Privacy Policy | PS English

1. Who we are

This website, www.psenglish.co.uk, is operated by PS English Limited, an English language school based in London, United Kingdom. We are registered in England and Wales, company number 08050147.

For the purposes of UK data protection law, PS English is the "data controller" for the personal information collected through this website. That means we are the organisation responsible for deciding how and why your information is used.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or about how we handle your information, you can contact us by email at ask@psenglish.co.uk, or by post at PS English Limited, 37 Abbots Gardens, London N2 0JG. You can also use the contact page for general enquiries.

2. What information we collect

We only collect the information we need to run the website, respond to your enquiries, and improve the service we offer. We do not sell your information to anyone, and we do not collect more than we need to. What we collect falls into four categories.

1. Information you give us when you contact us or book a consultation: When you fill in our contact form, or book a consultation through our scheduling system, we ask for your name, your email address and a few details about what you are looking for. Some fields are required, such as your name and email. Some are optional, such as your phone number. We only collect what you choose to share.
2. Information you give us when you sign up for our newsletter: If you sign up for our newsletter, we collect your email address and a record of your consent to receive it. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of every newsletter email, or by contacting us directly.
3. Information collected automatically when you visit the site: Like most websites, ours uses Google Analytics to understand, in aggregate, how visitors use the site: which pages are visited, how long visitors stay, which country they are visiting from, and what type of device they are using. Google Analytics also sets cookies on your device to support this measurement. Section 5 lists every cookie and section 6 explains how to control them.
4. Information collected if you become a student: If you go on to become a PS English student after your consultation, we collect additional information needed to deliver your lessons and to invoice you. That is covered by our separate student agreement rather than by this policy. This page only covers what we collect through the website.

3. Why we collect your information

We collect your information for specific purposes, and only for those purposes. Under UK data protection law we must have a "lawful basis" for each thing we do with your information. The bases we rely on are set out alongside each purpose below.

1. To respond to your enquiry or arrange your free consultation: If you contact us, we use what you give us to reply, to arrange a time for your consultation, and to answer your questions. Our lawful basis is that you have asked us to take steps before entering into a contract with you, and that we have a legitimate interest in responding to enquiries about our services.
2. To send you our newsletter, if you have asked us to: If you have signed up, we use your email address to send it. Our lawful basis is your consent, which you give when you sign up and can withdraw at any time.
3. To understand and improve how the website is used: We use the aggregate information collected by Google Analytics to understand which pages are useful, where visitors get stuck, and how to make the site better. We do not use this information to identify individual visitors. Our lawful basis is your consent, which you give or refuse through the cookie banner the first time you visit.
4. To meet our legal obligations: We may need to keep some information to meet legal obligations, for example tax records if you have paid for lessons, or to respond to a lawful request from a regulator or a court. Our lawful basis is compliance with a legal obligation.

4. Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that a website stores on your device when you visit it. Cookies let websites remember things about you between visits, such as whether you have agreed to analytics tracking.

The table below lists every cookie set by our website, what it does, and how long it lasts. We update this list whenever we add or remove a cookie.

Cookies set by this website
Cookie name	Set by	Purpose	Duration
Cookie name _ga	Set by Google Analytics	Purpose Distinguishes individual visitors so we can measure site usage in aggregate.	Duration 2 years
Cookie name _ga_<container-id>	Set by Google Analytics	Purpose Maintains the session for our specific Google Analytics property.	Duration 2 years
Cookie name _gid	Set by Google Analytics	Purpose Distinguishes individual visitors over a 24-hour period.	Duration 24 hours
Cookie name cookie_consent	Set by PS English	Purpose Remembers your cookie preferences so you do not see the banner on every page. Final name depends on the consent tool chosen at build.	Duration 12 months
Cookie name WordPress session cookies	Set by PS English and WordPress	Purpose Keeps you logged in to the WordPress admin area. Not set for ordinary visitors.	Duration Session, or up to 14 days

We do not use cookies for advertising, retargeting, or social media tracking.

5. Your choices about cookies

The first time you visit our website you will see a cookie banner asking what you are happy for us to use cookies for. You can:

Accept all cookies, including the Google Analytics cookies that let us understand how the site is used in aggregate.
Reject all non-essential cookies. Google Analytics will not run and we will not record your visit. The website will still work normally.
Choose which categories you accept. A short settings panel inside the banner lets you accept some categories and reject others.

You can change your mind at any time. A "Cookie settings" link in the website footer reopens the banner so you can update your choices.

You can also control cookies through your browser settings, including blocking them entirely. Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge all publish instructions on their own help pages. Blocking essential cookies may affect parts of the website. Blocking analytics cookies will not.

6. Who we share your information with

We do not sell your information to anyone. We share it only with the small number of service providers we need to run the website and the school, and only to the extent they need it to do their job.

Google, for Google Analytics: Aggregate, non-identifying information about how you use our site. Google is based in the United States, with data centres around the world. Google Analytics is configured to use IP anonymisation, and we rely on the standard data protection safeguards Google publishes for its analytics service.
Our website host, Exact Hosting: Our host stores the website and any form submissions made through it.
Our email provider, Microsoft 365: Email enquiries you send us, and any acknowledgement emails we send in reply, are handled through Microsoft 365.
Our newsletter provider, Mailchimp: If you have subscribed, Mailchimp stores your email address and consent record for as long as you remain subscribed.

We do not share your information with advertisers, data brokers or social media platforms. We will only share it beyond the list above if we are legally required to do so, for example in response to a court order, or if we ask for your consent first.

7. International data transfers

Some of the service providers we rely on, in particular Google Analytics, are based outside the UK. When your information is transferred outside the UK we make sure appropriate safeguards are in place under UK data protection law. Transfers happen only where:

the country in question has been formally recognised by the UK government as offering an adequate level of data protection, or
the provider has signed up to the UK's International Data Transfer Agreement, or the equivalent EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK addendum, or
another lawful safeguard recognised by UK GDPR applies.

If you would like more information about the safeguards in place for a specific transfer, please contact us at the email address in section 1.

8. How long we keep your information

We only keep your information for as long as we need it. The retention periods we apply are:

Contact and booking enquiries: Kept for up to two years from the date of your enquiry, then deleted, unless you have become a student in the meantime, in which case your information is handled under our student agreement.
Newsletter subscriptions: Kept for as long as you remain subscribed. If you unsubscribe, your email address is removed from the active list within seven days and from any backup records within thirty days.
Website analytics data: Held by Google Analytics for the 14-month retention period set on our account. Aggregate, non-identifying reports may be kept longer for trend analysis.
Tax and accounting records: Where we are required to keep records for tax purposes, for example if you have paid for lessons, we keep them for the period required by UK law, currently six years.

If you would like us to delete your information sooner, see section 9.

9. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have a number of rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you. These are:

The right to be informed: This whole page is part of how we meet that right.
The right of access: You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
The right to rectification: If anything we hold about you is wrong or out of date, you can ask us to correct it.
The right to erasure: You can ask us to delete the personal information we hold about you, subject to any legal obligation that requires us to keep it.
The right to restrict processing: You can ask us to pause our use of your information in certain circumstances.
The right to data portability: You can ask us for a copy of the information you have given us, in a structured, commonly used format.
The right to object: You can object to our use of your information for certain purposes, including direct marketing.
Rights relating to automated decision-making: We do not make decisions about you using purely automated processes, but you have a right to know if that ever changes.
The right to withdraw consent: Where we rely on your consent, for example for the newsletter or for analytics cookies, you can withdraw it at any time.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details in section 1. We will respond within one month, which is the timescale set by UK data protection law. If your request is unusually complex we may extend that by up to two further months, and we will tell you if we need to.

If you are not happy with how we have handled your information, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's independent data protection regulator. Their website is ico.org.uk.

10. How we keep your information secure

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to keep your information safe. These include using a reputable, security-maintained hosting provider, encrypting traffic to and from the website using HTTPS, keeping our software up to date, and limiting access to personal information to the small number of people at PS English who need it to do their job.

No internet service can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we take security seriously and review our arrangements regularly. If we ever became aware of a personal data breach that posed a risk to your rights, we would tell the ICO within 72 hours, and we would tell you directly if you were materially affected.

11. Children's privacy

Our website and our lessons are aimed at adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe your child has given us their information, please contact us at the email address in section 1 and we will delete it.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, for example if we change the tools we use or the way we run the website. When we do, we will update the "last updated" date at the top of this page. For significant changes we will also let active newsletter subscribers and current students know directly.

13. This page is not legal advice

This page explains our practices for the information collected through this website. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for advice about your own situation. If you have specific questions, please contact us and we will do our best to answer them.

14. One last thing

Most privacy policies are written by lawyers, for lawyers. This one was written by us, for you. We have tried to be specific about what we actually do, plain about why we do it, and honest about the small number of third parties we rely on. If anything on this page is unclear, or you would like more information about anything we have said, please get in touch. We will reply.