Client Privacy Notice

Paramount Visas Ltd is a UK-based visa and travel document service, registered in England and Wales (company number 12585525) and registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under number ZC268578. We are the controller of the personal information described in this notice.

Sometimes we work directly for you. More often, particularly for touring artists and crew, we work for an organisation acting for you or employing you: for example a touring, production or management company, a record label, an agent, or a company that looks after your affairs. This notice calls that organisation "the company that engaged us". It is responsible for its own use of your information, and we are responsible for ours.

We send you a link to this notice ourselves, usually with the first link we send you to fill in a form or upload documents.

If another visa business arranged your application with us, that business is responsible for telling you how your information is used, and we handle it on its instructions.

Information you give us

• Identity and contact details: your name, date and place of birth, nationality, address, email and phone number
• Passport and identity documents, including scans and the details printed on them
• Information the destination country's application asks for, such as travel history and plans, employment, education, family details and previous visa applications
• Your answers to background questions that some applications ask, including about health and criminal history (see below)
• Our emails, calls and messages with you

Information we receive from others

If a company has engaged us on your behalf, it may give us your name, contact details, role and the dates and places of your work or tour, so that we can contact you and prepare your application. Passport offices, embassies and other authorities also send us correspondence and decisions about applications we handle for you.

Information about other people

Many applications ask about other people, such as your parents, partner, children or contacts in the destination country. We use these details only for your application. We do not contact those people separately, so please let them know if you think they would want to.

Health and criminal history

Some applications, for example the US DS-160, ask about drug use or addiction and about arrests, convictions and similar matters. The law gives this information extra protection. We only collect it when the application requires it, and we ask for your explicit consent before you answer those questions, using a separate declaration on our form (or by email if we collect them another way). If we receive these answers without your consent, we ask for it straight away. If you do not give it, we stop using those answers for your applications and delete them, unless we need them for a live or likely legal claim about our work. Then we keep only what the claim needs, use it for nothing else, and delete it when the claim ends.

We share these answers with the company that engaged us only if you ask us to, the law requires it, or we need to for a legal claim about our work. For a legal claim, we share only what the claim needs, and only with those dealing with it, such as our insurer or solicitor.

To prepare and submit your application

We complete government forms, book appointments, check your documents and deal with the authorities for you. If you engaged us directly, we do this to perform our contract with you. If a company engaged us for you, we do it because we have a legitimate interest in delivering the service that company asked for, which is also in your interest.

Health and criminal-history answers

We hold these only with your explicit consent, and use them only to prepare and submit your applications. You can withdraw your consent at any time. If you do, we stop using those answers for your applications and delete them, unless we need them for a live or likely legal claim about our work. Then we keep only what the claim needs, use it for nothing else, and delete it when the claim ends. Without those answers we may be unable to complete an application that requires them.

Legal claims about our work

If a legal claim about our work is made or likely, we use the information the claim needs to establish, exercise or defend it. For most information we rely on our legitimate interests in doing so (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)), for health answers on Article 9(2)(f), and for criminal-history answers on the Data Protection Act 2018, Schedule 1, Part 3, paragraph 33.

To deliver documents to you

Where you need your passport or documents returned, we use your name and address to send them, always by a tracked and signed-for service.

Quotes, invoices and records

We use contact and job details to quote, invoice and keep the business records we are required to keep.

Keeping your details for future applications

If you tell us we may keep your information on file, we keep it so that your next application is quicker. This is based on your consent, and you can withdraw it at any time.

Marketing emails

We only send marketing emails if you opt in to our mailing list. Every marketing email includes a way to unsubscribe. Otherwise we only email you about your application.

Testimonials

If you leave feedback and tell us we may share it, we may publish your words on our website, anonymously unless you also agree to be named. You can ask us to remove it at any time.

We only share what each recipient needs:

• Government authorities of the country you are applying to, through their embassies, consulates and online application systems, and HM Passport Office for UK passports
• Other visa agencies, in the UK or abroad, when they can file an application we can't or we need extra help at short notice
• Local agents and representatives abroad, when an application must be filed in person or locally
• US immigration attorneys who you or the company that engaged us instruct, to coordinate your visa application
• Translators, and legalisation and apostille agents, to translate and legalise documents for your application
• Royal Mail, courier companies and our own runners, to collect and deliver documents
• The company that engaged us, if one did, and anyone it names as a contact for the job: the general progress and outcome of your application. Health and criminal history are covered above.
• Our insurers, solicitors and professional advisers, to deal with claims and complaints
• The police or the relevant authority, to report suspected forged documents or fraud
• Our service providers, who store or process information for us under contract and only on our instructions: Microsoft (email, Microsoft Teams and document reading), Vercel (hosting and document storage), Neon (database), FreeAgent (quotes and invoicing), Sentry (error monitoring, set up to exclude personal details), Resend (email notifications to our staff) and Ably (live updates on our staff screens)

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing.

Our database, document storage and hosting are in London. Some service providers hold information in the European Union (Resend and Ably in Ireland, Sentry in Germany, Microsoft in the UK and EU), which the UK recognises as giving adequate protection. Some of our providers are US companies, or have support staff outside the UK who could access information. Where that happens, the transfer is protected by the UK-US data bridge or the UK's approved contract terms for international transfers.

Applying for a visa means sending your information to the destination country, its embassy or its online system, and occasionally to a visa agent, local representative or US immigration attorney there. That country may not have data protection laws equivalent to the UK's. We send it because it is necessary to make the application you or your company asked us to make.

• If you did not ask us to keep your details: we review them 12 months after your last application is finished, which leaves time for questions, appeals and reapplications, and delete them unless the law requires us to keep them
• If you asked us to keep your details: we review them 4 years after your last application with us, and delete anything we no longer need. Each new application restarts the 4 years.
• Our records of the work we did for you: deleted 4 years after the work is finished
• Emails: deleted automatically after 4 years
• Unfinished application questionnaires: deleted after 3 months
• Documents you or we delete: permanently removed after 30 days
• Feedback you did not let us publish: deleted after 3 years
• Passports and original documents not collected: held for 3 months from when we first tell you, or the company that engaged us, that they are ready and ask for a return address or collection. We then send them by tracked delivery to whoever issued them: UK passports to HM Passport Office, foreign passports to that country's embassy in London, and other originals to the issuing authority or registrar. We shred copies.
• Invoices and accounting records: kept for 6 years, as UK tax law requires
• Backups: our database backups roll over every 7 days, so deleted information is gone from them within a week

Contact details of people at the companies we work with are reviewed every year, and removed when they are no longer needed. You can ask us to delete your information sooner. See Your Rights below.

• Only our staff can access client records, using their company accounts protected by multi-factor sign-in
• Access to client records and documents is logged
• Extra sign-in checks protect documents for clients who need additional care, and identity numbers are hidden until a member of staff deliberately reveals them, which is logged
• Links we send you to upload documents expire, and can be cancelled at any time
• All information is encrypted in transit, and our hosting providers encrypt stored data
• Passports and original documents are kept in a locked safe while we have them

Under UK data protection law, you can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the information we hold about you, with details of why we hold it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and where it came from
• correct information that is wrong or incomplete
• delete your information
• restrict how we use it, for example while you dispute whether it is accurate
• stop using it where we rely on legitimate interests, or for marketing
• give you your information in a portable format

Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. This does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it. If we correct or delete your information, we also tell anyone we have shared it with, unless that is impossible or would take disproportionate effort. Some rights have limits, for example where we must keep records by law. We will explain if one applies, and we respond within one month.

We will update this notice when how we handle information changes, and update the date and version at the top of this page.

For questions about this notice, to use your rights, or to complain about how we have handled your information, email privacy@paramountvisas.com. We will acknowledge a complaint within 30 days, look into it, keep you updated, and tell you the outcome.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at www.ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.