Privacy Policy

As part of everyday business operations we collect and store some information from other organisations and from individuals. This information may include lists of business contacts, event invitees and attendees, etc. 

We also collect personal information you give us through the use of request forms on the site. Please note that the information given by you will be processed in accordance with the Data Protection Bill 2018, the UK equivalent of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the purposes of processing your request, providing you with information about services we offer, and for auditing usage of the site. 

How we collect information about you
You give us your information when you sign up to receive email from us or update your email preferences.

We keep a record of the emails we send you, and we may track whether you receive or open them so we can make sure we are sending you the most relevant information.

What we do with your information
We use your information to send you a regular email newsletter with content including (but not limited to):

• news from Edinburgh's Festivals
• other relevant information about Edinburgh's Festivals, for example job opportunities
• surveys relating to Edinburgh's Festivals

As this form is not used for any purpose other than joining our email list, by entering your details you are deemed to have given a clear affirmative agreement to receive our emails as described.

Tools may be used to monitor the effectiveness of our communications with you, including email tracking, which records when an email from us is opened and/or how many links are clicked within the message. The data from this tracking is generally used in an aggregated and anonymised form.

You can opt out of any / all of our promotional and marketing communications at any point simply by contacting info@festivalsedinburgh.com

Who we share your information with
When you sign up to receive emails from us your information is transferred securely to our email distributor MailChimp who process it under our instructions (which is called being a data processor).

We use SurveyMonkey to distribute questionnaires.

We occasionally run competitions on this website, and require participants to submit certain personal information (for example First name, Surname, Country, Email address, etc) using an online form. This information is used only for the purposes of competition administration. 

The information you give us on competition pages will not be used for purposes beyond the scope of administering the competition for which they were submitted unless you give us your permission to do so. 

In particular Festivals Edinburgh will not send you promotional information using details you give us as part of a competition entry unless you indicate your express permission for us to do so by using the tick box on the competition form. 

Similarly, Festivals Edinburgh will not share your information with any third party (for example one of our member festivals), unless you indicate your express permission for us to do so by using the tick box on the competition form. This tick box will only indicate permission to share information with the 3rd party organisation stated, and does not give us permission to share your information with any other party. 

Please note: If you have previously given your permission for Festivals Edinburgh to contact you, this permission will not be altered by you entering a competition and leaving the relevant permission tick box blank. 

Should you wish to check, alter or remove the information we hold on you, we will be glad to help - please just email us at info@festivalsedinburgh.com or use the 'Correct my details' or 'Unsubscribe' links on any of our emails. The 'Unsubscribe' option will automatically prevent us sending you our promotional emails. Correction requests will be manually actioned as soon as possible after receipt by us. 

You have the right to apply for a copy of the information we hold about you (without charge), to have any inaccuracies corrected and to have your details removed from our records upon request. To do so, please email us at info@festivalsedinburgh.com

We will not share, give, trade, sell or otherwise transfer your personal information to any third party except with your express permission as described above, or: 

• Where we have a legal obligation to do so
• In the event that Festivals Edinburgh, or substantially all of its assets, is acquired by a third party. In these circumstances personal data held by us may be one of the assets transferred
• To protect the rights, property or safety of us, our staff members or others 

We may provide selected 3rd parties with aggregated statistics relating to website and email usage and patterns, but these statistics will include no personally identifying information. 

We will retain your information for as long as we have a relationship with you, eg for sending you our emails, or otherwise providing you with information about services you request.

We may also need to retain your information beyond the term of our relationship for legal reasons, specifically to evidence the relationship between us. We will delete information when we no longer require to evidence our relationship. 

If you would like specific information about you deleted or removed, please refer to “Your rights” below. 

We will always endeavour to keep your information safe and secure across any storage or processing systems we may use online or offline, and to identify any breaches that may occur. In the event that any of your personal information is hacked, stolen or otherwise accessed by an unauthorised party, we will:

• Identify the nature of the data breach and work to immediately resecure our data systems
• Within 72 hours, report the data breach to the Information Commissioners' Office.
• Within 72 hours alert any person who we reasonably believe to have been severely affected by the breach, providing details about what has happened, information on what steps we are taking to mitigate the situation and what action may be required or advised on the part of that person.

To help us to address the needs of our users, we may keep track of how you use the information which we send to you or which is available on our website. We keep a record of which links are accessed by users on our website to enable us to find out which kinds of information are of most interest to those users. 

We use this information to provide a service which is tailored to the needs of users of our website and those who have chosen to receive information from us. This information is held on an anonymous basis and you will not be personally identifiable from this information. This information is stored on our privately owned and maintained servers. 

Edinburghfestivalcity.com uses cookies in order to find out more about our audience and improve our service. These cookies are placed in the browser file of your computer in order that we can:

• monitor the number of visitors accessing our site and how they make use of it
• monitor sources and types of traffic to evaluate the effectiveness of our promotional material
• monitor actions taken by our site visitors (eg clicking a link) 

These data are aggregated anonymously using Google Analytics and cannot be used to personally identify any user. 

The delivery of cookies will enable us to ensure you are receiving the best service while accessing our website. You can delete these cookies from your computer or mobile device, however you may find that you are not able to receive the best experience while on our website. 

To find out how to allow, block, delete and manage the cookies on all standard web browsers, go to www.aboutcookies.org and select the browser and version you are using. You'll also find information about how to delete cookies from your computer. For the majority of browsers this can be done through your preferences control panel. 

You have a number of information rights that are provided for by data protection laws. These rights include: 

• the right to access personal data which you have submitted through our website which is stored by us, and otherwise held about you.
• the right to have inaccurate data about you rectified. This includes the right to provide us with supplementary data where we may hold information that is incomplete.
• the right to have data erased. This right has some exceptions, such as where we need the data for legal reasons.
• the right to restrict processing of your data, e.g. where data held is inaccurate.
• the right to have your data transmitted to a third party in limited circumstances - known as the right of data portability
• the right to object to how we process your data which includes in the case of direct marketing, the right to object to marketing from us.
• the right to not be subject to any automated decision making including profiling. 

You can also exercise any of these rights at any time by contacting us at info@festivalsedinburgh.com and we will process such requests in accordance with applicable data protection laws within one month from receipt of your request. We will contact you as appropriate, to explain how we have complied with your request. 

If you are not satisfied with the way we have handled any processing of your personal data, please contact us at info@festivalsedinburgh.com.

You should be aware that you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way organisations handle your information. They can be contacted on 0303 123 1113, or you can access their website which contains helpful information about the various rights you have. Please refer to https://ico.org.uk/concerns. 

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to other websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites and any services accessible through them are not governed by this Privacy Policy, and may be subject to a different privacy policy run by that third party website provider.

We do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies or any personal data that may be collected through these websites or services, such as contact and location data. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites or use these services. 

We reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time which will take effect from the date of posting on the Website. The new terms may be displayed on-screen and you may be required to read and accept them to continue to use the Website or App. Your continued use of the Website will mark your acceptance of any changes to this Privacy Policy.