Legal Privacy Statements and Cookies Policy

Privacy

We regard the lawful and correct treatment of personal information as important to our successful operations and to the maintenance of confidence of those with whom we deal. As such this statement will apply equally to all of our offices irrespective of where they are based.

We will ensure that our staff and those acting on our behalf obtain, use and disclose personal information lawfully and correctly. To this end we fully endorse and adhere to the principles of data protection, as set out in the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (the “Act”). We shall apply the Act globally, except where part or all of any local law is stronger.

In particular we will:

• observe the conditions in the Act regarding the fair collection and use of personal information (please see below regarding personal information collected via our website);
• meet our legal obligations to specify the purposes for which we process personal information, this information being set out in our data protection notification particulars which can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website ico.org.uk.
• collect and process appropriate personal information, only to the extent that it is needed to fulfil our operational needs or to comply with any legal requirement;
• ensure the accuracy of any personal information kept by us;
• apply checks to determine the length of time personal information is held by us;
• ensure that the rights of people about whom personal information is held, are able to be exercised fully under the Act;
• take appropriate technical and organisational security measures to safeguard personal information;
• ascertain that personal information is not transferred outside the European Economic Area without suitable safeguards or agreement from the individual.

If we collect personal information via our website, prior to finally submitting any personal information to our website, we will endeavour to ensure that you are informed as to:

• the purpose for collecting the information
• what the information will be used for
• the identity of anyone else to whom the information will be given and what they will use it for
• how you can request copies of any personal information we hold on you.

Please note that where our website contains links to other websites, we are not responsible for the privacy practices of other websites and this statement applies solely to any personal information collected by our website.

IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information. We only use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer our website, track general user movements, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.

Cookies

Please be aware that we use cookies on our website. We use cookies to track the interests of our users so that we can subsequently enhance their experience on our website. If your browser rejects a cookie, you may still use our website.

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website without storing any personally identifiable information about you. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

Cookies by 3rd party platforms and sites

To support our content publication, we sometimes embed photos and video content from websites such as Vimeo. As a result, when you visit a page with content embedded from, for example Vimeo, you may be presented with cookies from these websites. We do not control the dissemination of these cookies.

Cookies set up by Sharing Tools

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that many of our websites now carry embedded ‘share’ buttons to enable users of the site to easily share articles with their friends through a number of popular social networks. These sites may set a cookie when you are also logged in to their service. The British Council does not control the dissemination of these cookies and you should check the relevant third party website for more information about these.

Turning off Cookies

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. Below are links to the ‘Help’ pages of major browsers which explain how you can do this. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site or any other websites that you visit.

Except for essential cookies, all cookies will expire after a period of time.

Copyright

The copyright for content on this website is held by the British Council, except for material provided by other organisations, where copyright ownership is indicated.

The views expressed on this website are not necessarily those of the British Council.

You may link to us from your site, as long as our site appears in its normal form, for example, it does not appear inside your own frameset or with any advertising.

The British Council is not responsible for the content of external links.