Privacy and cookies

Last updated November 2026

Who we are

The Shop & Display Equipment Association (the SDEA) is responsible for the personal information described on this page: in data protection law, we are the “controller”. We look after it in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Shop & Display Equipment Association, 24 Croydon Road, Caterham, Surrey CR3 6YR
Telephone 01883 348911, email enquiries@sdea.co.uk

What we collect and why

• Enquiries to members. When you use the enquiry form on a member’s profile, we send your name, company, email address, telephone number and message to that member, with a copy to the SDEA. We keep a short record of each enquiry (the date, the member and your company name, not your contact details) so we can tell members how many enquiries their profile brings.
• Briefs. When you send a brief, we send your details and your project description to the members you choose, with a copy to the SDEA, and keep the same short record.
• Membership applications. We use the details in your application to decide on your membership, which is subject to a credit check and the approval of the SDEA Executive Council, and then to invoice you and set up your membership. Applications are emailed to us and a copy is kept on our website’s server.
• The members’ area. Members log in with a username and password. We never send passwords by email: if you forget yours, we email a link to choose a new one, which works once, within an hour. To stop people guessing passwords, we keep a coded record of failed log-ins for 15 minutes.
• Member profiles. The company details, descriptions, logos, photos and news that members give us are published on this website and in the SDEA Design & Display Directory: that is what they are for. We check the updates members send through the members’ area before they appear. We count how often each profile is viewed, to report to members; no information about you is kept with the count.
• Contact forms. What you send on our contact forms (on the Contact page and the LearnVM pages) comes to us by email, and we use it only to reply to you. To stop floods of junk messages, we keep a coded record of the internet address each message came from for an hour.
• LearnVM enrolment. The LearnVM enrolment form is provided by Jotform, which stores what you send for us.
• Mailing list. If you join our mailing list, on this website (we email you a link to confirm) or by asking us, we keep your email address, name and company, and use them to send you our newsletter: news, new products, events and offers from the SDEA and its members. It is sent from our own email (news@sdea.co.uk). Every newsletter has a link to unsubscribe, and you can unsubscribe at any time; we then keep your email address only so that we don’t send to it again. We count which links in the newsletter are clicked, to see what readers find useful. The newsletter has no tracking pictures, so we don’t record who opens it.
• Events. When you book an SDEA event, we use your details to manage your booking and the event.
• Email, phone and post. When you contact us, we keep the correspondence so we can deal with what you asked.

If you do not give us the information a form asks for, we may not be able to deal with your enquiry, application or booking.

Our legal reasons

• Contract: to deal with your membership application, your membership and your bookings.
• Legitimate interests: to pass your enquiry or brief to the members you choose, to run and protect this website, and to keep members informed about the Association. We only rely on this where your rights do not outweigh our interests.
• Consent: for our mailing list and for analytics cookies. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
• Legal obligation: for example, keeping accounting records.

Who we share it with

• The SDEA members you contact through this website.
• Companies that provide services to us, only to run those services for us: IONOS (website hosting), Microsoft (our email, which also sends our newsletter) and Jotform (forms), Google (website analytics, only if you accept analytics cookies).
• A credit reference agency, when we check a membership application.
• Regulators, the police or the courts, where the law requires it.

We do not sell personal information.

Outside the UK

Some of the companies that provide services to us, such as Microsoft, Google and Jotform, may handle information outside the UK. When they do, it is protected by UK adequacy regulations or by contract terms approved for international transfers.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes on this page, including legal, accounting and reporting requirements, and then delete it or make it anonymous. For example, links to set a new password stop working after an hour, records of failed log-ins are deleted after 15 minutes, and our records of enquiries hold no contact details.

Cookies

Cookies are small files a website stores in your browser. This website uses these:

We use Google Analytics only if you accept analytics cookies in the bar at the bottom of the page. You can change your choice at any time.

Change your cookie choice

Some pages show content from other services: forms from Jotform, and issues of Shoptalk and the Directory from Issuu, Yumpu and FlipHTML5. These services may set their own cookies, under their own privacy policies. Links to other websites open in a new tab, and those websites have their own policies.

You can delete or block cookies in your browser’s settings. Forms and the members’ area need the PHPSESSID cookie to work.

Your rights

You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• ask us to delete your information, where there is no good reason for us to keep it;
• ask us to restrict how we use it, for example while we check that it is accurate;
• object to how we use it where we rely on our legitimate interests, and to stop us using it for direct marketing at any time;
• ask for information you gave us to be passed to another organisation;
• withdraw your consent, where we rely on it.

To use any of these rights, email enquiries@sdea.co.uk or write to us at the address above. There is usually no fee. We may need to check who you are before we act, and we will reply within one month, as the law requires.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first, so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection, at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this page

We update this page when the way we use personal information changes. The date at the top shows when it last changed.