Privacy Policy

The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners Limited (“STEP”, “We”, “us”, “our”) are committed to protecting and respecting your personal information.

We have adopted the following privacy policy which sets out the basis on which any personal information which you may provide to us through this website or by any other means will be processed by us. Please therefore read this policy carefully so that you understand our views and practices regarding your personal information and how we will treat it. Any change to this Privacy Policy will be posted on this website and will become effective 5 days after posting.

1. Information we may collect about you

1.1 We may collect and process the following:

1.1.1 information that you provide by filling in forms (such as STEP and CLT application forms) which are provided on our website www.step.org (our site). This includes information provided at the time of applying to become a member of STEP, when posting material, or when requesting further services such as requesting to attend STEP events/conferences;

1.1.2 if you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence; and

1.1.3 details of your visits to our site and the resources that you access.

2 How we use our information

2.1 We may use your personal information for the following purposes:

2.1.1 to assess, operate and improve this website and to perform the services for which STEP is responsible;

2.1.2 to keep you informed about STEP and its services and about this website (where you have consented to be contracted for such purposes).

2.2 We may also (provided that you have given consent to us) use your information or permit carefully chosen third parties to use your information to provide you (by post or email) with information about products and services which may be of interest to you and which are relevant to your membership.

2.3 If you do not want us to use your information in this way, or to pass your details on to third parties for such purposes, please tick the relevant box situated on the form on which we collect your information (the “STEP Application Form”).

3 Disclosure of your information

3.1 We may disclose your personal information to any of our branches, any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in Section 1159 of the Companies Act 2006.

3.2 In the event that we disclose your information to any third party we will follow the relevant legal requirements and use reasonable precautions to ensure that there is adequate protection for your personal information in place.

3.3 We may also disclose your personal information to third parties:

3.3.1 in the event that we transfer the whole or a substantial part of our undertaking, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective transferee of such whole or substantial part of our undertaking; or

3.3.2 if we are under a legal duty to disclose or share your personal information.

However, we are not responsible for any breach of security or any act or omission of any third party who receive the personal information.

4 Where we store your information

4.1 Your personal information may be used, transferred to or stored in countries outside your own including to a destination outside the European Economic Area. It may be transferred to and processed by staff of one of our branches operating outside the EEA to enable our local branches to contact you about local STEP events. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

4.2 Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet in general is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

5 IP Addresses and Cookies

5.1 This website uses, or may from time to time use, Cookies. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record-keeping purposes and they can make the World Wide Web more useful by storing information about your preferences on a particular site. The use of Cookies is normal practice and many major websites use them to provide useful features for their users. Cookies do not personally identify users but they do identify a user’s computer. Most browsers are initially set to accept Cookies so our system will issue cookies when log on to our site. If you prefer, you can set your browser to refuse Cookies by activating the setting on your browser. If you select this setting, then you may be unable to access certain parts of our site.

5.2 STEP may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to advertisers. This is statistical data about users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

5.3 In addition to the use of your personal information as described above, STEP may also gather anonymous information which may be used by it or shared with third parties. This is information which does not identify you, but which may be helpful for marketing purposes or for improving this website or the services provided through it.

6 Your Rights

6.1 You have the right to ask us not to process your personal information for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your personal information for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by ticking certain boxes on the STEP Application Forms. You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us at step@step.org.

7 Other websites

7.1 Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to external websites linked through this website. Personal information which you choose to provide to other websites will be subject to the privacy policies of those websites. Please therefore read these policies before you submit any personal information to these websites as we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.

8 Access to Information

8.1 You have the right to access the personal information that we hold about you. You can request access to at any time subject to a fee of £10 to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.

If you have any questions or wish to have any personal information edited or deleted, please email or write to us at STEP Worldwide.