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Privacy notice

How ISAO uses personal data, and your rights under UK data protection law.

This notice explains how International Standards Accreditation Organization (ISAO) uses personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Who we are

ISAO is the controller of the personal data described in this notice.

Registered office: 22 Wenlock Road, London N1 7GU, United Kingdom.

Contacting us about your data

Email info@isao.org.uk, or write to our registered office, marked "Data protection". We reply to requests within one month.

What we collect and why

Personal data we use
DataWhy we use itLawful basis
Enquiries: name, email, organisation, telephone and messageTo answer your enquiryLegitimate interests
Applications for accreditation or registration: contact details and information about the applicant organisation or auditorTo assess the application and manage accreditation or registrationContract, or steps taken before entering into a contract
Complaints and appeals: contact details and the details of the complaintTo investigate and respondLegitimate interests, and legal obligation where it applies
Register entries: names of certified organisations and registered auditors, with grades, standards, dates and statusTo publish a register that the public can rely onLegitimate interests; consent for registered auditors who agree to be listed
Verification lookups: a keyed one-way hash of your IP address, with a count of your recent lookups. The search itself is not keptTo run the verification service and prevent abuseLegitimate interests
Staff and assessor accounts: name, email, role and sign-in recordsTo give access to the admin console and to keep it secureLegitimate interests; contract

How long we keep it

  • Lookup counts for the verification rate limit: deleted within two days of your last lookup
  • Enquiries: three years
  • Complaints and appeals: six years
  • Accreditation and registration records: while the accreditation or registration lasts, and six years after it ends

Who we share it with

We share personal data only with service providers that help us run ISAO's systems, under contracts that protect it: hosting, email delivery and file storage. We share the details of a complaint with the certification body concerned only as far as the investigation needs. We do not sell personal data.

The service providers that process personal data for us are:

  • Vercel, which hosts this website and stores our files, such as documents sent with a complaint and certificate files, in London
  • Supabase, which runs our database, in London

The map on our contact page is loaded from Google Maps. Google receives your IP address when the map loads and may set cookies of its own: see our cookies notice and Google's privacy policy.

International transfers

Some service providers may process data outside the UK. Where they do, we use the safeguards that UK law requires, such as adequacy regulations or the International Data Transfer Agreement.

Your rights

You have the right to ask for a copy of your personal data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to data portability where it applies. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. To make a request, use the contact details above.

Complaints to the regulator

If you are unhappy with how we have used your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk. We would welcome the chance to deal with your concern first.

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