Privacy Policy

Fortus (“We” “Us” “Our”) is a group of companies consisting of Fortus Limited, Fortus Audit LLP, Fortus Tax, Fortus Wealth Management, Fortus Business Finance. The registered office for all the above is Equinox House, Clifton park, Shipton Road, York, YO30 5PA and a list of the directors, partners and principles for each firm is available at its registered office.

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy (together with our terms of use and any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By visiting www.fortus.co.uk (our “site”) you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulations (the “GDPR“), if you are a client, the data controller will be the Fortus business that you engage with. If you are not currently a Fortus client, then the data controller is Fortus Limited whose registered office is at Equinox House, Clifton Park, Shipton Road, York, YO30 5PA.

Information we may collect from you

We may collect and process the following data about you:

Information you give us. You may give us information about you by filling in forms on our site or by corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise. This includes information you provide when you enter details on our site (for example, via our “contact us” function), requesting our services or downloadable content or if you report a problem with our site. The information you give us may include your name, address, e-mail address and phone number.

With regard to each of your visits to our site we may automatically collect the following information:

• Technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information (if applicable), browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform.
• Information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); services you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

Force24 Cookies & Tracking

Our organisation utilises Force24’s marketing automation platform.

Force24 cookies are first party cookies and are enabled at the point of cookie acceptance on this website. The cookies are named below:

• F24_autoID
• F24_personID

They allow us to understand our audience engagement thus allowing better optimisation of marketing activity.

f24_autoId – This is a temporary identifier on a local machine or phone browser that helps us track anonymous information to be later married up with f24_personid. If this is left anonymous it will be deleted after 6 months . Non-essential, first party, 10 years, persistent.

f24_personId – This is an ID generated per individual contact in the Force24 system to be able to track behaviour and form submissions into the Force24 system from outside sources per user. This is used for personalisation and ability to segment decisions for further communications. Non-essential, first party, 10 years, persistent.

The information stored by Force24 cookies remains anonymous until:

• Our website is visited via clicking from an email or SMS message, sent via the Force24 platform and cookies are accepted on the website.
• A user of the website completes a form containing email address from either our website or our Force24 landing pages.

The Force24 cookies will remain on a device for 10 years unless they are deleted.

Other Tracking

We also use similar technologies including tracking pixels and link tracking to monitor your viewing activities

Device & browser type and open statistics

All emails have a tracking pixel ( a tiny invisible image ) with a query string in the URL. Within the URL we have user details to identify who opened an email for statistical purposes.

Link Tracking

All links within emails and SMS messages sent from the Force24 platform contain a unique tracking reference, this reference help us identify who clicked an email for statistical purposes.

Cookies

Our site uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our site. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our site and allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them, please see our Cookies Policy.

This site is also protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

• To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information and services that you request from us.
• Where applicable, to send statements and invoices to you, and collect payments from you.
• To send you commercial (non-marketing) communications.
• To send you email notifications which you have specifically requested.
• To send to you our newsletter and other marketing communications relating to our business or the businesses of carefully selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you by post or by email or similar technology. You can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications by unsubscribing here or sending an email to enquiries@fortus.co.uk; to deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to our site.

Information we collect about you. We will use this information:

• To administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes.
• To improve our site and your browsing experience by ensuring that the content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
• To enable your use of the services available on our site.
• As part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure.
• To provide third parties with statistical information about our users. This information will not be used to identify any individual user.

Disclosure of your information

We may share your information with selected third parties including:

• Business partners, group companies, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you.
• Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.
• Credit reference agencies for the purpose of assessing your credit score where this is a condition of us entering into a contract with you.

We do not sell client data for marketing purposes but may share it with other professional organisations with which we arrange marketing or other promotional events.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
• If Fortus or substantially all of it’s assets are acquired by a third party, then personal data held by it about it’s customers will be one of the transferred assets.
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Fortus, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

You further acknowledge that any emails sent to a Fortus owned email address may be subject to monitoring, either by us, or by a third-party service provider engaged by us to provide email services.

Where we store your personal data

In providing services to you, the data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA“). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our business partners, suppliers or sub-contractors. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the provision of legal advice and services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access such as through the use of network access controls, passwords and access logging.

Your rights

Under the GDPR, you have the right to:

• 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 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 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 (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Access to information

Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the GDPR. You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights listed above). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive.

Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

Please contact enquiries@fortus.co.uk should you wish to request access to such information or if you have any queries or concerns about our use of any personal data relating to you. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy. This privacy policy was last updated on 30th October 2024.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to enquiries@fortus.co.uk.