01 Who we are
This privacy notice is issued by The Dance Studio, a competitive freestyle dance school based in Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire. We trade as The Dance Studio | Barton in the Clay. For UK data protection law, we are the data controller for personal information we hold about parents, carers, dancers, website visitors and others who deal with the school.
Principal: Karen Gregory. Owner, Administrator and Finance: Margaret Byrne. Privacy questions are best sent to our administrator, who looks after school records and enquiries.
- Email: thedancestudiokg@outlook.com
- Phone: 07841 193740
- Classes: Barton Le Clay Village Hall, Hexton Road, Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire, MK45 4JY
- Comp Squad: Arnold Academy, Hexton Road, Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire, MK45 4JZ
- Website: www.thedancestudio.uk
UK data protection law that applies to us includes the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 as it amends those rules.
02 What this notice covers
It explains how we collect, use, store and share personal information when you:
- visit this website, including our contact and free trial forms
- phone, text or email the studio
- message us on Facebook or Instagram
- book a trial, join a class, private lesson, Comp Squad, summer training, camp or awards event
- pay fees or buy studio kit through the channels we point you to
- compete with us, or appear in photos and films we use for the school
It is written for parents and carers, because they usually give us information about young dancers. Adult students (including adult dance courses) have the same rights over their own data.
03 What we collect
The details we hold depend on how you deal with us. We only ask for what we need.
| Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Website enquiries | Your name, email, phone (optional on the contact form), dancer's age, styles of interest, and your message. |
| Free trial requests | Parent or carer name, email, phone, dancer's name and age, preferred day, styles of interest, and any notes you add. |
| Class administration | Enrolment details, emergency contacts, registers, class groups, level, attendance, and fee records. |
| Safety and wellbeing | Allergies, injuries, medical conditions or additional needs you tell us about so we can teach safely, plus any safeguarding notes we must keep. |
| Competition and performance | Dancer name, age category, routines, results, and details needed to enter trophy days and championships. |
| Photos and film | Images and clips from class, camp, awards and competition, where we have permission to use them. |
| Website technical data | Server logs of form submissions for operational follow-up, and limited technical data our host needs to serve the site. |
Please do not put sensitive medical detail in a public social media comment if a private message, email or the trial notes field would be safer. If you do share health information, we will still look after it carefully.
04 How we collect it
Most information comes straight from you (or from a parent or carer on a dancer's behalf) through our forms, email, phone, in person at the Village Hall or Arnold Academy, or via Facebook and Instagram.
We may also receive information from:
- another parent or carer in the same family, when they book for a sibling
- competition organisers confirming entries, running orders or results
- teachers and guest teachers working with the school
- venues, if they need to tell us something about access or an incident on site
We do not buy mailing lists. We do not scrape contact details from elsewhere to market the school.
05 Why we use it, and our lawful bases
UK law says we must have a lawful basis for each use of personal data. For special category data such as health information, we also need an extra condition. This is how that works in practice.
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Reply to contact and trial forms, and arrange a first class | Contract (taking steps to enter a contract with you) and legitimate interests in running a local dance school. The trial form also asks you to confirm we may contact you. |
| Provide classes, Comp Squad, private lessons, camps and events; keep registers; collect fees | Contract, and legitimate interests in administering the school. Fee records also support our legal duty to keep accounts. |
| Use medical or additional-need information you give us, so teaching is safer | Explicit consent where we ask for it, and vital interests in an emergency. We keep this to people who need to know. |
| Enter dancers into competitions and share what organisers require (typically name, age category and school) | Contract with you, and legitimate interests in giving dancers the competition pathway they train for. |
| Take and use photos or film of dancers on this website, social media and school promotions | Consent. You can withdraw this. See Photographs and film. |
| Publish first names and results, and celebrate achievements | Legitimate interests in showing the school's work, balanced against a dancer's privacy. Tell us if you would prefer a dancer not to be named. |
| Safeguarding, accident records, and sharing with authorities when the law or a child's safety requires it | Legal obligation, vital interests, and (for health or safeguarding data) substantial public interest in protecting children. |
| Send practical messages about your class, fees, timetable changes, trials and events you have asked about | Contract and legitimate interests. We do not add you to a separate marketing list without a clear choice. |
| Keep the website working, including emailing form submissions and storing short operational logs | Legitimate interests in running a reliable website and following up enquiries. |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered your privacy, the nature of a family dance school, and whether a less intrusive option would still let us teach, compete and keep children safe.
We do not use automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects.
06 Children's information
We welcome dancers from 3 years upwards. Children's personal data needs extra protection, and we design our website and admin for parents and carers rather than for children to use on their own.
- Contact and trial forms are intended for adults. Please do not ask a young child to complete them without you.
- We do not create student login accounts on this website.
- We do not use children's data for advertising networks or sell it.
- We collect the minimum we need to place a dancer in the right class and keep them safe.
- A parent or carer may exercise data protection rights on behalf of a child. As a dancer gets older we will, where it is appropriate, take their views into account as well.
If we ever offered an online service aimed at children, we would take their needs into account when deciding how to use their information, as UK law now expressly requires.
07 Photographs and film
Dance is visual. We take photos and film at class, camp, awards night and competition so families can see the work, and so the school can show what we do. Student photos currently on this website were cleared for site use in August 2026.
We ask for permission before we use a dancer's image in our own publicity (this website, Facebook, Instagram, printed flyers and similar). You can say no, or say yes for some uses and not others. You can change your mind later by emailing or calling us.
If you withdraw consent, we will stop new use as soon as we reasonably can and remove images from this website where we control them. We may not be able to recall printed material already given out, or delete copies that other people have saved or that competition organisers have published themselves.
Trophy days and championships are public events. Organisers, other schools and families often photograph the floor. Their use of those images is their responsibility. Tell us if you have a safeguarding reason why a dancer should not appear in our own posts after an event, and we will take that seriously.
09 Transfers outside the UK
Some of our suppliers (including email delivery, website hosting, Google Maps, Microsoft and Meta) may process information in the United States or other countries outside the UK. Where that happens, we rely on UK-approved transfer tools such as the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or an adequacy decision where one applies.
Social networks and Google also apply their own transfer arrangements when you use their services.
10 How long we keep it
We keep information only for as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it, including any legal, accounting or safeguarding need. Typical periods are below. We may keep something longer if there is an insurance claim, dispute or safeguarding reason.
| Records | How long |
|---|---|
| Website contact and trial enquiries, if you do not join | About 12 months after last contact, so we can pick up a conversation if you write again. |
| Class registers, enrolment and emergency contacts | While the dancer trains with us, then about 12 months after they leave, unless a longer period is needed. |
| Fee and payment records | Usually 6 years after the end of the tax year, in line with accounting practice. |
| Photographs and film used with consent | Until you withdraw consent, or we no longer need the image for the school. |
| Published results on this website | For as long as they fairly describe the school's history, or until you ask us to take a name down and we agree that is reasonable. |
| Safeguarding and serious incident records | In line with child protection good practice, often until the young person reaches 25, and longer if the record still needs to be kept. |
| Website operational logs of enquiries | A short period for follow-up and troubleshooting, then they are deleted or overwritten. |
11 How we look after it
We take practical steps to keep personal information safe: limited access for teachers and administrators, password-protected email and devices, and reputable providers for the website and email. Forms are sent to the studio over encrypted connections on this site.
No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure. If we ever had a breach that was likely to put your rights at high risk, we would tell the ICO and, where the law requires, the people affected.
13 Your rights
You have rights over the personal information we hold. In short, you can ask us to:
- give you a copy of it (access)
- correct it if it is wrong or incomplete
- delete it in certain cases
- restrict how we use it, or object to a use that relies on legitimate interests
- move certain information you gave us, in a reusable format (portability), where we process it by contract or consent with automated means
- withdraw consent where we rely on consent, for example photographs or the trial contact confirmation. Withdrawal does not affect anything we did while consent was in place
To use these rights, email thedancestudiokg@outlook.com with the subject "Data protection request", or call 07841 193740. Tell us what you want us to do. We may need to check who you are before we release information. We will respond without undue delay, and within one month in most cases (we can take longer for complex or numerous requests, and we will tell you if so).
Some rights are limited. For example we may keep fee records we must hold for HMRC, or safeguarding notes we must not delete. If we cannot do what you ask, we will explain why.
14 Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have used personal information, please tell us first. You have a legal right to complain to us, not only to the regulator.
Send an email to thedancestudiokg@outlook.com with the subject "Data protection complaint", or call 07841 193740 and ask us to treat it as a data protection complaint. You can also use the contact form on this website and say that you are raising a data protection complaint. Electronic email is the easiest way for us to keep a clear record.
We will acknowledge a data protection complaint within 30 days and respond without undue delay. Please include your name, how we can reach you, and what happened, so we can look into it properly.
You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator. You may do that without complaining to us first, though it usually helps if we have a chance to put things right.
- Website: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
- Telephone: 0303 123 1113
- Post: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
15 Changes to this notice
We will update this notice when our practices or the law change. The date at the top is the latest version. Important changes will be highlighted on this page and, where we still hold your email for an active enquiry or enrolment, we may also mention them when we next write to you.
16 How to contact us
Questions about this notice, your information, photographs, or a data protection complaint: thedancestudiokg@outlook.com or 07841 193740. Write to us as The Dance Studio, Barton Le Clay Village Hall, Hexton Road, Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire, MK45 4JY.