Legal
Privacy Notice
How Bearing Consultancy Ltd looks after your personal information.
- Version
- Version 1.0, 10 October 2026
- Who we are
- Bearing Consultancy Ltd ("Bearing", "we"), registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, registration number ZC242169
- Contact
- Data Director, hello@bearingconsultancy.co.uk
The short version
- We use your information to give you what you asked for: a result, a place on a course, a certificate or a piece of work.
- We only send you marketing if you tick the separate box that says so. You can stop it at any time.
- If you use our online tools, we keep your answers. We may use them without your name as research data. We never publish anything that identifies you.
- We do not sell your information.
- You can ask to see it, correct it or delete it. Tell us at the address above.
What we collect and why
Online tool contact details
Name, email, role, organisation, country.
- Why we use it
- To send you the result you asked for, and to answer you.
- Our legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in delivering the tool you chose.
- How long we keep it
- Until you ask us to delete it. If you agreed to marketing, we review it every 24 months.
Decision Diagnostic answers and result
Your answers to the ten situations, your decision approach and your scores.
- Why we use it
- To give you your result. To follow up in a way that fits your result. To study, without your name, how people decide, and to improve the tool.
- Our legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in running the tool and in research. Your marketing agreement for marketing emails.
- How long we keep it
- Linked to your contact record while we keep it. Kept without your name for research, with no time limit.
Organisational Decision Readiness Tool answers
Answers to the 18 questions and the organisation’s result.
- Why we use it
- To give you the result. To study, without any name, how readiness varies between organisations.
- Our legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in running the tool and in research.
- How long we keep it
- Answers are stored without your name, email or organisation, and kept without a time limit.
Course booking details
Name, contact details, organisation, prior learning evidence, access needs.
- Why we use it
- To run your booking, check entry requirements and arrange adjustments.
- Our legal basis
- Contract. Legal duty to make reasonable adjustments. Your agreement for health related access needs.
- How long we keep it
- 6 years after the course.
Assessment and evaluation records
Observations, ratings, reflections, outcomes, feedback and surveys.
- Why we use it
- To assess you fairly, issue your certificate, deal with appeals and improve our courses.
- Our legal basis
- Our legitimate interest. Your agreement for follow-up surveys and research use.
- How long we keep it
- Identifiable for 24 months, then made anonymous and combined.
Membership records
Membership, refresher bookings, qualification status.
- Why we use it
- To keep our certificate register current and run your membership.
- Our legal basis
- Contract. Our legitimate interest in keeping the register accurate.
- How long we keep it
- While you are a member, then 6 years.
Client and partner contacts
- Why we use it
- To work with you and keep in touch about the work.
- Our legal basis
- Contract and our legitimate interests.
- How long we keep it
- Reviewed every 3 years.
Retention periods follow Policy 1 of the Bearing Policy Pack and are proposals until the Board approves them.
Online tools: what happens to your answers
Both tools need your email address so that we can send you the result. Marketing is a separate, optional tick box that starts empty and you get your result whether you tick it or not.
- Decision Diagnostic. Your answers are kept and stay linked to your contact record until we make them anonymous. If you ask us to delete your data before then, we delete the contact record and your answers.
- Organisational Decision Readiness Tool. Your answers are stored without your name, email or organisation. Because they cannot be traced back to you, we cannot withdraw them once you have submitted them.
- Research. When we use answers for research, we first remove names, email addresses and anything else that identifies a person or an organisation. We group details such as role, sector, size and country, and we combine small groups so that nobody can be picked out. We never name a person or an organisation in anything we publish.
- What the results are. Both tools are reflective indicators built on research. They are not psychometric tests, audits or assurance, and we do not use them to judge or select anyone.
Research and publishing
Bearing carries out research on decision-making. We may publish results in journals, at conferences, on our website, in white papers and in talks. Anonymised data from our courses and tools may be used. We use identifiable information for research only if you agree in writing. Some research is carried out for a client for its own use, and we do not publish that.
Who we share your information with
- Our suppliers, who process information on our behalf under written terms: our email platform (Resend), our website host (Akamai Cloud, formerly Linode, which keeps our website data in London), Cloudflare, which protects our online forms from spam and runs our domain's name service, and our cloud file storage (Google Drive).
- Venues and partners only where a course or exercise needs it, and only the details they need. Today we do not share personal information with our delivery and licensing partners.
- Your employer, if they booked and paid for your place. We give them attendance and the outcome for the course. We do not give them what you said or did in a simulation or debrief in a way that identifies you, unless you agree.
- Authorities, where the law requires it, or where we learn of a real risk to safety.
If any of these suppliers keeps information outside the UK, we make sure there is a lawful safeguard in place.
Your rights
You have the right to ask us for a copy of your information, to have mistakes corrected, to have it deleted, to limit how we use it, to receive it in a portable format, and to object to uses based on our legitimate interests. You can withdraw any agreement you have given at any time, and that does not affect what we did before. We answer within one month.
Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link. We act on unsubscribe requests straight away, and always within 5 working days.
Keeping your information safe
We use multi-factor sign-in, encrypted devices and access that matches each person's role. Files with personal information are shared by access-controlled link. If a breach puts you at risk, we tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office as the law requires.
Complaints
Please tell us first, so that we can put things right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.ukor on 0303 123 1113.
Changes to this notice
We update this notice when what we do changes, and we show the date of the latest version at the top.