Keeping your personal information safe is very important to us. We are committed to complying with privacy and data protection laws and being transparent about how we process personal data.

This policy applies to ABRSM Downloads, which is a separate legal entity to ABRSM.

We have policies, procedures and training in place to help our employees and volunteers understand their data protection responsibilities and follow the data protection principles:

• We will process your personal information fairly, lawfully and transparently
• When we gather personal information from you, we will ensure what we collect is adequate, relevant and not excessive to our needs
• We take care to ensure your personal information is accurate and up to date
• We will only keep personal information for as long as necessary
• We will only use your personal information for the reasons for which it was collected
• We have put in place technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information from accidental loss or unlawful processing

Our Data Protection Officer is Peter Sheldrake. If you have any questions regarding our privacy policy, please email peter.sheldrake@abrsmdownloads.org. 

This privacy policy relates to our use of any personal information we process about you.

We may collect your personal data in a number of ways, for example:

• when you, your parent or guardian, your tutor or your school communicate with us by telephone, email or via our website – for example, in order to make enquiries about a purchase or download;
• as you interact with us in other ways – either as a student, a contractor, or in any other capacity.

We collect and use personal information about our enquirers and customers to:

• provide customer service and respond to enquiries.

The information that we collect may include:

• contact details such as name address, email address and phone numbers;
• your instrument and grade; 
• credit card details and any purchases you have made; 
• name of your parent or guardian (if you are under 18);
• nationality.

Purchase payments for our downloads are processed by Paypal.  

If you contact ABRSM Downloads to make a general enquiry, your personal information will be used to respond to your enquiry.

We use cookies and log files on our website (abrsmdownloads.org) to store information about how you use our website. 

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. This enables us to create a profile that details your viewing preferences. We use your profile to tailor your visit to our website to make navigation easier and direct you to information that best corresponds to your interests. Read our cookie policy.

Aggregate information is collected from users using our own web tracker. This information includes users' Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time of visit, error pages and number of unique visits. This information is not linked to personal profiles or to personally identifiable information provided by users. We use it to analyse visitor trends and use of our website, to administer the website, and to gather broad demographic information of our website users.

We communicate with our customers on a regular basis to provide requested services, and in regards to issues relating to their purchases we reply via email in accordance with their wishes.

We strive to respond to initial enquiries within 3 working days.

We may process personal information because it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party (or to take steps at your request prior to entering a contract). For example, we may process your personal data (as is necessary for our exam regulations and related contracts):

• to provide you with an exam, course or other product that you have requested from us;
• to process enquiries and complaints.

In this respect, we may provide your personal data to third-party service providers who we engage to provide these services to you – for example caterers, schools, conference and course providers, referees, tutors and examiners. We may also share your information with: 

• our bank in order to process a payment;
• our professional advisers (such as our legal advisers) where it is necessary to obtain their advice;
• our IT support and data storage providers.

We may process personal information where it is in our legitimate interests to do so and where we are confident that such processing will not infringe on your rights and freedoms. Our 'legitimate interests' in this context include promoting musical achievement and education through examination and assessment, professional development of music teachers and the provision of published resources, for example:

• to train our staff and to improve our website and the services that we offer;
• to provide you with an exam, course or other product that has been arranged on your behalf by a third party – for example, if your parent, school or tutor has instructed us to deliver a downloadable asset to you;
• to analyse use of and to administer our website;

ABRSM Downloads will also share personal information with ABRSM and ABRSM Publishing so that ABRSM Publishing can contact you about exam-related products and services – for example, printed sheet music or theory books.

Where required, we will process personal information in order to comply with our legal obligations. We may use your personal data to comply with subject access requests, tax legislation, for the prevention and detection of crime, and to assist the police and other relevant authorities with investigations (including criminal, fraud and safeguarding investigations).

If you no longer wish to receive communications about products and services from us, please contact marketing@abrsmdownloads.org.

You also have the right to:

• request a copy of the information we hold about you (requests should be addressed to peter.sheldrake@abrsmdownloads.org, and we will respond within one month);
• tell us to change or correct your personal information if it is incomplete or inaccurate;
• ask us to restrict our processing of your personal data or to delete your personal data if there is no compelling reason for us to continue using or holding this information (and, where our processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw that consent without affecting the lawfulness of our processing based on consent before its withdrawal);
• receive from us the personal information we hold about you that you have provided to us, in a reasonable format specified by you, including for the purpose of you sending that personal information to another data controller;
• object, on grounds relating to your specific situation, to any of our particular processing activities where you feel this has a disproportionate impact on you.

Please note that we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply – for example, if we have reason to believe that the personal data we hold is accurate or we can show our processing is necessary for a lawful purpose set out in this privacy policy.

Please contact support@abrsmdownloads.org or phone us on 0845 862 1509 if you think our records are inaccurate. If you wish us to update or delete your personal information, or if you wish to exercise your other rights under applicable data protection laws, please contact Peter Sheldrake by emailing peter.sheldrake@abrsmdownloads.org.

We will retain your personal information within our systems for as long as necessary for the relevant activity. In some circumstances, we may be legally required to retain your personal information – for example, for finance, employment or audit purposes. We will not retain your personal information if it is no longer required.

This privacy policy may change from time to time. Where practical, we will provide you with an updated policy. However, we also recommend that you visit this page frequently to keep up to date with any changes.

If you are not satisfied with our response to any query you raise with us, or you believe we are processing your personal data in a way that is inconsistent with the law, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office through their helpline: 0303 123 1113.