Voting & Website Sign-ups Privacy Policy
Your privacy is important to The British Independent Film Awards C.I.C. (BIFA). This privacy statement provides information about the personal information that BIFA collects, and the ways in which BIFA uses that personal information.
Personal information collection
BIFA may collect and use the following kinds of personal information:
- information about your use of this website;
- information that you provide for the purpose of registering with the website, where you request to do so;
- information that you provide for the purpose of subscribing to the website services or an event or award ceremony we run;
- any other information that you send to BIFA; and
- footage we film and photographs we take at our award ceremonies and events (to the extent that that you are identifiable in such footage or photographs).
Using personal information and our lawful bases for doing do
In accordance with data protection laws, we will only process your personal information where we have a lawful basis for doing so. In respect of your personal information, these bases are: (i) where it is necessary to perform the contract we have with you; (ii) where you have given your consent; (iii) where it is in our legitimate interests to process your personal information, and provided that our interests do not prejudice your own rights, freedoms and interests; and (iv) where it is necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation that we are under.
The following is a list of the purposes for which BIFA processes your personal information, and the lawful bases on which we carry out such processing:
BIFA may use your personal information to:
- carry out our main activities of supporting and promoting British independent film (legitimate interests, to promote the British film industry);
- improve the content of the website (legitimate interests, to ensure our website is as effective as possible);
- enable your access to and use of the website services, where you have requested them (necessary for the performance of a contract);
- publish information about you on the website, where you have given us consent to do so;
- send you marketing communications, where you have given us consent to do so.
- operate the entry, long list and nomination process when you enter a film for an award (legitimate interests, to facilitate the award process);
- organise and issue tickets to for award ceremonies and events (necessary for a contract and legitimate interests); and
- promote and broadcast our award ceremonies and events (legitimate interests, to promote the British film industry). Further information can be found in the “Attending an awards ceremony and events” section below.
Where BIFA discloses your personal information to its agents or sub-contractors (for example: the developers of our website, our PR company to prepare for the award ceremony or events) for these purposes, the agent or sub-contractor in question will be obligated to use that personal information in accordance with the terms of this privacy statement.
In addition to the disclosures reasonably necessary for the purposes identified above, BIFA may disclose your personal information to the extent that it is required to do so by law (necessary for compliance with a legal obligation), in connection with any legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings, and in order to establish, exercise or defend its legal rights (legitimate interests).
Attending an awards ceremony and events
We might collect and use your personal information to process payments and issue tickets relevant to your attendance of awards ceremonies and events organised by BIFA. We might also collect, use and publicise your personal information when you are nominated for an award that will be presented at an awards ceremony organised by BIFA. Awards ceremonies and events organised by the BIFAs may be filmed and nominees and attendees may be filmed and photographed, so if you attend one of our award ceremonies or events please note you may be captured in the footage and photographs we take. We use the footage and photographs in accordance with our legitimate interests to promote our organisation and British film generally, including making the footage and photographs publicly available, worldwide, as part of broadcasting the award or event and related promotional material.
Security of your data
BIFA will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information.
BIFA will store all the personal information you provide on secure servers.
Cross-border data transfers
In line with data protection laws, before transferring your personal information to third parties outside the EEA we will put in place measures to ensure your personal information is protected to an equivalent standard to the protections offered in this country. We will usually do this by standard contractual clauses or by a scheme approved by our data protection regulator as providing adequate protection (such as a scheme known as Privacy Shield, for transfers to US companies).
In addition, personal information that you submit for publication on the website will be published on the internet and may be available around the world and, as mentioned above, footage and photographs we take at our events and awards may also be made publicly available, worldwide.
How long we retain your personal information
BIFA will retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to achieve the purposes set out above (or where you have a right to withdraw your consent to a particular use, until you withdraw that consent).
To the extent any personal information is included in the final edit of footage or photographs of our awards and events and any related promotional material, this may be publicly available on a permanent basis.
Your rights
You have the following rights in relation to your personal information:
Access: You are entitled to confirmation that we process your personal information and a copy of such personal information.
Rectification: If you believe the personal information we hold on you is incorrect, you have the right for this to be rectified.
Erasure: You can request us to erase your personal information where there is no compelling reason to continue processing.
Restriction: You may request a restriction on the processing we undertake on your personal information. This will only apply where we have no lawful basis to process your personal information, your personal information is inaccurate or to comply with an objection request (see below).
Objection: You may object to our processing of your personal information where our processing is carried out in accordance with the legitimate interests lawful basis. Please note, however, that should we determine that our interests are so compelling as to override your objection we may continue to process your personal information.
You may also object to receiving direct marketing at any time.
Portability: You have the right to receive some of your personal information in machine readable format. This right extends to you being able to request that such data is sent to a third party controller.
Withdraw Consent: Where we indicate that we rely on consent for a particular use of your personal information, you may withdraw your consent to The British Independent Film Awards processing your personal information for that purpose by emailing hello@bifa.film.
Your right to complain You also have the right to complain about our handling of your data by contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office, but we ask that you contact us in the first instance so we can try to resolve your complaint directly.
To exercise these rights please contact us by emailing hello@bifa.film. To ensure the security of your personal information, we may ask you for valid proof of identity and once we’ve received it, we will provide our response within one month. If your request is unusually complex and likely to take longer than a month, we will let you know as soon as we can and tell you how long we think it will take.
Updating this statement
BIFA may update this privacy policy by posting a new version on this website.
We will endeavour to make you aware of any material changes, but we recommend that you check this page regularly to ensure you are familiar with any changes.
Other websites
This website contains links to other websites.
BIFA is not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of any third party.
Contact BIFA
The British Independent Film Awards C.I.C. (a Community Interest Company with registration number: 09497840) is a “controller”, as defined by GDPR regulations, which means that we are responsible for deciding how we process the personal information we hold about you. Our contact details are 22 Golden Square, London W1F 9AD, 020 7846 1066, hello@bifa.film. BIFA’s data protection officer is Deena Wallace, deena@bifa.film
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or BIFA’s treatment of your personal information, please write to:
This privacy notice was last updated 5 May 2023.