1. Introduction
Welcome to our privacy policy. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy informs you about how we look after your personal data when you visit our website to nominate or vote for your favourite local music acts, and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
This website is designed specifically to celebrate local music talent by allowing members of the public to submit nominations and cast votes. Because our functionality is limited strictly to these activities, we only collect the minimum amount of personal data necessary to run a fair, secure, and transparent voting process.
2. The Data We Collect About You
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store, and transfer different kinds of personal data about you, which we have grouped together as follows:
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Voter & Nominator Data: Email address (collected when you submit a nomination or cast a vote to verify your entry and prevent duplicate voting).
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Technical Data: Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
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Usage Data: Information about how you use our website, including the timestamps of when nominations or votes were submitted.
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Nominee Data: If you nominate a local music act, we collect the name of the act and any public links or social media handles you provide to identify them. If an act is an individual or a group of individuals, this information may constitute personal data.
3. How Your Personal Data Is Collected
We use different methods to collect data from and about you, including through:
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Direct Interactions: You give us your email address and nomination selections by filling in forms on our website.
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Automated Technologies: As you interact with our website, we automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs, and similar technologies.
4. How and Why We Use Your Personal Data
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we use your personal data in the following circumstances:
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Legitimate Interests: Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests to ensure the integrity, security, and fairness of the voting and nomination process (for example, tracking IP addresses and email addresses to detect and prevent automated voting, spam, or multiple voting fraud).
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Consent: Where you explicitly choose to provide information or opt-in to receive subsequent updates about the award outcomes or event logistics.
5. Data Retention: How Long We Keep Your Information
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, or reporting requirements.
Retention Policy: All email addresses and IP addresses collected strictly for validation and voting verification purposes will be securely and permanently deleted within 60 days following the formal announcement of the award winners and the conclusion of the event cycle.
Publicly displayed nominee names or music act profiles may remain on the website as a historical archive of the awards, unless a request for removal is submitted.
6. Sharing Your Personal Data
We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data to any third parties for marketing or commercial purposes. Your data is only shared with trusted service providers who assist us in operating our platform:
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Hosting & Infrastructure Providers: Web hosting and database providers who securely store data within UK or European Economic Area (EEA) data centres.
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Anti-Fraud Services: Technical verification services that assist in identifying malicious bot activity or bulk spam submissions.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes.
7. Cookies
Our website uses essential cookies and similar session-tracking technologies strictly to manage the voting workflow. These cookies are required to remember your session state, ensure that your vote is registered accurately, and prevent duplicate entries. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, but note that if you disable or refuse cookies, some parts of this website may become inaccessible or fail to function properly during the voting process.
8. Data Security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. Communication with this website is encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) / Transport Layer Security (TLS) technology. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those organizers or technical administrators who have a business need to know.
9. Your Legal Rights
Under UK data protection laws, you have rights in relation to your personal data, including the right to:
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Request Access: Receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
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Request Correction: Ask us to correct any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you.
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Request Erasure: Ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it.
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Object to Processing: Object to the processing of your data where we are relying on a legitimate interest.
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Withdraw Consent: Withdraw your consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your data.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us via our designated contact details.
10. Contact Us and Regulatory Complaints
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our data protection practices, please contact the organizing committee through the contact form or email address listed on our website's homepage.
You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please contact us in the first instance.
