Privacy Notice
How we use your information.
- Who we are and how to contact us
- What this notice covers
- The personal data we collect
- Why we use it, and our lawful basis
- Keeping in touch
- Who we share it with
- Where it is stored
- How long we keep it
- How we keep it safe
- Your rights
- Complaints
- Other websites
- Changes to this notice
1. Who we are and how to contact us
The Academy of Culinary Excellence (“the Academy”, “we”, “us”) is operated by Impact Learning & Data Solutions Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under number 05526370, whose registered office is at Axis 19 Mallard Way, Riverside Business Park, Swansea Vale, Swansea SA7 0AJ. The same company trades as The Training & Learning Company (“TLC”), the regulated apprenticeship provider that delivers the Academy’s programmes. We are the data controller for the personal data described in this notice, which means we decide why and how it is used. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration number Z1601195.
To ask about anything in this notice, or to exercise your rights, contact our data protection lead:
- Email: mpwculinaryacademy@tlc-uk.org
- Post: Data Protection, The Academy of Culinary Excellence, Impact Learning & Data Solutions Limited, Axis 19 Mallard Way, Riverside Business Park, Swansea Vale, Swansea SA7 0AJ
2. What this notice covers
This notice applies to the website mpw-culinaryacademy.com and explains how we use personal data about:
- visitors to mpw-culinaryacademy.com;
- people who contact us through the enquiry form, by email or by telephone, and the people we go on to work with; and
- people whose details are given to us by their employer or a colleague in connection with a programme.
It does not cover the personal data of apprentices and employers once an apprenticeship is under way. That is handled by us as TLC under TLC’s own privacy notice, which is given to every apprentice and employer at enrolment and is available at www.tlc-uk.com. Nor does it cover other websites we link to (section 12).
3. The personal data we collect
Information you give us
When you use the enquiry form we ask for your name, email address, organisation, sector, the programme you are interested in, and a message in your own words. If you email or telephone us, or meet us, we keep what you tell us, including anything you include in your message and any notes we take. Please do not include sensitive details about yourself or about other people — residents, patients, colleagues — in your message; we do not need them to reply to you.
Information collected automatically
When you visit our site, our hosting provider, 123 Reg, records technical details in its server logs: your IP address, the type and version of your browser and device, the pages you request, the date and time, and the page that referred you. These are used only to keep the site secure and working. Our site does not set cookies, use analytics or embed content from other companies. Its typefaces are loaded from Google Fonts, which means Google’s servers receive your IP address to serve the font files (section 7). See our Cookie Notice.
Information from other people
We may receive your details from a colleague or employer who enquires on your behalf or names you as a contact, and from public sources, such as your organisation’s website, to prepare for a conversation with you.
Information we do not want
Our site and our programmes are for organisations and the chefs who work in them. The site is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect children’s data through it. We do not ask for special category data (such as health, ethnicity or religion) through the site.
4. Why we use your personal data, and the lawful basis for doing so
Data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for each use of your data. These are ours:
| What we use your data for | Which data | Our lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Replying to your enquiry, answering questions and arranging a conversation or a visit | Your enquiry form details and anything you tell us afterwards | Our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us and running our business; and, where you are enquiring on your own behalf, taking steps at your request before entering into a contract |
| Setting up and contracting an apprenticeship programme with your organisation | Your name, organisation, contact details and what you have told us about your needs | Taking steps at your request before entering into a contract, and our legitimate interest in delivering the programmes you have asked about |
| Keeping in touch with news about the Academy, the Collection, events and An Audience with Marco | Your name, email address and organisation | Your consent, given by ticking the box on the enquiry form; or, if you are an existing contact at an organisation we work with, our legitimate interest in keeping you informed about that work. You can opt out at any time (section 5) |
| Keeping the website secure, preventing misuse and fixing faults | Server logs | Our legitimate interest in the security of our site, and our legal duty to keep personal data secure |
| Keeping records, handling complaints and requests, dealing with legal claims, audits and insurance | Any of the above, as relevant | Our legal obligations, and our legitimate interest in being able to establish, exercise or defend legal claims |
Where we rely on our legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your interests, rights and freedoms and are satisfied that our use of your data is proportionate, has a minimal impact on your privacy and is what you would reasonably expect. You can ask us for more detail of that assessment, and you can object to any processing based on legitimate interests (section 10).
We do not make decisions about you by automated means, and we do not profile you.
AI-assisted tools. We may use Claude, an AI-assisted tool provided by Anthropic, to help us read, summarise and draft replies to enquiries. A member of our team reviews everything before it is sent, and no decision about you is made automatically. Anthropic processes your data only on our instructions, under a contract that prevents it using your data to train its models, and the transfer safeguards in section 7 apply.
5. Keeping in touch
We will only send you news about the Academy by email if you have asked us to, or if you are an existing contact at an organisation we work with and the news relates to that work. Every email we send includes a link to stop further emails, and you can also opt out by writing to mpwculinaryacademy@tlc-uk.org. We will act on your request promptly, and in any event within 10 working days. We never sell, rent or swap your details with anyone for their marketing.
6. Who we share your personal data with
Within our company. Your enquiry is received by our customer success team, and is seen only by the people who need it to reply to you and to set up a programme with you — including, as TLC, the staff who arrange and deliver apprenticeships.
Our service providers. Companies that provide services to us under written contracts and act only on our instructions:
- 123 Reg Limited (Nottingham; part of the GoDaddy group), which hosts our website on its managed WordPress platform and relays enquiry-form emails to us (section 7).
- Microsoft, which provides the Microsoft 365 mailbox and office systems in which enquiries and correspondence are held.
- Anthropic, PBC (United States), which provides Claude, the AI-assisted tool we may use to help read and draft replies to enquiries (section 4). It processes data only on our instructions, under terms that prohibit using it to train its models.
- Google, whose Google Fonts service serves the typefaces used on the site. When a page loads, your browser requests the font files from Google’s servers, which receive your IP address to serve them; Google states that this request sets no cookie and is not linked to a Google account.
They may not use your data for their own purposes. Fasthosts Internet Limited registers our domain name; it holds our own business contact details for that purpose, not information about visitors.
MPW Culinary Academy Ltd. The company that owns the Marco Pierre White Learning Collection and the “Accredited by Marco Pierre White” credential. We do not pass enquiries to it.
Professional advisers and insurers — our lawyers, accountants, auditors and insurers — where we need their advice or they need the information to act for us.
Regulators, courts and public authorities where the law requires or allows it, for example the Information Commissioner’s Office, or the Department for Education and Ofsted in connection with the apprenticeships we deliver.
A buyer or successor if our business, or substantially all of its assets, is sold or reorganised; your data would pass to the new owner under the same protections.
We do not sell your personal data.
7. Where your data is stored, and transfers outside the UK
Our website is hosted by 123 Reg Limited on its managed WordPress platform. The personal data on that platform — server logs and, for the moments it takes to email it to us, the content of an enquiry — is stored on servers in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Enquiries are not stored on the web server. Technical and administrative metadata, support systems and content-delivery caching may route or process elements of that data through the United States and other locations.
Enquiries and correspondence are held in our Microsoft 365 mailbox and office systems, which may process data in the European Economic Area and in other countries. If we use Claude to help with your enquiry, Anthropic processes the data in the United States.
When a page loads, your browser requests the site’s typefaces from Google Fonts, so Google’s servers — which may be in the United States — receive your IP address in order to serve the font files; Google states that this request sets no cookie and is not linked to any Google account. Nothing else on the site contacts another company’s servers.
Where any of these providers processes personal data outside the United Kingdom, it does so in a country covered by the UK Government’s adequacy regulations, or under contract terms approved for the purpose (the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses) or the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework (the “UK–US Data Bridge”), so that your data receives protection equivalent to UK law. You can ask us for details of the safeguard that applies.
8. How long we keep your personal data
We keep personal data only for as long as we need it for the purposes above, and then delete or anonymise it. Our standard periods are:
| Data | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Enquiries that do not lead to a programme | 12 months from our last contact with you, then deleted |
| Contacts at organisations we work with, and the records of that work | For as long as we work together, and six years afterwards for contractual, tax and legal purposes |
| Marketing preferences | Until you opt out; we also remove contacts we have not written to for two years. We keep a record that you opted out so that we do not contact you again |
| Server logs | Kept by 123 Reg for up to 90 days for security and fault-finding, then deleted; we do not keep copies |
| Requests and complaints about your data | Three years after they are closed, so that we can show how we dealt with them |
9. How we keep your data safe
Our site is served over an encrypted connection (HTTPS). Enquiries are emailed straight to a shared mailbox that only authorised members of our customer success team can open, protected by multi-factor authentication; nothing is kept on the web server. We keep our own copy of the website files, which contain no personal data, so that the site can be restored if the hosting fails.
Our service providers are bound by written contracts that require them to keep your data secure and to use it only on our instructions. We have a procedure for handling any personal data breach: where a breach is likely to put your rights at high risk we will tell you without undue delay, and we will report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hours where the law requires.
10. Your rights
You have the right to:
- access the personal data we hold about you, and receive a copy;
- correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete;
- have your data deleted in certain circumstances, for example where we no longer need it or you have withdrawn consent;
- restrict how we use your data while a question about it is resolved;
- object to our use of your data where we rely on legitimate interests — and to object at any time to direct marketing, which we will always honour;
- receive the data you gave us in a portable, machine-readable form, where we process it by automated means on the basis of your consent or a contract;
- withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it, without affecting what was done before you withdrew it; and
- not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that significantly affects you (we make no such decisions).
To exercise any of these rights, email mpwculinaryacademy@tlc-uk.org or write to the address in section 1. There is normally no charge. We will respond within one month; if your request is complex or you have made several, we may take up to two months longer and will tell you if so. If we need to confirm who you are, or need you to clarify what you are asking for, we will tell you promptly, and the time we spend waiting for that does not count towards the deadline. You can find more about these rights on the Information Commissioner’s website, ico.org.uk.
11. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us. You can complain by email to mpwculinaryacademy@tlc-uk.org, by post to the address in section 1, or in any other way that reaches us. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it in a way that is proportionate to what you have raised, keep you informed, and give you our response without undue delay.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator for data protection, at any time: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, telephone 0303 123 1113, or Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. We would welcome the chance to address your concern first, but you do not have to come to us before going to the ICO.
12. Other websites
Our site links to other organisations’ websites — including businesses associated with Marco Pierre White. Those sites have their own privacy notices and cookie practices, and we are not responsible for them. Please read their notices before giving them your details.
13. Changes to this notice
We review this notice at least once a year and whenever the way we use personal data changes. The date and version at the top tell you when it was last updated. If a change is significant and we are in contact with you, we will tell you directly.