UK Black Stars – Privacy Notice
Publication Date: 03 March, 2026
This privacy notice sets out how UK Black Stars uses and protects your personal data. This privacy policy is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below.
1. Important Information and Who We Are
This privacy notice gives you information about how UK Black Stars (“we”, “us”, or “our”) collects and uses personal data through your interaction with our website, nomination processes, events, publications, and communications.
UK Black Stars is a UK-based initiative established to recognise and celebrate outstanding British Ghanaians in the United Kingdom who are making remarkable contributions in their respective fields and who positively represent Ghana in the diaspora. The initiative highlights individuals from all walks of life who demonstrate excellence, leadership, innovation, integrity, and impact across sectors.
This Privacy Notice explains how personal information is collected, used, shared, and protected by us, and informs you of your rights and the choices available to you in relation to your personal data.
This website and initiative are not intended for children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data relating to children.
Controller
UK Black Stars is the data controller and determines the purposes and means of processing personal data, unless otherwise stated.
Our Services are operated primarily in the United Kingdom, although publications and promotional materials may be accessed outside the UK.
UK Black Stars has appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions regarding this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights (Paragraph 10), please contact the DPO using the information set out in the contact details section.
- By email at: dpo@hewardmills.com
- By post at: 77 Farringdon Road, London EC1M 3JU
- By phone at: +44 20 4540 5853
2. The Types of Personal Data We Collect About You
Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified.
We may collect, use, store, and transfer different kinds of personal data depending on your interaction with us. This includes:
- Identity Data, such as your name, title, background information, and any details relevant to eligibility or recognition under the initiative.
- Contact Data, such as your email address, telephone number, and any other contact details you choose to provide.
- Professional and Biographical Data, such as your occupation, sector, career history, achievements, biographical summaries, photographs, and publicly available professional profiles.
- Nomination and Assessment Data, such as nomination statements, supporting materials, references, and evaluation comments provided by judges or assessors.
- Communications Data, including correspondence with us by email or other means and any feedback or enquiries you submit.
- Marketing and Communications Preferences, including your choices about receiving updates, announcements, or promotional communications from us.
Special Category Personal Data
In limited circumstances, we may also process special category personal data, where this is relevant to the initiative and provided by you or by nominators. This may include:
- Information relating to racial or ethnic origin, for example, where individuals choose to share information about their Ghanaian heritage; and
- Photographs where these may reveal special category characteristics.
We only process special category personal data where permitted by applicable data protection law and subject to appropriate safeguards.
We may also collect, use, and share aggregated or anonymised data for statistical, reporting, or promotional purposes. Such data does not identify individuals and is not considered personal data.
3. How Is Your Personal Data Collected?
We use different methods to collect personal data from and about you.
Personal data is collected directly from you when you complete nomination forms, submit information for consideration, register interest, attend events, or communicate with us by email or other means.
We may also receive personal data from third parties, including nominators, referees, partners, collaborators, or advisory panel members, where this is relevant to the initiative.
In some cases, we may collect personal data from publicly available sources, such as professional websites or social media platforms, where it is relevant, appropriate, and lawful to do so.
4. How We Use Your Personal Data
Legal Basis
The UK data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for collecting and using personal data. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:
- Legitimate interests: where processing is necessary for the administration, operation, and promotion of the initiative, provided those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms.
- Consent: where you have given clear permission for us to use your personal data for a specific purpose, such as receiving communications or agreeing to publicity.
- Legal obligation: where processing is required to comply with applicable legal or regulatory requirements.
Purposes for Which We Will Use Your Personal Data
We use personal data to administer nominations and selection processes, assess eligibility and achievements, communicate with nominees, nominators, judges, partners, and stakeholders, and organise and deliver events or announcements related to the initiative.
We may also use personal data to promote the initiative and celebrate award recipients through publications, websites, social media, or other media, where appropriate and lawful.
We process personal data to respond to enquiries, manage feedback or complaints, and to ensure the effective and fair operation of the initiative.
| Purpose / Use | Type of Data | Legal Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Managing nominations, assessments, and selection processes | Identity, Contact, Professional, Nomination | Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated for the nomination process) |
| Communications with nominees, nominators, judges, and partners | Identity, Contact, Communications | Legitimate interest |
| Promoting the initiative and celebrating award recipients (including publications, websites, and events) | Identity, Professional, Biographical | Legitimate business interests / Consent |
| Responding to enquiries, feedback, or complaints | Identity, Contact, Communications | Legitimate interest |
| Complying with legal or regulatory requirements | Relevant Data | Legal obligation |
5. Direct Marketing
You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or participated in our services and you have not opted out of receiving the marketing.
Third-Party Marketing
We will get your express consent before we share your personal data with any third party for their own direct marketing purposes. We currently do not engage in third-party marketing activities.
Opting Out of Marketing
You can ask us to stop sending you marketing communications at any time by following the opt-out links within any marketing communication sent to you or by contacting us at dpo@hewardmills.com.
6. Disclosures of Your Personal Data
We may share your personal data if it’s lawful. For example, we may share your personal data if we have a legitimate business reason for doing so.
We may share your information with:
- Our judges, assessors, advisory panel members, event partners, or service providers who support the delivery of the initiative.
We may also share personal data with professional advisers, such as legal or technical consultants, and with public authorities where required by law.
All third parties are required to respect the confidentiality and security of personal data and are only permitted to process it in accordance with our instructions and applicable law.
7. International Transfers
Where personal data is transferred outside the United Kingdom, we rely on appropriate safeguards including UK International Data Transfer Agreements (IDTAs), the UK Addendum to EU Standard Contractual Clauses, applicable adequacy regulations, or other lawful mechanisms under the GDPR. All transfers comply with UK data protection law.
8. Data Security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We apply a range of technical, physical and organisational measures to keep your information safe. We work with service providers to ensure an appropriate level of security is in place for the requirements of the business.
In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those who have a business requirement to do so. Those with such a business requirement are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
9. Data Retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our engagements with you.
For further information about our retention periods, please contact dpo@hewardmills.com.
10. Your Legal Rights
Under UK data protection laws, you have certain rights, including:
- Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a data subject access request). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data that we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data that you provide to us.
- Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing, where we may have processed your information unlawfully, or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with UK law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request for erasure for specific legal reasons that will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
- Request the restriction of the processing of your personal data.
- Request the transfer of your personal data. This is known as the right to portability, where we can provide to you or a third party that you have chosen your personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.
If you have given us consent to use your personal information for any of the above-mentioned purposes, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.
If we send marketing communications that we believe would be of interest to you, you will have the right to opt-out of these at any time.
Automated Decision-Making
There is no automated decision-making or profiling about you when you contact us or use our Service.
11. Contact Details
How to Make a Data Protection Rights Request
To make a data protection rights request, please contact our Data Protection Officer directly at dpo@hewardmills.com. You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data or to exercise any of the other rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee or refuse to comply if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive.
We may need to verify your identity to ensure we are processing a request for the correct person. If verification is necessary, we will inform you. Our response time to your request is one month; if we cannot respond within this period, we will notify you accordingly.
12. Raising Concerns and Complaints
If you have any concerns about how your personal information is being processed, please contact us first by emailing dpo@hewardmills.com, so we can address them.
If you still believe your complaint about the use of your personal data has not been addressed, you can also file a complaint with the ICO.
13. Privacy Notice Update
We may update this privacy notice from time to time in response to legal, technical, or business developments. Where we make any substantial changes to the processing of your personal data, we shall inform you through the most appropriate medium.
14. Third-Party Links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.