Privacy statement

Who is responsible for your information?

MGR Music Tuition Ltd (“we”, “us”) operates the Guitar Lessons Middlesbrough website and is the controller of personal information used to handle website enquiries. Our company number is 08646304, registered in England and Wales. Our registered office and postal contact address is 6 Oaklands Court, Tiverton Way, Tiverton, Devon, EX16 6TG.

For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, email info@mgrmusic.com. You can also contact info@guitarlessonsmiddlesbrough.com about your lesson enquiry.

This notice covers the website and MGR Music Tuition’s handling of lesson enquiries and related student information. Dave Rutherford receives relevant enquiry details so that he can discuss lessons with you. Dave acts as a separate controller for the information he uses to arrange and provide his lessons, including his own teaching records, and is responsible for explaining how he uses and keeps it. You can ask him about this when arranging lessons.

Information we collect

• Enquiry details: your name, email address, optional telephone number and the message you send. This may include your musical experience, availability and information about the prospective student.
• Correspondence: messages and replies needed to deal with your enquiry or a privacy request.
• Technical and security information: your IP address, browser information, the page used to submit an enquiry, submission times and verification results. Our hosting and security providers also process technical request information.
• Abuse-prevention records: coded fingerprints derived from your enquiry, email address and IP address, together with delivery status and timing information. These help limit spam and duplicate messages; they are not treated as anonymous data.

The form requires a name, email address and message so that we can understand and answer your enquiry. A telephone number is optional. You are not legally required to contact us, but without a way to reply we cannot respond. This website does not provide an account-registration or online card-payment facility.

Please share only what is needed for your enquiry. Do not include bank details, identity documents, a child’s full date of birth or detailed medical information in the form.

Why we use your information

UK data protection law requires a lawful basis for each use of personal information. For the website enquiry service, the relevant purposes and bases are:

• Answering and routing enquiries: our legitimate interests in running the enquiry service and helping prospective students contact the teacher they have asked about. This includes administrative correspondence and an enquiry acknowledgement.
• Protecting the website and delivering messages reliably: our legitimate interests in preventing spam, misuse and duplicate delivery, and keeping the service available.
• Handling privacy requests and legal requirements: compliance with applicable legal obligations.
• Investigating complaints, handling safety concerns or establishing, exercising or defending legal claims: our legitimate interests in responding to concerns, protecting people and protecting legal rights, where the information is necessary for that purpose. Where a specific legal duty requires processing, we rely on that legal obligation. Sensitive information or criminal-offence information requires a separate applicable legal condition; these interests alone are not sufficient.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, your interests and rights must also be considered. You can object to these uses by contacting us. Sending an enquiry does not subscribe you to a newsletter or give consent to unrelated marketing. Simply browsing this website is not consent to the uses described in this notice.

Who receives your information

Your enquiry is delivered to the website’s administration team and the relevant details are passed to Dave Rutherford to respond about lessons. Authorised people supporting the enquiry service may access correspondence where needed.

• Google Firebase and Google Cloud: website hosting, processing form submissions and maintaining security and delivery-control records.
• Google reCAPTCHA: checking form activity to help distinguish people from automated abuse.
• Mailchimp Transactional (Mandrill): sending the enquiry email and, where applicable, an acknowledgement to you. Open and click tracking are disabled in the website’s email-sending configuration.
• Email service providers: storing and delivering correspondence in the administration and teacher’s mailboxes.

Information may also need to be disclosed to professional advisers, regulators or authorities where necessary to meet a legal obligation or deal with a legal claim. We do not use the enquiry form to sell personal information or provide contact lists to advertisers.

Processing outside the UK

The enquiry-processing service is configured in Google’s United States region. Google and Mailchimp may also process information in other countries where they or their service providers operate. This means your enquiry is not processed exclusively in the UK.

UK law requires an appropriate transfer mechanism where applicable, such as UK adequacy regulations or approved contractual safeguards. Google and Mailchimp describe their contractual and transfer arrangements in their Firebase privacy information and Mailchimp European data transfer information. Contact us for information about the safeguards applicable to your enquiry, including how to obtain a copy where relevant.

How long information is kept

MGR Music Tuition’s approach is to retain enquiry emails and any student information it holds only for as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. The retention period depends on whether an enquiry is still being handled, whether follow-up has been requested, and whether the information remains necessary to administer a resulting service or resolve an outstanding issue. Dave manages his own teaching records separately.

Information must be deleted or anonymised when it is no longer needed, unless a specific reason justifies keeping it longer. Such reasons may include an applicable legal record-keeping requirement or the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal claim. Any extended retention must be limited to the information needed and the period justified by that reason.

You can ask MGR Music Tuition to explain the retention criteria applicable to your information or request deletion using the contact details above. A deletion request will be considered alongside any continuing legal need to retain the information.

The website’s current form-processing code does not save the full enquiry text in its delivery-control database. It sends the enquiry by email. Security fingerprints and delivery-control entries become eligible for removal after 48 hours and are removed when subsequent submission processing runs; this is not a guarantee of deletion exactly 48 hours after submission.

Email copies, provider logs and backups have separate retention arrangements. You can ask us about the records held for your enquiry, their retention or deletion using the contact details above. A request to erase information is considered alongside any continuing legal need to retain it.

Cookies and spam protection

The current website does not load Google Analytics or an advertising service of its own. Google reCAPTCHA loads when you first interact with an enquiry form on the live website. The FAQs embed a Google map, which can connect to Google as you approach it while browsing.

These external features send technical information to Google and can store or access information on your device. Our cookie policy explains their purposes and browser controls. You can email us instead of using the enquiry form. See Google’s reCAPTCHA data-processing information for its role in verification and Google’s privacy policy for its map service.

An embedded map can disclose technical information to Google even if you do not submit an enquiry. This can include your IP address, browser information and information identifying this website as the source of the request. Further information may be processed when you interact with a map. The information involved depends on the service, your actions, existing cookies and account settings.

The legitimate interests described for our enquiry and security activities do not replace consent where device storage or access requires it. Any exception must apply to the particular purpose and activity; it is not a blanket exemption for Google services. Our cookie policy explains that there are currently no separate on-site permission or withdrawal controls for these embedded features.

Enquiries about children

A parent or guardian should make an enquiry for a child and use their own contact details. An age or school-year range and a short description of the child’s musical experience are usually enough at this stage. Please avoid sending information about other children or unnecessary sensitive details.

If you need to discuss an accessibility or health-related adjustment, first ask how to share the information appropriately. Any necessary sensitive information requires additional protection and an appropriate legal condition; a general enquiry is not blanket consent to process it.

Your data protection rights

Depending on the circumstances and the lawful basis, you can ask us to:

• give you access to your personal information and a copy of it;
• correct inaccurate or incomplete information;
• erase information or restrict its use;
• stop processing based on legitimate interests, by exercising your right to object;
• provide information in a portable format, where the right to portability applies.

Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of earlier processing. These rights are subject to the conditions and exceptions in data protection law.

Email info@mgrmusic.com to make a request; no special form is required. We normally respond without undue delay and within one month. If the law allows an extension, a pause for necessary clarification or a request for identity information, we will explain this. Requests are normally free; any permitted charge or refusal must be justified under the law.

Automated checks may reject a form submission suspected of spam. They do not decide your eligibility for lessons. If verification prevents you from contacting us, email us so that a person can deal with your enquiry.

Questions and complaints

If you are concerned about how your information has been used, contact info@mgrmusic.com and describe the issue so we can investigate. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK data protection regulator.

This notice is intended to explain the website’s use of personal information under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, as amended. We will update it when relevant practices or requirements change. If we intend to use your information for a new purpose, we will provide the required information before doing so and establish an appropriate lawful basis. The date above identifies the latest revision.