Privacy notice

1. About this notice

The Practitioner Peer Support Study explores informal business support between health and wellness practitioners in the UK. It examines the support practitioners give and receive, its perceived usefulness, difficulties and sustainability.

The study runs continuously through a voluntary online questionnaire, with findings reported at intervals.

This notice explains how we use information about website visitors, people invited to participate, respondents and optional email subscribers.

The study is separate from the Graduate Success Benchmark. Taking part does not create an account, subscribe you to marketing or require you to use GROW’s services.

2. Who is responsible for your information

The data controller is:

Sole Trader Courses Ltd, trading as GROW Formula
Company number: 16406138
Registered office: 12 Charmind Walk, Swindon, SN25 1QA
Email: support@growformula.org
Website: growformula.org

“GROW”, “we” and “us” in this notice refer to this company.

GROW sponsors and administers the study. GROW also provides commercial business education and support. This interest is disclosed, but individual research answers are not used to identify prospective customers or coaches.

3. Information we collect

Research responses

The questionnaire does not ask for your name, email address, practice name or contact details.

We collect:

• Your eligibility confirmations and agreement to participate, including the information version and timestamp.
• Whether you have completed the study before and approximately when.
• Your broad professional area, career stage and working arrangement.
• Whether you give or receive informal business support.
• Your answers about support topics, frequency, format, usefulness, actions, difficulties, time commitments and changes in arrangements.
• How you heard about the study.
• Any optional written comment.
• Submission date, questionnaire version and a randomly generated response reference.
• A secure representation of the private withdrawal code issued after submission.

Answers to questions hidden by the questionnaire’s routing are not recorded.

Although we do not ask for your identity, a combination of answers or information in a written comment could identify someone. We therefore treat research responses as personal data rather than promise complete anonymity.

Please do not include names, contact details, client information, personal health information or other details identifying yourself or anyone else in written comments. If we identify unnecessary personal information, we will remove or redact it where practicable.

Research invitations

If we approach you directly about the study, we may use your name, professional role, public professional profile or published contact details to assess whether an invitation is relevant.

These details may come from a public professional website, directory or networking platform such as LinkedIn. When contacting you, we will explain where we found your details and provide access to this notice.

We may retain a limited record of the invitation, any reply and any request not to be contacted. We do not attach these records to your questionnaire answers.

Where another organisation distributes an invitation on our behalf, we do not necessarily receive its contact list.

Optional subscriptions

If you separately subscribe to emails, we collect:

• Your email address.
• The categories you choose.
• The wording and version of the choices presented to you.
• When and through which subscription form you made those choices.
• Whether you confirmed your email address.
• Later preference changes, withdrawals and relevant delivery records.

Subscription details are held separately from research responses. We do not match them to answers using response references, withdrawal codes, timestamps, browser identifiers or other methods.

Technical and correspondence information

Our service providers may process IP addresses, browser information, timestamps and security logs necessary to operate and protect the website.

If you contact us, we also process your contact details, correspondence and any information needed to handle your enquiry or rights request.

4. How we use information

We use information to:

• Invite relevant practitioners to participate.
• Check eligibility and administer the questionnaire.
• Analyse experiences of informal business support.
• Compare responses collected during different reporting periods.
• Prepare aggregate findings and publications.
• Identify invalid submissions and maintain research quality.
• Operate and protect the website.
• Handle enquiries and withdrawal requests.
• Send optional emails within the categories subscribers have selected.
• Maintain consent and suppression records.
• Meet applicable legal obligations.

We do not sell personal information, use individual research responses for sales prospecting or build marketing profiles from participants’ answers.

5. Our lawful bases

Our legitimate interests are to conduct proportionate research into practitioner peer support, produce useful findings, administer the study responsibly and protect the service.

We consider necessity, reasonable expectations and privacy impact when relying on legitimate interests. Safeguards include collecting limited information, restricting access, keeping subscriptions separate and publishing findings in aggregate.

Your agreement to participate is an ethical requirement of the study. It is separate from the lawful basis we rely on to process research information.

Participation and subscriptions are voluntary. You are not legally or contractually required to provide information. Eligibility confirmations are required to participate; substantive questions may be skipped.

6. Participation and withdrawal

You can stop before submitting. Questionnaire answers are not saved to the research database until you submit. Leaving or refreshing the page may lose an unfinished response. Necessary website security logs are separate from questionnaire answers.

After submission, you will receive a private withdrawal code. Keep this code if you may want us to locate your response later.

To request withdrawal, email support@growformula.org and provide the code, or use the withdrawal form below. Do not share it publicly.

Because we do not collect names or email addresses within the questionnaire, we may be unable to identify your response without the code. We will consider any other information you can provide without collecting unnecessary information.

We can remove a response where it remains identifiable in our research records. We cannot identify and remove an individual contribution from findings that have already been effectively anonymised. Withdrawal will not normally result in previously published aggregate reports being retracted.

These arrangements do not remove your statutory data-protection rights.

7. Optional contact from GROW

After participating, or independently of participation, you may choose separate email subscriptions.

Study findings and progress

Factual findings and progress updates about The Practitioner Peer Support Study. These emails do not promote GROW’s paid courses or services.

GROW resources and events

Free business-development resources and invitations to GROW-hosted learning and best-practice events. These communications promote GROW’s expertise and may introduce its services.

GROW courses and services

Information and offers about GROW’s paid courses and business-support services.

Each category requires a separate, active choice. None is selected automatically. We confirm your email address before sending optional updates.

Every optional email provides an unsubscribe link. You can remove individual categories or unsubscribe from all optional emails without creating an account.

You have an absolute right to object to the use of your personal information for direct marketing. If you object or withdraw the relevant consent, we will stop that marketing. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing undertaken before withdrawal.

Email permission does not authorise LinkedIn DMs or marketing through other channels.

Following a link to GROW’s website does not subscribe you. Registering for one event does not automatically subscribe you to future invitations. Necessary event messages, such as joining instructions, are distinct from ongoing marketing.

Unsubscribing does not delete your research response. Research withdrawal follows the separate process above.

8. Who can access information

Information may be accessed by:

• Authorised GROW personnel administering the research or subscriptions, according to their responsibilities.
• Providers supporting hosting, storage, security and email delivery.
• Research collaborators where necessary, under appropriate agreements and safeguards.
• Professional advisers or authorities where disclosure is necessary to comply with law or establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

Individual responses are not provided to training institutions, employers, other practitioners or subscribers.

We publish aggregate findings. Small or distinctive groups and written comments are assessed for identification risk before publication. Any published quotations will be checked and edited or omitted where necessary to protect confidentiality.

9. Service providers and international transfers

The study website uses Lovable Cloud. Its research database is hosted in Ireland.

Website delivery, support and security operations may involve processing outside the UK and European Economic Area. Hosting a database in Europe does not mean every aspect of processing occurs there.

Optional subscriber emails are delivered through Mailchimp, provided by Intuit in the United States. Subscriber addresses and the preferences needed to administer communications are shared with the email provider. Research answers and withdrawal codes are not shared with Mailchimp.

Technical email-delivery records may also be processed. We do not enable tracking of individual email opens or marketing-link clicks for these subscriptions.

Where a restricted international transfer occurs, we use an applicable lawful transfer mechanism. This may include UK adequacy regulations or contractual safeguards incorporating the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, as applicable to the provider and transfer.

You can request information about the safeguards used, including how to obtain a copy, by contacting support@growformula.org.

10. Retention

Continuous recruitment does not reset the retention period for older responses.

Backup copies may remain temporarily after deletion from live systems, until the applicable backup rotation expires. If a backup is restored, relevant deletion and suppression instructions will be reapplied.

11. Your rights

Depending on the information and lawful basis involved, you may have rights to access, correct, erase, restrict or receive a portable copy of your personal information.

You may object to processing based on legitimate interests. We will assess research-related objections under the applicable legal rules. Direct-marketing objections are absolute and will be honoured.

You may withdraw consent for optional emails at any time.

Contact support@growformula.org to exercise your rights. We may request proportionate information to verify your identity or locate the relevant record. We will not collect additional identifiers solely to identify research responses where this is unnecessary.

We normally respond within one month. If an extension is permitted and necessary, we will explain why.

12. Cookies and security

We use only storage and similar technologies necessary for the site’s operation and security by default. Any optional technologies requiring consent will be explained and offered separately before activation.

We do not use advertising pixels, retargeting or cross-site identity matching on the research website. Refusing optional tracking does not prevent participation.

We use appropriate access restrictions, authentication, secure connections and other technical and organisational safeguards. No online service can guarantee absolute security.

13. Automated decisions and profiling

The study does not assess your suitability to become a coach, generate individual marketing scores or make solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects.

Automated calculations may summarise research responses for statistical analysis. They are not individual assessments of professional competence or business potential.

14. Changes and complaints

We may update this notice as the study develops. The current version and date will be displayed on the website.

If a change materially affects how personal information is used, we will provide appropriate information before introducing it. Changes to this notice do not expand existing marketing permissions.

For questions or complaints, contact:

Sole Trader Courses Ltd, trading as GROW Formula
12 Charmind Walk, Swindon, SN25 1QA
support@growformula.org

You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.