Privacy Policy

We take the privacy of our users’ and customers' data seriously. Please ensure that you have read and understood this Policy prior to using our website or making a purchase from us.

1. Purpose of this Policy

  • This policy sets out how Quality Formations Limited (company registration number: 09010176), trading as QCF and Quality Company Formations (“we”/”us”/”our”), collects and processes your personal data.
  • It also gives you information about the legal rights that you have in respect of your personal data.
  • Given that we provide our services to limited companies and LLPs rather than individuals, we treat all users of our website and any customers who purchase services from us as “corporate subscribers” as defined in the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
  • We keep this policy under review and it may be updated at any time. You must ensure that you revisit this page to ensure that you are familiar with the most up to date version.

2. What does personal data include?

  • In short, personal data is any information about an individual from which they can be identified. You can read more about what constitutes personal data on the ICO’s website.
  • We may collect, store, transfer and process the following kinds of personal data:
    • Identity Data
      This includes full names, previous names, date of birth, gender, citizenship, passport numbers and usernames, for example.
    • Contact Data
      This includes billing addresses, delivery addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers.
    • Financial Data
      This includes bank account and payment card details.
    • Transaction Data
      This includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
    • Technical Data
      This includes IP addresses, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device ID and other technology on the devices you use to access our website.
    • Profile Data
      This includes usernames and passwords, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
    • Usage Data
      This includes information about how you interact with and use our website, products and services.
    • Marketing and Communications Data
      This includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
  • Our website is not intended for children, and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children, nor do we collect any special categories of personal data, e.g. information about race, health or religion.

3. Collection of personal data

We collect your personal data in the following ways:

  • When you interact with us - e.g. when you send us any correspondence or fill out any online forms. This might happen, for example, when you:
    • order from us;
    • provide us with feedback;
    • create an account on our website; or
    • enter a competition, promotion or survey.
  • Using Automated technology or interactions. This doesn’t require you to input any personal data manually. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data using cookies and other similar technologies. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Cookies Policy.
  • From public sources and other third parties such as:
    • Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the UK in relation to Identity and Contact Data
    • Providers of technical, payment and delivery services - e.g. Trust Payments in relation to Contact, Financial and Transaction Data
    • Analytics and search providers - e.g. Google based outside the UK in relation to Technical Data

4. Who is responsible for the personal data?

  • We are the controller and are ultimately responsible for any personal data which has been collected by us or on our behalf.

5. Is personal data required?

  • We will need you to provide personal data where:
    • It is required by law; or
    • It is required under the terms of our contract with you.
  • Where this is the case and you do not provide the information required, we will likely be unable to provide you with any services and this may therefore result in the cancellation of any contract between us.
  • It is also very important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us, for example if you change your residential address or email address.

6. Our legal basis for collecting and processing your personal data

  • In accordance with data protection law, we can only collect and use your personal data if we have a legal basis for doing so. We use a combination of the following legal bases to justify the collection and processing of the personal data we collect:
    • Performance of our contract with you.
    • Where necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation.
    • Where it is necessary for us to be able to operate the business and achieve our, or a third party’s, legitimate interest. Where we rely on legitimate interests as a justification for processing your personal data, we always balance this against your interests, rights and freedoms as an individual. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless permitted to by law).
    • Consent. We only rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data when we share personal data with our partners in respect of referrals.

7. How do we use your personal data?

We use your personal data in various ways, depending on the type of data and the purpose for which it is collected. We have set out below the ways in which your personal data is used by us.

  • To provide our services to you, including:
    • To register you as a new customer
    • To process and deliver your order and/or provide the services you have requested
    • To carry out mail forwarding
    • To manage payments
    • Debt recovery

    Our legal basis

    • Performance of our contract with you.
    • Our legitimate interest in recovering any debts due to us.
  • To operate, protect and improve our services, business and website, including:
    • Troubleshooting
    • Testing
    • Data analysis
    • System maintenance
    • Reporting and hosting of data
    • Support

    Our legal basis

    • Legitimate interests in running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise
    • Necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation.
  • To manage our relationship with you, including:
    • Communicating with you about your order
    • Notifying you about changes to any of our terms or policies
    • Asking you to leave a review for our business
    • Enabling you to take part in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey

    Our legal basis

    • Performance of our contract with you.
    • Legitimate interests in understanding how our customers use our products and services, keeping our customers informed and maintaining up to date records.
    • Necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation.
  • To assist us with advertising, including:
    • Measuring and understanding how effective our advertising is
    • Allowing us to provide you with relevant advertisements
    • Ensuring that our website content is relevant
    • Recommending services or products to you that may be of interest
    • Providing you with promotional offers

    Our legal basis

    • Legitimate interests in understanding how our customers use our products and services, developing our service offering, growing our business and informing our marketing strategy.
  • To improve customer and user experience, including:
    • Using data analytics to improve our website, products and services
    • Identifying our customer base
    • Improving website and business relationship experience for our customers
    • Ensuring that our marketing is relevant

    Our legal basis

    • Legitimate interests in identifying our target audience, developing our website and business, informing our marketing strategy and ensuring a good experience with the business.
  • To share your details with our referral partners.
    • We will only do this where you have asked us to do so, either by requesting the additional services at checkout or by clicking on any of our referral partners’ links on our website.
    • If you have asked us to do so, we will ask you to complete a form containing the personal data you consent to be provided to such partners. The partners to whom the data will be provided will be expressly identified on the form.
    • We will also ask you to consent expressly to this sharing of your personal data by ticking a tick-box. This will include a statement setting out that you consent to the partner contacting you directly
    • Whenever you have provided consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us.

    Our legal basis

    • Performance of our contract with you.
    • Your consent.
    • Legitimate interests in growing our business and developing our service offering.
  • To carry out due diligence checks on our customers and associated individuals including:
    • Verification of identity
    • Verification of address
    • Due diligence monitoring

    Our legal basis

    • Performance of our contract with you.
    • Necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation.
    • Legitimate interests in record keeping, preventing crime and understanding our customers.

8. How do we handle marketing?

  • You will receive direct marketing communications from us by email and/or SMS if:
    • you have requested information from us; or
    • purchased goods or services from us; and
    • you have not opted out of receiving the marketing.
  • As you are a “corporate subscriber”, we are not required by law to obtain your consent to direct marketing. However, you will always have the option to opt out of receiving direct marketing messages.
  • If you would like to opt out of receiving direct marketing messages, you can do this at any time by contacting us or by using the opt-out links in the direct marketing messages themselves.
  • Please be aware that if you opt out of receiving direct marketing messages, you will still continue to receive service-related messages that are essential for customer service or administrative purposes - e.g. in relation to order confirmations and reminders.
  • As mentioned, we may also analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage, and Profile Data to determine which products, services, and offers may interest you, so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications.

9. Who does your personal data get shared with?

The personal data we collect and hold about you may be transferred to the following third parties:

  • Other members of our corporate group who are within the UK.
    • for administrative purposes; and
    • to develop our products and services.
  • Professional advisors
    • Including lawyers, accountants, consultants and insurance providers.
  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities including law enforcement.
    • To comply with all applicable laws and compliance requirements we are subject to.
  • Our referral partners.
    • Where you have requested that we do so.
  • Third parties in relation to the sale, merger or other disposal or restructuring of the business.
    • Those to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets.
    • Where we seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them.
    • If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this policy.
  • Our service providers
    • They may be acting as processors or controllers.
    • They assist us by providing services including credit and identity checks, advertising and marketing, SEO facilities, website services, bank and merchant account services, payment processing and the delivery of goods and/or documents purchased from us.
  • Review websites
    • We ask our customers to provide a review of their experience with us. We may temporarily share your information (name, email address and order number) with Trustpilot, to allow them to send you this invitation; however, the information will not be stored. This information will also not be shared with anyone else.

    Please be assured that we require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

10. Call recording and monitoring of other correspondence

  • Any telephone conversation that we have with you may be recorded, monitored and stored by us.
  • We may also do the same with any email messages or other correspondence that we have with you.
  • We do this so that we can refer back to your instructions to ensure that we respond correctly, to train our staff (particularly in relation to customer service), to assist in preventing crime or fraudulent activity and to improve our customers' overall experience with us.

11. Is the personal data shared internationally?

  • Some of our service providers may be located outside of the UK. This means that we may need to transfer your personal data internationally to countries that do not have the same level of protection as the UK under data protection law.
  • If we do need to transfer your personal data outside of the UK, we make sure that a similar standard of protection is given to your data by:
    • only transferring your personal data to countries that have been deemed by the UK to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data; or
    • using specific standard contractual terms approved for use in the UK. To obtain a copy of these contractual safeguards, please contact us.

12. How long do we keep the personal data?

  • We will retain your personal data only as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or reporting requirements. In the event of a complaint, or if we reasonably foresee potential litigation regarding our relationship with you, we may retain your personal data for a longer period.
  • To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process the data and whether these purposes can be achieved through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or other requirements.
  • Please note that in accordance with the law, we must keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax and legal purposes
  • In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete your data by exercising your legal rights. Please see paragraph 13 for more information.
  • In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it no longer reveals your identity) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

13. Your legal rights & how they can be exercised

You have several rights set out under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:

  • Request access

    This is usually referred to as a “subject data request” and allows you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and verify that we are processing it lawfully.

  • Request correction

    You can request correction of the personal data we hold about you. This allows you to have incomplete or inaccurate data corrected, although we may need to verify the accuracy of the new information you provide.

  • Have your data erased

    You can request erasure of your personal data under certain circumstances. This allows you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no valid reason for us to continue processing it. You also have the right to request erasure if you have successfully objected to processing, if we have processed your data unlawfully, or if we are required to erase your data to comply with local laws. Note that we may not always be able to comply with your erasure request for specific legal reasons, which will be communicated to you at the time of your request.

  • Object to your personal data being processed

    You can object to the processing of your personal data where we rely on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for using your data, including for profiling purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information that override your objection rights. You also have an absolute right to object to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes at any time.

  • Request that your data be transferred

    You can request the transfer of your personal data to yourself or a third party. We will provide your data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. This right applies only to automated information that you initially consented to us using, or where we have used the information to perform a contract with you.

  • Withdraw consent

    You can withdraw your consent at any time when we rely on consent to process your personal data - i.e. in relation to sharing your data with our referral partners. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw it. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you, and we will inform you if this is the case at the time of your withdrawal.

  • Restrict the processing of your data

    You can request restriction or suspension of processing of your personal data in the following circumstances:

    • you would like us to verify the data's accuracy;
    • our use of the data is unlawful, but you do not want it erased;
    • you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it, as you need it to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims; or
    • you have objected to our use of your data, but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Exercising your rights

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us.

  • You will not have to pay a fee to exercise your rights. However, we may refuse to comply with your request or charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive.
  • Please also be aware that we may need to ask you to provide or confirm specific information as a security measure to help us confirm your identity and ensure the exercise of your rights.
  • We may also need you to provide further information so that we can respond to your request efficiently.
  • We aim to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Sometimes it may take us longer than a month, for example, if your request is particularly complex or you have made multiple requests. If this is the case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

14. Security of personal data

  • The security of your personal information is our top priority. While no security system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, we are committed to protecting your personal information.
  • We use robust security measures and follow industry standards to safeguard your data during transmission and once we receive it.
  • Access to your personal data is restricted to employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties with a business need to know. They will process your data according to our instructions and are bound by confidentiality obligations.
  • Please be aware that we cannot guarantee absolute security of our servers or that information sent over the Internet will not be intercepted. However, we have established procedures to handle any suspected personal data breaches. If a breach occurs, we will notify you and any relevant regulators as required by law.

15. Other data we collect

We also collect and process data which is not personal data. This includes data which has been anonymised or aggregated. This type of data generally includes information such as statistics on how our website is being used and will not reveal your identity. We use this kind of data to inform our services and website development.

16. Third-party links on the website

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We have no control over these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy policies. When you leave our website, you should ensure that you read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

17. Contacting Us

If you have any questions or would like to exercise your legal rights, please contact us at [email protected].

18. Complaints

  • If you wish to make a complaint about our use of personal data, please email the details of your complaint to [email protected] in the first instance. We will thoroughly investigate and respond to any complaints we receive.
  • You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (“ICO”) in the UK (as the UK’s data protection regulator). Please visit the ICO’s website for further information on how to make a complaint.