of qualifications and end-point assessments, to understand behaviour and responses and identify patterns and trends.
We evaluate, categorise and profile personal data to tailor services and communications we send out (including targeted advertising) and to prevent unwanted material from being sent to you.
We profile customers in terms of their integration with our website and registration portals. For example, we keep track of the resources that are downloaded. This information helps us to ensure communications are relevant and timely.
We collect information on preferences and so that we know what material you are most likely to be interested in.
We will also obtain information about you from other sources, such as your training provider or employer.
We may combine sets of personal data and change the personal data so that it can no longer be linked to any particular person. This information may then be used to monitor CIH Awarding’s business performance or to identify trends or patterns within our existing learner database.
We will never sell your personal data. If you have opted-in to marketing, we may contact you with information about the services we provide.
We may share personal data with subcontractors or suppliers who provide us with services.
For example, we may use an IT supplier to process personal data. However, these activities will be carried out under a contract which imposes strict requirements on our supplier to keep your information confidential and secure.
We use personal data to communicate with people and to promote CIH AO and CIH membership. This includes keeping you up to date with our news and offerings.
CIH Awarding Organisation will ask its supporters to “opt-in” for marketing communications.
This means you’ll have the choice as to whether you want to receive these messages and be able to select how you want to receive them (post or email).
We publish e-newsletters on a regular basis.
As an awarding organisation, we regularly process the personal data relating to young people who undertake one of our qualifications or end-point assessment opportunities.
If your child is under 18 then we will seek permission to record any audio-visual communications.
We take great care to protect and respect the rights of individuals in relation to their personal data, especially in the case of children.
How do we protect personal data?
We use a variety of physical and technical measures to keep your data safe and to prevent unauthorised access or sharing of your personal information.
Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems, and we control who has access to information using both physical and electronic means. Our employees receive data protection training, and we have a set of detailed data protection procedures which personnel are required to follow when handling personal data.
All electronic forms that request financial data will use secure web technology to encrypt the data between your browser and our servers.
If you use a credit card to pay for services we provide, we will pass your credit card details securely to our payment provider. CIH AO complies with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council and will never store card details.
Some of our premises have CCTV and you may be recorded when you visit them.
CCTV is there to help provide security and to protect both you and CIH AO. CCTV will only be viewed when necessary (e.g. to detect or prevent crime) and footage is only stored temporarily. Unless it is flagged for review CCTV will be recorded over.
CIH AO complies with the Information Commissioner’s Office CCTV Code of Practice and we put up notices, so you know when CCTV is in use.
CIH Awarding’s operations are based in the UK, and we store our data within the EEA.
In limited circumstances such as the need to share data with subcontractors, some personal information may be processed outside of EEA.
How long does CIH AO store information for?
We will only use and store information for so long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for. How long we keep information for depends on the information and what it’s used for. For example, if you ask us not to send you marketing emails, we will stop storing your emails for marketing purposes (though we’ll keep a record of your preference not to be emailed).
We continually review what information we hold and delete what is no longer required. We never store payment card information.
How do we ensure that you remain in control of your data?
We want to ensure you remain in control of your personal data. Part of this is making sure you understand your legal rights, which are as follows:
- the right to ask and be told whether or not we have your personal data and, if we do, to obtain a copy of the personal data we hold (this is known as a subject access request)
- the right to have your data deleted (though this will not apply where it is necessary for us to continue to use the data to administer your training course or apprenticeship.
- the right to have incorrect data amended
- the right to object to your data being used for marketing purposes or profiling
Please note that there are exceptions to the rights above and, though we will always try to respond to your satisfaction, there may be situations where we are unable to do so.
If you would like further information on your rights, please write to or email our Data Protection Officer at the addresses given earlier in this document.
We can provide you with a subject access form template which includes guidance on how to make your request and will help us respond more quickly. Please contact us for a copy of this.
You can complain to CIH AO directly by contacting our data protection officer using the details set out above. If you wish to make a complaint which does not directly relate to your data protection and privacy rights, you can do so in accordance with CIH Awarding’s complaints policy.
If you are not happy with our response, or you believe that your data protection or privacy rights have been infringed, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office which regulates and enforces data protection law in the UK.
Details of how to do this can be found at www.ico.org.uk
A cookie is a small file which asks for permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added, and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.
Our website contains hyperlinks to many other websites. We are not responsible for the content or functionality of any of those external websites (but please let us know if a link is not working by using the 'Contact us' link).
If an external website requests personal information from you, the information you provide will not be covered by CIH AO’s privacy policy. We suggest you read the privacy policy of any website before providing any personal information.
When purchasing goods or services from any of the businesses that our site links to, you will be entering into a contract with them (agreeing to their terms and conditions) and not with CIH AO.
We’ll amend this Privacy Policy from time to time to ensure it remains up-to-date and accurately reflects how and why we use your personal data. The current version of our Privacy Policy will always be posted on our website.
This Privacy Policy was last reviewed in March 2024.
