The Comedy School Privacy Policy
Last updated: March 2025
INTRODUCTION
The Comedy School takes the privacy of all of its participants and supporters
very seriously and is committed to respecting and protecting your personal
information. We aim to be transparent about what information we hold about
you, whichever way you are connected with us.
The purpose of this policy is to explain how The Comedy School collects, uses
and protects any personal data.
All personal data is collected, stored and used in strict accordance with the UK
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Collecting personal data helps
us to develop a better understanding of everyone who engages with us – from
course participants and event attendees to website users, our members and
supporters. This allows us to work more effectively and helps us provide you
with a better, more tailored service.
We will publish any updates to our privacy policy on our webpage
(thecomedyschool.com) and we recommend you check this page from time to
time. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal
data, we will notify you.
WHO ARE WE?
The Comedy School Company Limited is a company limited by guarantee.
Registered in England Reg No. 3574261.
HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have any questions regarding this privacy policy or your personal data,
please contact us.
• Email: email@thecomedyschool.com
• Phone: 020 7486 1844
• Post: Data Enquiries, The Comedy School, 14-15 Gloucester Gate, London NW1 4HG
WHAT DATA DO WE COLLECT?
Depending on the reason for interacting with us, we may collect and hold the
following information from you:
• Identity Data: includes your first name,
last name, title, date of birth,
gender and contact details for your parent or guardian if you are under 16.
• Contact Data: includes billing address, delivery address, email address,
telephone numbers.
• Education Data: if you are a student, including name of your
college/university/community group and your course details.
• Financial Data: includes bank account and payment card details if you
are making a purchase or donation and your preferences relating to Gift
Aid.
• Transaction Data: includes details about payments to and from you and
details of tickets or services you have purchased from us.
• Supporter Data: includes information relating to memberships,
donations, attendance at events and interests.
• Health Data: if you have a disability, information about your access
requirements (for example if you require wheelchair access, an
assistance dog, assisted hearing audio descriptions, BSL interpretation
or a seat for a personal assistant); information about your allergies or
dietary requirements if you are participating or attending an event and
information about your health if we are investigating an accident or
other incident that has occurred at The Comedy School.
• Image Data: includes your image and likeness as captured in
photographs, video and audio recordings if you participate in a
workshop or other event.
• Usage Data: includes information about how you use our websites and
services.
• Marketing and Communications Data: includes your preferences in
receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your
communication preferences.
• Evaluation Data: this helps us understand the impact of our work.
Depending on what programme you participate in, it could include
before and after surveys to explore outcomes and also your feedback.
HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA?
Personal data is collected directly from you.
Personal data is collected though a range of mediums and interactions.
Examples include: when you book for an event, participate in a workshop or
attend another event, speak to or email a member of our team, make a
donation, join as a member, subscribe to an email newsletter, respond to a
survey, request marketing or fundraising information to be sent to you, enter acompetition, provide feedback to us, fill out a form or provide any other
information in any way.
HOW DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most
commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
• To perform a contract with you, such as when you book a ticket for a
showcase or course or other event, become a Comedy School member
or give a donation or when we need to contact you with important
information relating to your booking
• To comply with a legal obligation, such as when you exercise your
rights under data protection law or when we have to report to or
respond to a request from government or law enforcement officials
(such as reporting Gift Aid details to HMRC) or to meet national security
or law enforcement requirements or prevent illegal activity
• Based on your consent, for example when you have specifically
consented for us to use your information. For example, this could be to
send you updates via email about what’s on, priority booking, The
Comedy School news or information about membership or supporting
us. This may also include us sharing your details with our partner
organisations where you’ve consented to this.
• Based on your explicit consent when you provide us with information
about your health or access needs for us to provide you with tailored
services, such as a wheelchair accessible space or seating for a
captioned performance
• As necessary for our legitimate interests in providing our service to you.
We aggregate data on an anonymous basis for evaluation and reporting to
funders (e.g. The National Lottery Community Fund). We ensure that you
cannot be identified by any data that is used in evaluation and reporting.
SHARING OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We may share your personal information with our trusted service providers,
sub-contractors and agents that we may appoint to perform functions on our
behalf and in accordance with our instructions, including payment providers,
event ticketing providers, email communication providers, market research
analysts, IT service providers, postal mailing providers, accountants, auditors
and lawyers.We may also share your personal information with other venues or
organisations with whom The Comedy School works, but only if you have
given your explicit consent to this.
We require all other organisations with whom we share your personal
information to respect the security of your information and to treat it in
accordance with the law. We do not allow our service providers to use your
personal data for their own purposes.
We might also have to share your information if we have to by law or where
we need to protect you or other people from harm.
Other than as expressly set out in this Privacy Policy, we will not sell, rent,
trade or distribute your personal information to third parties without your
express consent or are required by law to do so.
HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent your personal
information from being lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered
or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those
employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business
need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions as
Data Controller. They are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
Your personal stored in secured networks and is only accessible by a very
limited number of persons who have special access rights to such systems,
and who are required to keep the information secure and confidential.
All financial transactions are processed through a gateway provider and are
not stored or processed on our servers.
We have procedures to deal with any suspected data breach and will notify
you and the Information Commissioners Office when we are legally required to
do so.
HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR DATA?
We will only keep your personal information in accordance with data
protection law for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it
for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting
requirements. Where your information is no longer required, we will ensure it
is disposed of, deleted or cached in a secure manner.To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we
consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the information, the potential
risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of the information, the
purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can
achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal
requirements.
YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
You are in control of your personal information. You have the right to:
• Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Ask us to correct information that’s wrong, to delete it or to request that
we only use it for certain purposes.
• Request that we provide your personal information to you or another
organisation in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable
format.
• Object to us processing your personal information based on our
legitimate interests.
• Change your mind and ask us to stop using your information, for
example, unsubscribing from any marketing emails.
Please be aware that if you ask us to stop using your information we may not
be able to provide certain services to you; we will let you know if this is the
case.
If you would like to exercise any of your legal rights in relation to the personal
data that we hold about you, please contact us.
If you have a concern about the way in which we use your personal
information, you may also make a complaint to a supervisory authority for data
protection matters. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s
Office: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/. If you live in another EEA country, you
may complain to the supervisory authority in your country.
HOW TO CHANGE OR ACCESS THE INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT
YOU
The accuracy of your personal information is important to us and you can help
keep our records up to date by telling us when your contact details and other
personal information changes, and if you change your mind about how we
contact you. We may occasionally screen our database against recognised
data hygiene files such as National Change of Address file and cleanse ourfiles or correct inaccurate data. We may also update inaccurate data if the
information is available.
You may opt out of receiving marketing and communications at any time.
Every email we send you will include details on how to change your
communications preferences or unsubscribe from future communications.
If you would like to update the details we hold or change your contact
preferences you can contact the Office on 020 7486 1844 /
email@thecomedyschool.com
