Privacy policy

1 Introduction

The purpose of this privacy policy is to set out how any personal data about you is obtained and processed, in relation to The Gazette business, and to explain who is the Data Controller of that data, and who is the Data Processor.

The privacy statement covers personal data from notice placers, from users of this website and The Gazette mobile site, published in Gazette notices and data services, and in other Gazette products such as Company Profile pages.

The Gazette is managed by The National Archives under a concessionary contract with The Stationery Office (TSO). The privacy policy sets out why and how personal data is processed by TSO, and explains your rights.

2 The Gazette

The purpose of the data processing in The Gazette is to place official information permanently on the public record and in the public domain. Information is published online, in print and via data services. Gazette notices can be mandated, ie they are required by law to be published, or they can be placed by choice, ie the notice placer chooses to put information in The Gazette in order to create an official record of fact.

Personal data is also processed to support the delivery of the business operations, to help understand and manage demand for Gazette services, to enable The National Archives to effectively monitor and manage performance under the concessionary contract, and to transition services to another provider, should this be required.

3 About the Data Controller and the Data Processor

The Data Controller for all Gazette data is The National Archives – a non-ministerial government department, and publisher for the UK government, and for England and Wales. The National Archives is responsible for managing The Gazette, under a concessionary contract, currently let to TSO. TSO is the Data Processor for Gazette data – under contract we host, manage and operate The Gazette website and Gazette business.

The National Archives’ address is Bessant Drive, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU. TSO’s registered address is 18 St. Andrews Business Park, Norwich, England, NR7 0HR.

4 Personal data: notice placers

When you submit a notice to be published in The Gazette, or via The Gazette in a local newspaper, we process personal data about you to facilitate that transaction. The personal information we process may (without limitation) include your name, address, telephone number, email address, user ID, bank details and credit limit/allowable spend. We store this information securely under the terms of the concessionary contract with The National Archives. This data will also be processed to enable the transfer of accurate notice placer information at the end of the contract to support the transition of The Gazette business to a new provider, if required.

5 Personal data: customers and users of The Gazette website, mobile app and live chat

We collect data about you when you use The Gazette online services. This data includes the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform.

We may also automatically collect information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site, products you have viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call our customer service number.

The purpose of this processing is to provide access to Gazette services and to improve our understanding of customer needs, to improve our service offering. The results of all such research and analysis is presented as anonymous or aggregated information and does not reveal any personal facts about individual users. The data is managed securely under the terms of the concessionary contract.

Find out more about The Gazette cookie policy.

If you contact our customer services team either via telephone or live chat to discuss or order Gazette products, they will process personal data that may include (but is not limited to) telephone number, email, fax, postal and live chat enquiries and orders, payment details, address for delivery (of one-off orders and subscriptions). This will be held securely, under the terms of the concessionary contract, and may be processed at the end of the contract to support the transition of The Gazette business to a new contractor, if required.

6 Personal data: notices and data service

Personal data is included in some Gazette notices, online and in print, and in data services where customers pay for the convenience of receiving Gazette notices via a service, rather than by having to search for notices on The Gazette website, create a pdf of the notices they are interested in, or subscribe to a full printed or electronic version of The Gazette. Some of the data available from the data service also contains insolvency information from Scotland’s Insolvency Service, the Accountant in Bankruptcy.

Your personal data may be included in a Gazette notice, online and in print, and in data services, because you have chosen to submit a notice to be published. Or your personal data may be processed because an authorised intermediary has placed a notice to be published on your behalf. This may be because they are required by law to submit this information about you (the publication of bankruptcy orders, for example, is governed by the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016 – rule 10.32 and 10.45), or because they choose to put official information about you permanently on the public record and in the public domain (for example if a notice is submitted about a military honour awarded to you, or the Queen’s birthday and new year honours).

The personal data in Gazette notices varies according to the requirements of the type of notice placed. Some notices contain no personal data at all. Others may contain (without limitation) a name, address and previous address (business and/or personal), job title, rank, job identification (eg IP number for insolvency practitioners), email address, telephone number, fax number, date of birth, marital status, previous name, name of the executor of an estate.

If there is no statutory requirement to publish personal information in The Gazette, processing is covered by contract with the notice placer (the terms and conditions of notice placement). A notice placer is an organisation or individual with the authority to place a notice in The Gazette under Article 6 (e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). For example, a personal insolvency notice will be placed in The Gazette by an insolvency practitioner. We verify the authority to place a notice. If there is a statutory requirement to publish information in The Gazette, then the legal basis for processing personal data is that The Gazette has a legal obligation under Article 6 (c) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). Therefore, the consent of the data subject is not required, and the data subject has no right to erasure, or the right to object.

If you have questions or concerns about any personal data included in a Gazette notice, please contact our customer service team in the first instance. We will manage your enquiry in line with our customer charter, which includes escalation to The National Archives, as Data Controller, as required.

7 Personal data: personal insolvency notices

Personal insolvency notices are required by statute to be published, as follows. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the publication of bankruptcy orders in The Gazette is governed by the Insolvency Rules. Once made, the order is required by law to be gazetted (rules 6.34 and 6.48 prior to 6 April 2017, and rules 10.32 and 10.45 from this date – England and Wales and rule 6.031 - Northern Ireland), making the notices available to the public as evidence of the conduct of discharged or undischarged bankrupts.

In Scotland, the publication of sequestration (bankruptcy) and trust deed orders in The Edinburgh Gazette was required under the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 1985, but these requirements have been repealed over a period from 2010 – 2015 (see the Home Owner and Debtor Protection (Scotland) Act 2010, the Protected Trust Deeds (Scotland) Regulations 2008 and The Bankruptcy and Debt Advice (Scotland) Act 2014).

The personal insolvency notices on The Gazette website are part of the permanent official record. However, we request that search engines start to exclude all personal insolvency notices from their search results after one year and three months. This policy is aligned to the lowest common denominator of insolvency registers which, in this case, is the Insolvency Service bankruptcy and insolvency register. Once a bankruptcy order is made, the data subject is usually discharged after one year. The record is then removed from the Insolvency Service register three months after the insolvency case has ended.

To view the current status of a bankruptcy you can search the individual insolvency registers England and Wales and Northern Ireland.

Every type of personal insolvency notice has a different notice code and each notice code has a ‘no-index, follow’ tag automatically added to it one year and three months after it was placed. The ‘no-index, follow’ tag instructs search engines, if they adhere to these rules, to exclude results from their search. The automatic adding of a ‘no-index, follow’ tag means that the first notice about your personal insolvency will be excluded from search engines one year and three months after it was placed, with any subsequent notices excluded one year and three months after they were placed.

If you are the subject of a personal insolvency notice you can also request that the Official Receiver places a discharge of insolvency notice or notice of annulment (if these apply). More information on these notice types is given below.

Discharge of insolvency notices

If you want to request that the Official Receiver places a discharge of insolvency notice in The Gazette, point 9 in the Insolvency Service’s guidance on bankruptcy sets out the process you must follow.

Notice of annulment

If your bankruptcy is annulled you can also request that the Official Receiver places a notice of annulment in The Gazette; point 9 in the Insolvency Service’s guidance on bankruptcy sets out the process you must follow.

8 Personal data: company profiles

As part of The Gazette service offering, we collate information from The Gazette, and from Companies House, to create Company Profiles. The intent of this processing is to present official information about a registered business, in one place. Please note that the Companies House data used does not include information about sole traders.

We create ‘vanilla’ profiles that collate basic business information and provide the option for businesses to ‘claim’ their profile and add in (‘customise’) additional official information. The personal data included in the Company Profile pages is business-related, and the profile page clearly indicates the provenance of the data included, ie whether it came from a Gazette notice, or whether it came from Companies House.

The personal data included in vanilla company profile pages is as follows: director name, role, month and year of birth, nationality, appointment and termination dates and business address. Sole traders are not included in company profile pages.

For further information, see our Company profiles FAQs.

9 Security of information and personal data

Under the terms of the concessionary contract, we are required to comply with data protection legislation, and to securely manage your personal data. The Gazette ecommerce activities are certified to the best practice information security standard ISO 27001, and we follow strict security procedures for obtaining, processing and storing the personal information. The transmission of information via the internet is at your own risk, but once we have received your information, we use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access, where possible.

We will not disclose or make your personal information available to a third party (otherwise than where indicated within this privacy policy) without your consent. However, we may disclose your personal information to third parties if it is under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply its terms and conditions and other agreements, or to protect the rights, property or safety of TSO, The National Archives, Gazette customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

You can help to protect your personal information by ensuring that you keep your login password secure. We also recommend that you log out of your account once you have completed your transaction or enquiry, especially if you are using a shared computer.

10 Retention of personal information

The period for which we will retain personal information will vary depending on the purposes that it was collected for, as well as the requirements of any applicable law or regulation:

If you have signed up for an account on The Gazette website, we will store your personal information and the information in your account for as long as is necessary to provide the account, and for the period for which you or we could bring legal proceedings in relation to the running of your account.
If you order a product through The Gazette website, we will store your personal information and information about your order for as long as is necessary to comply with applicable tax legislation, and for the period for which you or we could bring legal proceedings in relation to your order.
If you contact The Gazette either via telephone or live chat, we will store the telephone recording or live chat transcript for a period of three months, unless required for a longer period in order to resolve any on-going communication or dispute.
If you use the forwarding service when placing a deceased estates notice, we will store your personal information for a period of 10 months from publication of the notice in The Gazette, or 10 months from publication of the notice in a local newspaper, in line with the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependents) Act 1975, which allows for the standard practice of executors distributing an estate within six months of the date of the grant of probate and served within four months of issue. In relation to the forwarding service, your personal information will only be used to allow notification of any claims or correspondence received.
If you are required to submit personal identification when claiming a company for the company profile membership, we will store your personal information for a period of one month in order to process your profile claim.
Personal data from notice placers is kept for six years in order to enable the transfer of accurate notice placer information at the end of the contract to support the transition of The Gazette business to a new contractor, if required.

11 Accuracy of notice content

Under the terms of the concessionary contract, we are required to carry out validation checks on notice information. Additionally, we also require notice placers to confirm the accuracy of the data they are submitting, prior to a notice being accepted for publishing – this is set out in notice placer terms and conditions.

However, if you believe that the information contained in a notice published in The Gazette is inaccurate and evidence can be provided by an authoritative body, by which we mean: a regulator (for example the Law Society); an ombudsman (for example the FCA); an insolvency practitioner; the Official Receiver; The Insolvency Service in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Accountant in Bankruptcy in Scotland; or a court of law, you can do one of the following:

If you placed the notice: contact our customer services, informing them which part of the notice is inaccurate. They will need evidence from you, or from an authoritative body, that clearly proves the inaccuracy of the information in the notice, before any action is possible. For example, you will need to send evidence of a correct date for a court hearing, if you believe the date in the notice is wrong. Corrective action will either be a reinsertion, retraction or substitution notice. If this is a result of notice placer error there will be a charge for correcting inaccurate information, which the customer services team will discuss with you.
If you did not place the notice: contact the organisation or person who placed the notice and explain your concerns. Ask the notice placer to contact our customer services team with evidence of factual inaccuracy, supported by evidence from an authoritative body. We will then be able to take appropriate action which will either be a reinsertion, retraction or substitution notice. For personal insolvencies, the notice placer will be your insolvency practitioner. If the error was in the information provided by the notice placer, there may be a charge for correcting inaccurate information which our customer services team will discuss with the notice placer. If you are not able to contact the notice placer, but have evidence from an authoritative body, contact our customer services, who will discuss options with you. There will be a charge for correcting inaccurate information, which the customer services team will discuss with the notice placer.

12 Redacting personal information

The purpose of the data processing in The Gazette is to place official information permanently on the public record and in the public domain.

We cannot redact information that is available in print, but may redact personal information online (this means obscuring information so that it cannot be read) if:

There is evidence of a significant risk to the physical or mental health or the safety of the data subject. Such evidence would need to come from the police, security services, social services, child protection services, a doctor or other medical professional and, if the notice is published under a statutory authority, you will be required to seek the notice placers permission and provide evidence of that approval before any redaction can occur. If you think you have evidence which would lead to redacting your personal information, please contact the customer services team.
There is no statutory requirement to publish the data and you did not give consent (through accepting notice placer terms and conditions), or have subsequently withdrawn consent, for that data to be published.
If there is a statutory requirement on the part of the notice placer to publish information in The Gazette, then the legal basis for processing personal data is that there is official authority for it under Article 6 (e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and The Gazette has a legal obligation under Article 6 (c) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). Therefore, the consent of the data subject is not required, and the data subject has no right to erasure, or the right to object.

Under exceptional circumstances a notice may be removed in its entirety, for example if the notice was found by us to have been submitted by an unauthorised notice placer, or if a request to completely remove a notice is received from the police. If a notice is removed entirely, we will retain the notice identification online and include explanatory text saying why and when the notice was removed.

13 Direct marketing material

If you have opted in to receive information about The Gazette, in the post, telephone or by email, we may use your personal information to keep you informed of Gazette-related products, services and events.

You may ask us at any time to cease sending you direct marketing material by:

contacting our customer services team on +44 (0)333 202 5070
sending an email to customer.services@thegazette.co.uk
clicking the 'unsubscribe' button on any email you receive

14 Email marketing communications

Where you have consented to receiving email marketing material about The Gazette from us, you may ask us at any time to cease sending you such material. Unsubscribe instructions are clearly outlined at the bottom of every direct marketing email that you receive.

15 Further information and help relating to search engines

It is possible to contact search engines directly, usually via an online form, to request that personal information is removed from their search index. Please find details of these forms for some commonly used search engines below:

Please note: Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines index many thousands of websites, including The Gazette, and each search engine will have their own policy regarding what personal information they will remove. The Gazette is not affiliated in any way with these search engines.

16 Processing your personal information outside of the EU

All EU countries, including the UK, process personal information according to the General Data Protection Regulation, which requires them to have a legal basis for processing it, and gives you rights over your information. Countries outside the EU, although they may have their own data protection legislation, will not be subject to the same EU regulations.

We exercise particular care if we need to send your information outside the EU, ranging from secure methods of transferring it, to ensuring it has a robust contract in place with any third party. If necessary, we may send specialist IT staff abroad to inspect and approve the conditions under which your information would be processed. Any processing of data outside the EU requires the consent of the Data Controller, The National Archives. Currently, the only data processed under the concessionary contract outside of the EU is notice placer information, which may be accessed by our credit management team, who are based in the UK and in India.

If you are accessing our services from outside the EU, any information you send or receive from us will of necessity be transferred via a non-EU country.

17 Your rights

You have certain rights in relation to the personal information collected about you. These include the right to request access to your personal information, to request that it is erased, or that its processing is restricted, or that any inaccurate personal information is rectified. You also have the right to object to the processing of your personal information, or in some circumstances, to obtain a copy of the personal information in machine readable format. Any such request should be submitted in writing to our customer service team. Some of these rights do not apply if the information is required by law to be published.

You also have the right to complain about the use your personal information to the local supervisory authority, which in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office (www.ico.org.uk).

You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113. Or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns (please note we can't be responsible for the content of external websites).

Or you can write to them at:

The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

18 Contacting TSO

We aim to offer you the very best personal service; the kind of service you want, and the products you need. Your views are important, so if you have any views on how The Gazette service could be improved, contact +44 (0)333 202 5070, or email customer.services@thegazette.co.uk.

19 Links to other websites

The Gazette website may contain links to other third-party websites with whom we have a relationship, in relation to The Gazette business. We are not responsible for these websites and their privacy practices. They therefore suggest that you read the privacy policy statements on any website that you visit from a link on this site, as their policies and procedures may differ from ours.

20 Logo re-use

For information about using The Gazette logo, see the logo re-use guidelines.

21 Changes to this privacy policy

This policy will be reviewed from time to time to take account of changes to business operations or practices and to make sure it remains appropriate to any changes in law, technology and the business environment.

22 The National Archives’ data protection officer

The National Archives’ data protection officer is Linda Stewart, who can be contacted at linda.stewart@nationalarchives.gov.uk.