Privacy notice

This notice is for people who apply to, or take part in, the SBS Foundation employment-support programme. It explains, in plain English, what information we collect about you, why, who can see it, and the choices and rights you have.

This programme is open to adults aged 18 and over.

Who we are

Sky Based Specialists Ltd ("SBS", "we") runs the programme and is the "controller" of your information — the organisation legally responsible for it.

• Company number: 16494173 (registered in Manchester, United Kingdom)
• ICO registration: ZC139768
• Privacy contact: hello@skybased.org
• Postal address: 32a Altrincham Street, Manchester, M1 7JR

What we collect, and when

When you sign up (our short online form): your first name, last name, email address, and (optionally) phone number.

If we invite you to complete an assessment: we email you a private, one-time link. The link expires after 30 days — the email always shows the exact expiry date. If we send you a reminder, the reminder link and your original link both work until you submit (at most two live links at any time).

In the baseline assessment, we ask about:

• Your personal details — date of birth, address, and how you prefer to be contacted.
• An emergency contact — the name and phone number of someone we can reach in an emergency. Please tell that person you have given us their details. We use them only in a genuine emergency, we remove them from anything we share outside SBS, and we delete them together with your record.
• Your aspirations, in your own words.
• Your work and education situation.
• How you're doing — four wellbeing questions and three confidence questions, each answered on a simple scale.
• Accessibility and support (optional). In this section we ask whether you have a disability or health condition, and what adjustments would help you. In the exact words you will see on screen: "This section is optional — skipping it will never affect whether you're offered a place. But if you don't tell us about a condition or the adjustments you need, we may not be able to put the right support in place for you. You can share this with us at any time later instead."
• Equality monitoring (optional). Questions about your background — age band, sex, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and disability under the Equality Act. Your answers go into a separate, locked store that no member of staff can read individually. They are only ever used in anonymous group counts, and we never show any figure for a group smaller than five people.

If you join the programme: we keep records of your training, activities, milestones and progress, and we ask similar wellbeing and outcome questions when you finish and at follow-up points afterwards.

In the background: our systems keep security records (such as the internet address and browser used when forms are submitted) to protect against abuse, and an audit log of key actions. The private links we email you are never stored in readable form.

Why we use your information, and our legal grounds

We do not sell your information, we do not use it for advertising, and no decision about you is ever made by a computer alone — a named member of SBS staff reviews every application and enrolment.

Who can see your information

• Named SBS staff working on the programme.
• Nobody else sees your individual answers. The organisations SBS works with only ever receive anonymous, combined figures — never your name, never your answers, and never any figure covering fewer than five people.
• Your equality answers are locked even inside SBS: no staff member can read them individually.

Where your information is kept

Your assessment and programme records are stored with our database provider Supabase in London (UK). Our website host (Vercel) and email provider (Resend) are US companies; we only use them under UK-approved international transfer safeguards. All information is encrypted in transit and at rest, protected by strict access controls, and covered by daily backups.

How long we keep it

• If you sign up but never enrol: everything is automatically deleted after 12 months.
• If you enrol: your records are kept for 6 years (a standard period for programmes of this kind), then anonymised.
• Invitation links expire after 30 days regardless.
• Every automated deletion run is logged, so we can show it happened.

Your choices

• The health and equality sections are always optional, and skipping them never affects your place.
• You can tell us about a condition or adjustment need at any time later instead.
• You can withdraw your consent to the health or equality information at any time by contacting us — we record the withdrawal, stop collecting, and it does not affect your participation. You can also ask us to delete what you already provided.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us for a copy of your information, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable format. Contact us at hello@skybased.org and we will respond within one month.

If you're unhappy with how we handle your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO): ico.org.uk · 0303 123 1113. We'd appreciate the chance to put things right first.

Cookies and local storage

This website sets no cookies; it uses your browser's local storage only to remember your theme and accessibility preferences. The assessment pages (portal.skybased.co) use only what is strictly necessary for security. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, and no tracking, anywhere in the assessment journey.

Changes to this notice

If we change how we use your information, we will update this notice and its version number, and tell you about any change that matters before it affects you.