How we use your information

Enquiries

Enquiries

When you make an enquiry to the Scottish Enterprise (SE) enquiry service, it will be processed as follows:

Personal information processed

SE collects the following types of personal data:

  • Identity data
  • Contact data

Source of personal information

Direct interactions, third party sources 

The purpose for processing

SE collects personal data for the following purposes:

  • To answer your enquiry/complaint
  • To answer your enquiry where this comes through any of our social media channels.
    • We use a third-party provider, Hootsuite, to manage our social media interactions. If you send us a private or direct message via social media, it will be stored by Hootsuite. It will not be shared with any other organisations. We see all this information and decide how we manage it. For example, if you send a message via social media that needs a response from us, we may process it in as a general enquiry or a complaint.
    • When contacting Scottish Enterprise through a social media platform, we suggest you also familiarise yourself with the privacy information of that platform.
  • To keep you informed of the status of your enquiry
  • To respond to freedom of information requests
  • To exercise data subject rights
  • To respond to subject access rights requests
  • To create a new customer record
  • To share your personal data with our public sector partner to ensure your enquiry is answered by the most appropriate body

Please note if you proceed to receive funding and support from us your information will be processed as described in the funding and support category

Lawful grounds

There are lawful grounds under which SE will process your personal information for this purpose. These are:

  • Contractual
  • Legal obligation
  • Performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of SE’s official authority

Consequences of not providing the personal information

We will be unable to answer your queries.

We will be unable to meet our legislative requirements under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004, the INSPIRE (Scotland) Regulations 2009, UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, which requires us to respond to an identified individual.

How long we will keep your personal information

Your personal information will be retained for a period of 2 years after your enquiry is answered, or as part of our legal requirements. If there is a continuation of service, (e.g. funding and support) your personal information will be retained as per the details of that service.

Enquiries sent and replied to (whether a private or direct message) via social media, will be stored by Hootsuite for three months.

Find out more about how we use your information.