Privacy Policy

Brink Innovation Limited Privacy policy

Last updated: May 2024

This privacy policy explains how Brink uses personal information we collect via our work and our website. We are committed to protecting your privacy and we take all reasonable precautions to safeguard personal information.  

1. What kind of information do we collect?

Sign-up details: If you register or sign up for events, newsletters or publications on the site, we will ask you for personal information such as your name, email address, occupation and other contact details such as a contact phone number.

Job application details: If you apply online for a job at Brink, we will collect information about you and your experience through that application process.

Other application details (e.g. for services or funding): If you submit a tender to provide any services, apply for funding or support from Brink, or register to attend one of our events, we may ask for more detailed information which we will use to process your application and you will be asked to agree to specific terms and conditions at the time of making the application.

Feedback and surveys: We may also ask you for feedback about Brink or to complete surveys.

Research: If you agree to work with us in relation to any research we are conducting we will ask you for your name and contact details, occupation and may ask for further information about you as may be relevant to the particular research you are participating in.

Online activity: When you use our website, we obtain information about the device from which you accessed it, your visits and use of the website including your IP address, location, browser type and version, referrer and activity. We record your activity and preferences when visiting the site through the use of cookies (see "Cookies", below).

2. What do we do with information we collect and what is our legal basis for this?

Third party processors: As is indicated below, we may use third party platforms and processors to deliver newsletters, process applications, event registrations, tickets or publication sales, payments, surveys, and any request to update your data contact preferences. In using these third parties we are pursuing our legitimate interest to use third party technology to achieve greater efficiency within our organisation. To balance our interests against yours, we have taken steps to ensure these third parties maintain appropriate technical and organisational measures to keep your personal information secure.

Sign-up details: If you sign-up for us to send you newsletters, publications and other information about Brink, our partners and activities (see “Marketing” section below), we will use your personal information to send these to you. Our legal basis for doing this is your consent. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time, as explained in the “Marketing” section below. If you are given the opportunity to sign-up, register for an event, or programme, or to create a personal profile through Facebook or Twitter, Facebook and Twitter will make your email address registered to your Facebook or Twitter account available to Brink, and Brink will use the email address to enable you to log in to the particular platform. Our legitimate interest in doing this is the use of third party platforms for business efficiency and ease of registration for users.

Events: If you register to attend one of our events we will use your personal information to process your application to attend the event, take payment, if any, for our administration and management of the event and to send you any updates or information regarding the event. Our legal basis for doing so is to fulfill the agreement with you for your attendance.

We use Eventbrite as a registration systems for some of our events and their servers are based in the United States (U.S.) and may store and process your information outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Eventbrite complies with the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework. See the Eventbrite privacy policy for more information.

Purchases: If you buy a ticket for an event, or make a purchase via the website we will use the information provided to fulfill your order. We use third party systems to process your purchase and take payment. The payment processing organisation will be the data controller of your information for the purpose of processing the transaction, and may process your information outside of the EEA. Please read the terms and conditions before completing your purchase and making payment.

Job application details: We will use your personal information to process your application. We undertake this processing because it is necessary to fully assess your application, and if successful, to take steps to enter into a contract with you (this is our legal basis for the processing).

At Brink we use a third party platform provider to process our job applications. We will make the terms and conditions very clear at the point of application. For more information please see the Breezy privacy policy.

Other application details: We will use your personal information to process applications you make via the site. We undertake this processing because it is necessary to fully assess your application, and if successful, to take steps to enter into an agreement with you (this is our legal basis for the processing).

If you tender to provide any services, or apply for funding or support, enter one of our, or our partners’ prizes, you may be directed to another platform to process these applications. Some of these platforms may be managed by third parties other than Brink, and further details will be given to you when you start the application. Please ensure you read the terms and conditions of those platforms when making any such applications, as when you submit an application you will be agreeing to the terms and conditions of those platforms. However, we remain the controller of your personal information in this arrangement – these third parties only process your personal information in line with our instructions.

Feedback and surveys: If you agree to give us feedback or complete a survey, we will use the information to improve our work and activities. We usually use Typeform to process surveys, and they only process your information on our instructions. Typeform operate in the EU and comply with EU regulations. For more information see the Typeform privacy policy. If you agree to participate in any survey that will form part of any research project, we will tell you at the time you take part how your information will be used for the particular research project or programme, and how long it will be kept for.

Research: If you agree to take part in any research we will use your information for the purpose of that research project or programme. Full details of how your personal information will be used will be given to you at the time you agree to participate; this could include to inform the development of a new prize, project, programme or other initiative, being incorporated into reports or other research outcomes, and may include being publicly displayed on web pages relating to the particular research project or programme.

Online activity: The information that we obtain about your device helps us to monitor the website and keep it secure. The cookies we use tell us how you use the site and what pages you have visited. In pursuing these activities, we use our legitimate interest of monitoring and improving the performance of the site, and its security, to help us understand more about our customer’s interests and preferences and to inform our marketing strategy. Some of these cookies are used for remarketing purposes and, if you agree, will be used to send you tailored advertisements. For more information, see “Cookies” below.

Social media interaction: We do not currently use any third party providers to process the contact details of our followers on social media.

For all kinds of information collected: Please make sure that any personal details you provide are accurate and up to date, and let us know about any changes. Please get consent first before giving us anyone else’s information.

The nature of Brink’s work means we often work in partnership with other organisations, however, we will not share your information with any other organisation unless we have your permission first, unless we have a legitimate interest to do so (see section 5 below).

We may also use your information to carry out analysis and research to improve our publications, events and activities, customise our website and its content to your particular preferences, notify you of any changes to our website or to our activities that may affect you, to prevent and detect fraud and abuse, and to protect other users.

However you choose to engage with or support Brink, we may retain your information for our own legitimate business interests for statistical analysis purposes, in order to review, develop and improve our business activities. In this situation, we will only keep any personal information if it is necessary to do so, and will always put in place appropriate safeguards, including where possible anonymising or minimising the data retained.

3. How long will we keep your information for?

General principle: We will only keep any personal information that you provide to us for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purpose for which you gave us the information and we will securely delete information when it is no longer needed for that purpose, as explained in more detail below.

Events: If you attend one of our events, we will use your information for the purpose of the event, and will only contact you for any other purpose if you have said we can. We will retain your personal information collected for the purpose of the event for 3 years for evaluation and business development purposes to help us understand our audience and reach, and to improve future events.

Consent: We keep records of consent, and any withdrawal of consent, on our files for as long as your personal information is being used in-line with that consent and for a period of 6 years after the consent is withdrawn (unless otherwise requested by you).

Job application details: If you apply for a job or send us a CV, we will keep your details on file for 2 years from the end of the recruitment process. After that point, your application or CV will be destroyed. However, if you are successful in your application, then the information you provide during the application process will be retained by us as part of your employee file for the duration of your employment plus 6 years following the end of your employment.

Other application details: If you tender to provide any services, or apply for funding or support, or enter one of our or our partners’ prizes, and you are successful, then we will keep your information for 6 years after the associated agreement has come to an end, or if the agreement was executed as a deed for 12 years. If the project or initiative has any external funding or support, we may need to retain your information for a longer period to fulfil our obligations under those agreements, in which case we will tell you that at the time of application.

If you are unsuccessful in a tender to supply services or you are unsuccessful in an application for funding, support or a prize entry, once the process has ended we will retain your information for 3 years for evaluation and business development purposes, and to provide you with future opportunities to apply for similar opportunities, funding and support, or prizes in the future. If you do not wish us to contact you about future opportunities, please let us know by writing to use or emailing us at the contact details below.

Research: If you agree to take part in any research your personal information will be kept for as long as it is of value to Brink and the wider research community, and for as long as may be specified by any external research funder, patent law, legislative and other regulatory requirements. Research data shall be reviewed at least every 5 years to consider its continued value to Brink, and personal data anonymised or pseudonymised where possible, unless to do so would affect the integrity of the research data and/or its outcomes, or its future value. Where we use verbatim quotes, we will always seek your consent before attributing them to you in any research.

To the extent that Personal Data arising from any research is embodied within a research report or other research outcome, it will be retained in perpetuity as part of the published materials.

Research that supports the development of a project, programme, publication or other research outcome, shall be kept for at least 5 years beyond publication or any other research outcome has been completed. If the research is funded or the subject of any other contract, your personal data may be kept for 6 years after the end of the contract or longer if the contract or funding agreement specifies, which could be up to 12 years after the contract ends.

Processing for statistical analysis purposes: This type of processing will only be undertaken whilst we retain your personal information in line with the principles explained above.

4. Marketing

If you sign up to our mailing list we will use your details to keep you informed about latest news, blogs, programme updates, research, publications, event details, jobs and funding opportunities, and may request feedback, including our annual audience survey.

We use third party providers to deliver our e-newsletters. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. We currently use Mailchimp whose servers are hosted in the USA, but do comply with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. If you want to know more about how your information will be stored and processed see the privacy policies for MailChimp.

If you no longer want to receive marketing communications from us, you can unsubscribe from our mailing list at any time by please clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails or by emailing coffee@hellobrink.co detailing your name and email address. If you are given the opportunity to update your contact preferences in any email from us, this will link to a form hosted by Mailchimp. If this function is not made available, please email us at the above address with your preference updates.

We use third party remarketing services to tailor advertising to you based upon your browsing history on this website, for more information see “Cookies” below.

5. Who else has access to your information?

We may share your information with our partners and companies who help us to operate this site, and if you register to attend an event or apply to one of our programmes or indicate interest in any other activity detailed on the site, we may share your details with the companies/organisations and individuals who help us to fund, organise and operate the events, grant programmes and other activities.

Our legal basis for doing this is to pursue our legitimate interest of being able to work collaboratively with other organisations to operate and administer the event, programme or activity. Some of these organisations may process your information in countries outside the EEA, such as the United States, where data protection laws are not the same as in the EEA. Rest assured that we will always ensure any transfer is subject to appropriate security measures to safeguard your personal data. Where transfers are necessary to countries where data protection has not yet been declared to be adequate, we rely on GDPR Article 49(1)(c) for these transfers. Full details of these organisations, confirmation of where they would process your personal information, and details of the steps we have taken to safeguard your personal data will be provided as part of the online data collection process.

We may disclose your personal information to law enforcement agencies if required by law (in which case our legal basis for doing this is for compliance with a legal obligation), or to protect or defend ourselves or others against illegal or harmful activities (in which case, our legal basis for doing this is the pursuit of these legitimate interests).

6. Cookies

Our website uses cookies. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites you visit. They are widely used to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to site owners. Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through browser settings.

This site uses cookies that are strictly necessary to enable you to move around the site or to provide certain basic features, such as logging into secure areas.

The site also uses performance cookies which collect information about how you use the site, such as how you are referred to it and how long you stay on certain pages. This information is aggregated and therefore anonymous and is used to improve the performance of the site. If you want, you can block cookies by changing the settings on your browser. Please note that some of the features of the site may not work if you choose to block cookies.

7. Security

We take steps to protect your personal information and follow procedures designed to minimise unauthorised access or disclosure of your information. If you have a password for an account on Brink’s online systems due to your role as an employee, associate, contractor or otherwise, please keep this safe and do not share it with anyone else. You are responsible for all activity on your account and must contact us immediately if you are aware of any unauthorised use of your password or other security breach.

8. Contacting us, exercising your rights and complaints

You are legally entitled to know what personal information we hold about you and how that information is processed, which includes the right to:

If you wish to know what information we hold about you, or wish to exercise any of your other rights as detailed above, or have any complaint about how we are using your personal information, then please email us using coffee@hellobrink.co or write to us at Brink Innovation Ltd, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE  and provide enough information to identify yourself (e.g. name and address or any registration details).

If our information is incorrect or out of date, please provide us with information to update it. If you want us to delete, restrict or stop using any information we hold about you, please explain the reasons why you are asking this. If you are unhappy with how we are using your information, again please explain to us the reasons and we will investigate the matter.

You can also write to the same address if you have a complaint about this policy.

If you are unhappy with how any data rights request or complaint has dealt with you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner:

9. Changes to the privacy policy

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes that relate to information we already hold about you, where practicable. You should check this policy occasionally to ensure you are aware of the most recent version that will apply each time you access this website.

Brink Innovation Limited, a private limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 11116719

Registered office: 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE

Email: coffee@hellobrink.co