Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how McDermott KC Training (“we”, “us”, “our”) collects, uses, stores and protects your personal data when you engage with our expert witness training services, visit our website or subscribe to our marketing communications.

We are committed to complying with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Who we are

McDermott KC Training is a limited company registered in England with registration number 07971844.

Our registered office is Incom House, Waterside, Trafford Park, Manchester M17 1WD. Our trading and postal address is 7 Stamford Street, Stalybridge, Cheshire SK15 1JP.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’) and our registration number is ZC160095.

McDermott KC Training is a data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) 2016/679 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

Data protection principles

We will at all times comply with the data protection principles set out in the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 (which includes not only electronic data, but also personal data held in paper format in filing systems). We will ensure that your personal data is:

  • processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner;
  • collected for specified and legitimate purposes that have been clearly explained to you and not further processed in a way that is incompatible with those purposes;
  • adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed;
  • accurate and kept up to date;
  • kept in a form which permits your identification for no longer than is necessary for those purposes; and
  • processed in a way which ensures appropriate security of data.

In addition, the principle of accountability means that we, as a data controller, are responsible for and must be able to demonstrate compliance with these principles.

For these purposes, personal data means any information about an individual from which that individual is capable of being identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymised data). There are ‘special categories’ of sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection and which are referred to below.

What types of personal data do we collect about you?

We collect and process personal data about you. The data we will collect may include:

  • Title;
  • Name;
  • Email address;
  • Phone number;
  • Job title and professional background;
  • Organisation/employer;
  • Payment information (including where processed securely via third-party providers);
  • Training records (attendance, completion and certificates).

Special categories of data

We may also collect and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information in the following situations:

  • Information you provide about your dietary requirements in the booking process for an event may contain reference to religion or health condition but are only stored for the purpose of providing appropriate food and beverage.
  • Information you provide about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records for the purposes of ensuring access at any of our events or deferring any element of our accredited qualification.

Where we collect “special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information this information requires higher levels of protection and by law we need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information.

Visitors to our website

We may collect information about you and your use of our website via technical means such as cookies, webpage counters and other analytics tools. We use this as necessary for our legitimate interests in administering our website and to ensure it operates effectively and securely. We keep this website information about you from when it is collected until the relevant cookie expires or you disable it.

Our website may, from time to time, contain 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 do not control these third party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

We will seek your consent before storing any cookies on your computer. You can refuse to accept cookies, however, doing this may affect the functionality you can access on some websites. Having consented to the use of all cookies you may visit “cookie settings” at any time to provide a controlled consent.

Cookies are small, harmless text files placed on a computer hard drive. The information we collect, process and store, via cookies, during the normal use of the site is used to monitor and analyse how parts of the site are used. Such use does not result in any personally identifiable data being collected, processed, or stored.

The rest of this notice is in relation to data received other than via cookies and our website.

How do we collect your personal data?

The vast majority of the information we hold about you is collected during the course of you making enquiries or bookings with us. This information will be provided directly by you. We may occasionally obtain information from other sources such as:

  • Agencies/organisations you work with;
  • Publicly available sources;
  • Social media.

Marketing

We may collect your name and contact details (such as your email address, phone number or address) in order to send you information about our products and services which you might be interested in. We may collect this directly from you, or through a third party. If a third party collected your name and contact details, we will process your professional data based on legitimate interests to send you a fair processing notice and then respect any communication preferences you give us.

You always have the right to “opt out” of receiving our marketing. You can exercise the right at any time by contacting us at gerard@mcdermottkctraining.com. If we send you any marketing emails, we will always provide an unsubscribe option to allow you to opt out of any further marketing emails. If you “opt-out” of our marketing materials you will be added to our suppression list to ensure we do not accidentally send you further marketing. Where you unsubscribe from any postal marketing, you may initially still receive some content which has already been printed or sent, but we will remove you from any future campaigns. We may still need to contact you for administrative or operational purposes, but we will make sure that those communications don’t include direct marketing.

If you are an existing customer we use your contact details as necessary for our legitimate interests in marketing to you and maintaining a list of potential customers.

We never share your name or contact details with third parties for marketing purposes. We may use third party service providers to send out our marketing, but we only allow them to use that information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

We retain your details on our marketing list until you “opt-out” at which point we add you to our suppression list. We keep that suppression list indefinitely to comply with our legal obligations to ensure we don’t accidentally send you any more marketing.

How do we store your data?

We will keep your personal data secure at all times. Your information may be stored in different places including a paper based filing system and IT systems, including a secure encrypted intranet and diary management and email systems.

We operate various security measures in order to prevent loss of, or unauthorised access to, your personal data. In order to ensure this, we restrict access to your personal data to those with a genuine business need to access it, and we have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

How long do we keep your personal information?

Personal data that is processed by us will not be retained for any longer than is necessary for that processing, or for purposes relating to or arising from that processing (including any legal, accounting, regulatory and reporting requirements).

Where your information relates to a contract, it is kept for a period of up to 7 years after your account is closed to enable us to deal with any after sales enquiries or claims and as required for tax purposes and may be stored in our archive for reference purposes for as long as our business need which we will review after 7 years. Online payment information is collected by our payment card processing provider and is retained in line with their policies and procedures.

Marketing data will be retained until you unsubscribe or request deletion.

Where we collect “special categories” of data, i.e. dietary requirements or health information, we retain this for one month.

How do we use your personal information and on what basis?

We will primarily use your personal information for:

  • Registering you for training courses;
  • Providing course materials and certificates;
  • Managing bookings, payments and customer support including handling complaints;
  • Internal record keeping;
  • Improving our services and training content;
  • Ensuring website security and performance;
  • Sending newsletters, training updates and promotional offers;
  • Informing you about new courses, events or expert witness resources;
  • Tailored marketing content based on your interests.

Legal bases for processing data

In the majority of cases we will be seeking to rely on the following bases for processing your data:

  • Performance of a contract with you or to take steps to enter into a contract;
  • Legitimate interests;
  • Consent; where you explicitly opt in to receive marketing communications;
  • Legal obligation; for financial and tax recordkeeping.

Legitimate interests might include:

  • Provision of training services;
  • Maintaining accurate and up-to-date records and contact details;
  • The management, administration and operation of our company, including accounting requirements;
  • Business development and direct marketing purposes.

Certain personal data is subject to additional safeguards under data protection legislation. This includes special category data referred to earlier in this notice.

Sharing your data with others

We may share your personal information with third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal information in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our agreements with you, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of us, our customers, or others or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so. We also may need to share your personal information with third-party service providers (including consultants, contractors, email marketing platforms, cloud storage providers, payment processors and designated agents) so that they can carry out their services.

The following activities may be carried out by third-party service providers: administration, provision of conference delegate information, CRM system, email marketing system, event administration and management, event venues, feedback and review platforms, IT services, legal advice, learning management systems, printers and mailing houses, payment processing systems, trainers and speakers at events, training partners and webinar platforms.

All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information. Where third parties process your personal information on our behalf as “data processors” they must do so only on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure. We will never sell your personal data.

Transferring your data outside the UK

We do not expect to transfer your personal information outside the UK. If we do we will ensure the relevant safeguarding measures are in place.

Your rights in relation to your data

Data protection legislation gives you various rights in relation to your personal data that we hold and process. These rights are subject to specific time limits in terms of how quickly we must respond to you. The rights which data subjects have are, in the main, set out in Articles 12–23 of the UK GDPR. They are as follows:

Right of access – this is usually known as making a data subject access request. It enables you to obtain from us confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning you is being processed, and, where that is the case, access to that personal data and various other information, including the purpose for the processing, with whom the data is shared, how long the data will be retained, and the existence of various other rights (see below).

Right to rectification – this enables you to have any inaccurate or incomplete personal information we hold about you corrected.

Right to erasure – sometimes referred to as the right to be forgotten, this is the right for you to request that, in certain circumstances, we delete data relating to you.

Right to restrict processing – the right to request that, in certain circumstances, we restrict the processing of your data.

Right to data portability – the right, in certain circumstances, to receive that personal data which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, and a right to have that personal data transmitted to another controller.

Right to object – the right, in certain circumstances, to object to personal data being processed by us where it is in relation to direct marketing, or in relation to processing where we are relying on the legitimate interests of the business as our legal basis for doing so.

Right not to be subject to automated decision making – the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning you, or similarly significantly affects you. We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you based solely on automated decision making.

In the event that you wish to exercise any of these rights please contact us. Some of these rights are not automatic, and we reserve the right to discuss with you why we might not comply with a request from you to exercise them. We may need to request specific information from you in order to verify your identity and check your right to access the personal data or to exercise any of your other rights. This is a security measure to ensure that your personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

In the limited circumstances where you have provided your consent to the processing of your personal data for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. This will not, however, affect the lawfulness of processing based on your consent before its withdrawal. If you wish to withdraw your consent please contact us. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent we will no longer process your personal information for the purpose you originally agreed to.

Making a complaint

If you have any queries as to the acquisition, use, storage or disposal of any personal data relating to you please contact us at gerard@mcdermottkctraining.com.

Despite our best efforts, inevitably sometimes things do go wrong. If you are unhappy with any aspect of the use and/or protection of your personal data, you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, who may be contacted in writing at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF; by telephone on 0303 123 1113; or online at www.ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

This privacy policy is reviewed annually. The terms and provisions of this policy may be changed, updated and amended from time to time.

If you would like this policy to be supplied to you in another format (for example audio, large print, braille) please contact us.

12th June 2026