Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Introduction

Vocate (“we”, “our”, or “us”) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and safeguard your personal information when you use our website (vocate.training) and our apprenticeship services.

We act as a data controller in relation to your personal information, which means we determine the purposes and means of processing your personal data.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data.

Information We May Collect

We may collect and process the following categories of personal information:

Information You Provide to Us:

  • Contact information (name, email address, phone number, postal address)
  • Date of birth and demographic information
  • Education and employment history
  • Qualification certificates and assessment results
  • Financial information for funding eligibility assessment
  • Special category data (such as information about disabilities or learning needs) where needed to provide appropriate support
  • Identification documents for verification purposes

Information We Collect Automatically:

  • Technical information including IP address, browser type and version, operating system
  • Information about your visit including pages viewed, navigation paths, and timing
  • Information collected through cookies (as detailed in our Cookies Policy)

Information We Receive From Third Parties:

  • References from employers or educational institutions
  • Information from government agencies for funding eligibility verification
  • Information from assessment bodies or previous training providers

How We Use Your Information

We use your personal information for the following purposes:

To Provide Our Services:

  • Process applications for apprenticeships
  • Deliver training and assessment services
  • Manage your apprenticeship journey
  • Provide support services and reasonable adjustments
  • Communicate with you about your apprenticeship

For Administrative Purposes:

  • Process payments and administer funding
  • Verify your identity and eligibility
  • Maintain accurate records
  • Comply with quality assurance requirements
  • Respond to enquiries and complaints

For Legitimate Business Interests:

  • Improve and develop our services
  • Monitor usage patterns and trends
  • Conduct research and analysis (in anonymised form where possible)
  • Protect our legal rights and comply with our obligations

For Marketing (With Your Consent):

  • Provide information about other relevant services
  • Share success stories (with explicit consent)
  • Send newsletters and updates

Legal Basis for Processing

We process your personal information based on one or more of the following legal grounds:

  • Contract: Processing necessary for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract
  • Legal Obligation: Processing necessary for compliance with our legal obligations
  • Legitimate Interests: Processing necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party
  • Consent: Processing based on your specific consent
  • Public Task: Processing necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest (for publicly funded apprenticeships)

For special category data (sensitive personal information), we will only process this with your explicit consent or where another lawful basis from Article 9 of the GDPR applies.

Data Sharing

We may share your personal information with:

Service Providers:

  • Learning management system providers
  • Assessment organisations
  • IT and system providers
  • Payment processors

Regulatory Bodies and Funding Agencies:

  • Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA)
  • Ofsted
  • Office for Students
  • End-point assessment organisations
  • External quality assurance providers

Employers:

  • Current or potential employers involved in your apprenticeship

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes.

International Transfers

We primarily store and process your data within the UK and European Economic Area (EEA). However, some of our service providers may be based outside the UK/EEA or may use data processing facilities outside the UK/EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal data outside the UK/EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by implementing appropriate safeguards, such as:

  • Using standard contractual clauses approved by the UK government
  • Transferring to countries with an adequacy decision
  • Using approved certification mechanisms or codes of conduct

Data Security

We have implemented appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data Retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

For apprenticeship records, we typically retain your information for:

  • 6 years from the end of your apprenticeship for general records
  • Longer periods may apply for certain information where required by funding rules or other legal obligations

Your Legal Rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

  • Right to access: You can ask for copies of your personal information
  • Right to rectification: You can ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate or complete information you think is incomplete
  • Right to erasure: You can ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances
  • Right to restriction of processing: You can ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances
  • Right to object to processing: You can object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances
  • Right to data portability: You can ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you
  • Rights related to automated decision making and profiling: You have rights relating to how we use your information to make decisions about you without human involvement

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. We have one month to respond to you.

Marketing Communications

We may use your personal data to send you information about our services that may be of interest to you. You can opt out of these communications at any time by:

  • Clicking the unsubscribe link in any marketing email
  • Contacting us at the details below

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. We will notify you of significant changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on our website and, where appropriate, contacting you directly.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer:

Email: [email protected]
Post: Data Protection Officer, Vocate Training. 56 West Street, Shoreham By Sea, West Sussex BN43 5WG.

Your Right to Complain

If you have concerns about our data processing activities, please contact us first so we can address your concerns. However, you also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).

Last Updated

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 1st May 2025