Privacy & how we handle your information

Who we are

Northstar Skills Advisory ("Northstar", "we", "us") is run by Charlie Gill and Josh Lloyd, based in Nottingham, UK. We help UK employers find and access funded training and apprenticeship programmes, delivered by accredited training providers. For the purposes of UK data protection law, Northstar Skills Advisory is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy.

What we collect

When you get in touch or book a call through this site, we collect what you give us directly: your name, company name, role, company size, email address, phone number, a free-text description of the skills gaps you want to address, and whether you know if your business pays the Apprenticeship Levy. If you email or call us directly, we'll hold the content of that conversation too.

We don't currently run analytics or tracking cookies on this site. If that changes, we'll update this policy and ask for consent where the law requires it. Our hosting provider may keep standard technical server logs (such as IP address and browser type) purely to keep the site running securely — we don't use these to identify or profile individual visitors.

Why we collect it, and our lawful basis

• To respond to your enquiry and assess whether a funded training or apprenticeship route is likely to apply to your business — legitimate interest (ours and yours, in having a useful conversation before any commitment).
• To introduce you to an accredited training provider, once you've agreed to that introduction — consent.
• To meet our own legal and accounting obligations, where relevant — legal obligation.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for marketing purposes with anyone outside Northstar. We share your details with an accredited training provider only once you've agreed to be introduced to them — at that point, the provider becomes a separate data controller for the information needed to deliver and administer your training and its funding, under their own privacy policy and compliance obligations. We don't deliver training ourselves and we don't process your funding or levy transfer — your accredited training provider handles that.

We may also share information with trusted service providers who help us run this site or our business (for example, website hosting or email delivery), acting as our data processors under a data processing agreement, and only ever to the extent needed to provide that service.

How long we keep it

If your enquiry doesn't lead anywhere, we'll keep your details for up to 24 months from your last contact with us, in case you get back in touch, then delete them. If you become a client or we introduce you to a training provider, we'll keep relevant records for as long as needed to support that relationship and to meet our legal and accounting obligations, typically up to 7 years afterwards.

International transfers

Some of the tools we use to run this site and our business (such as hosting) may store or process data outside the UK. Where that happens, we rely on the safeguards required under UK data protection law, such as standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision covering that country.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Ask us what personal data we hold about you, and get a copy of it
• Ask us to correct anything that's inaccurate or incomplete
• Ask us to delete your data, where there's no good reason for us to keep it
• Ask us to restrict or object to how we use your data
• Ask for your data to be moved to another organisation, where technically possible
• Withdraw consent at any time, where we're relying on consent (for example, before we introduce you to a training provider)

To use any of these rights, contact us using the details below. If you're not happy with how we've handled your data, you also have the right to complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

Keeping your data secure

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect the information you share with us against unauthorised access, loss or misuse. No method of transmission over the internet is completely secure, but we work to keep the risk as low as we reasonably can.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example as our services or the tools we use change. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last updated.

Contact us

For anything about this policy or your data, contact us at [business email to be added] or [phone number to be added].