1.Policy statements
Dance City strives for high standards in service delivery and welcomes feedback from individuals, intermediaries, and anyone who works with us, on all aspects of our services.

Such feedback is invaluable in helping us evaluate and improve our work.

The objectives of the Dance City Complaints Policy are to:
– Ensure everyone knows how to provide feedback and how a complaint will be handled
– Ensure that complaints are dealt with consistently, fairly and sensitively within clear time frames
– Provide individuals with a fair and effective way to complain about our work
– Ensure that complaints are monitored and used to improve our services.

Dance City will ensure that we:
– Listen carefully to complaints and treat complaints as confidential, where possible
– Record, store and manage all complaints accurately and in accordance with GDPR.
– Investigate the complaint fully, objectively and within the stated time frame
– Notify the complainant of the results of the investigation and any right of appeal
– Inform the complainant of any action that will be implemented in order to ensure that there is no re-occurrence
– Report, on an annual basis, the number of complaints received, the outcomes of investigations and any actions taken.

The Dance City Executive Director is responsible for implementing the Complaints Procedure.

2. Definition of a Complaint
A complaint is any expression of dissatisfaction by an individual, whether justified or not. An individual may make a complaint if they feel Dance City has:
– Failed to provide a service or an acceptable standard of service.
– Delayed in providing a service.
– Made a mistake in the way it has provided a service.
– Failed to act in a proper way.
– Provided an unfair service.

This policy and procedure relates only to complaints received about Dance City and its services. Individuals who make complaints about partner organisations will be notified in writing that they need to complain to the organisation they have the complaint with, and will be provided with contact details, where possible.

3. Complaints Procedure
3.1. Complaints
There are three stages to the complaints procedure:
– Stage One – Complaint
– Stage Two – Appeal
– Stage Three – Independent Review

Stage One
Dance City aims to settle the majority of complaints quickly and satisfactorily by the member of staff or the relevant manager who provides the service. The complaint may be resolved quickly by way of an apology, by providing the service required or by providing an explanation to the individual.

Individuals wishing to make a complaint should contact the person who provided the service, or their manager. Alternatively they can contact Dance City by email or by letter.

On receipt, each complaint will be allocated a unique reference number, logged on the Complaints Register and assigned an Investigator. The Complaints Register will be managed by the Ticket Office Manager.

Complaints will be acknowledged within one week. The complaints will be fully investigated and a written response provided to the complainant within 20 working days by the Investigator.

The Complaints Register will be updated and any pending complaints flagged so they are followed up.

Individuals will be advised that if they are not satisfied with the response to their complaint, they may appeal within 14 working days and progress to Stage Two.

Stage Two
Dance City’s Executive Director will appoint a manager to investigate the matter independently and communicate the outcome and any action(s) to the complainant in writing within 20 working days. This person may need to contact the complainant to clarify the issues, conduct the investigation and explore resolution. The complainant will receive written confirmation of the outcome of any investigation and any recommendations/remedies made, such as, staff development and training, reviewing of policies or appropriate improvement to Dance City services. The outcome should not refer to any individual employees or groups of employees within Dance City.

Occasionally, investigations may take longer, particularly if the complaint is complex. Should this be the case a holding letter will be sent after 20 working days and a final date given for a conclusion being reached.

If an individual remains dissatisfied with the outcome from Stage Two they can request an Independent Review within 14 working days of the date of the outcome and progress to Stage Three.

Stage Three
The Dance City Chair of Trustees will review the Stage Two investigation and recommend one of the following actions, within 20 working days:
– Uphold the action taken by Dance City at Stage Two
– Changes to the Stage Two recommendations/actions, including but not limited to further investigation.
– In addition the Trustees may make recommendations for Dance City operations for the Dance City Management Team to consider.

4. Anonymous Complaints
4.1 Complaints received anonymously will be recorded and considered, but action may be limited if further information is required to ensure a full and fair investigation.

5. Data Protection
To process a complaint, Dance City will hold personal data about the complainant, which the individual provides and which other people give in response to investigating the complaint. Dance City will hold this data securely and only use it to help address the complaint. The identity of the person making the complaint will only be made known to those who need to consider the complaint and will not be revealed to other people or made public by Dance City. However, it may not be possible to preserve confidentiality in some circumstances, for example, where relevant legislation applies or allegations are made which involve the conduct of third parties.

Under the Data Protection Act 2018 (UK GDPR), individuals have a right to obtain a copy of their personal data. However, there are exceptions to this right. Dance City will normally destroy its compliments and complaints files in a secure manner six years after the compliment has been made or the complaint closed.

6. Monitoring
Complaints are an important tool which, alongside data provided by exit surveys, user feedback and focus groups, will allow Dance City to learn about the services we provide. They provide a useful source of information about how individuals see our services and how we are serving them. To ensure Dance City can learn from compliments and complaints, the following data will be collected:
– Name and address
– Name of person dealing with the complaint
– Date of complaint and response date
– Nature of complaint
– Action(s) taken/recommendations made in response to the complaint
– Lessons learnt.

Complaints information will be considered on a regular basis by the Dance City Senior Management Team and reported annually to the Trustee Board. Wherever possible the data will be used to improve and develop the service.

Purpose of Policy

We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what information we hold about you.
Using personal information allows us to develop a better understanding of our patrons and in turn to provide you with relevant and timely information about the work that we do – both on and off stage. As a charity, it also helps us to engage with potential donors and supporters.

The purpose of this policy is to give you a clear explanation about how we collect and use the information we collect from you directly and from third parties.

We use your information in accordance with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information. This policy explains:

• What information we may collect about you
• How we may use that information
• In what situations we may disclose your details to third parties
• Our use of cookies to improve your use of our website
• Information about how we keep your personal information secure, how we maintain it for you and your rights to be able to access it.

If you have any queries about this policy, please contact the Data Protection Officer at Dance City or email info@dancecity.co.uk

Who we are

Dance City is a charity and is funded by Arts Council England, the Department for Education as well as various trusts, foundations and individual donors and supporters. Our registered charity number in England and Wales is 702801.

Mission
Dance City is the North East’s leading dance development organisation which is renowned for creating outstanding dance experiences.
Our mission is to add value to people’s lives through dance by delivering high quality community dance classes, professional performances, employment-focused FE and HE education courses and tailored support for dance artists.

Vision
Our vision is to engage more people in the North East and beyond through dance, develop new dance talent and bring outstanding dance performances to our region.

Information collection

We collect various types of information and in a number of ways:

Information you give us
For example when you register on our website, buy tickets or make a donation, we’ll store personal information you give us such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone number and card details. We will also store a record of your purchases and donations.

Information about your interactions with us
For example, when you visit our website we collect information about how you interact with our content and ads. When we send you a mailing we store a record of this, and in the case of emails we keep a record of which ones you have opened and which links you have clicked on.

Information from third parties
We occasionally receive information about you from third parties. For example, we may use third party research companies to provide general information about you, compiled using publicly available data.

Sensitive personal data
Data Protection law recognises that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive such as health information, race, religious beliefs and political opinions. We do not usually collect this type of information about our patrons unless there is a clear reason for doing so.

Legal Basis

There are three bases under which we may process your data:

Contract purposes
When you make a purchase from us or make a donation to us, you are entering into a contract with us. In order to perform this contract we need to process and store your data. For example we may need to contact you by email or telephone in the case of cancellation of a show, or in the case of problems with your payment.

Legitimate business interests
In certain situations we collect and process your personal data for purposes that are in our legitimate organisational interests. However we only do this if there is no overriding prejudice to you by using your personal information in his way. We describe below all situations where we may use this basis for processing.

With your explicit consent
For any situations where the two bases above are not appropriate, we will instead ask for your explicit consent before using your personal information in that specific situation.

Marketing Communications

We aim to communicate with you about the work that we do in ways that you find relevant, timely and respectful. To do this we use data that we have stored about you, such as what events you have booked for in the past, as well as any preferences you may have told us about.

We use our legitimate organisational interest as the legal basis for communications by post and email. In the case of postal mailings, you may object to receiving these at any time using the contact details at the end of this policy. In the case of email, we will give you an opportunity to opt out of receiving them during your first purchase with us. If you do not opt out, we will provide you with an option to unsubscribe in every email that we subsequently send you, or you can alternatively use the contact details at the end of this policy.

We may also contact you about our work by telephone, however we will always get explicit consent from you before doing this. Please bear in mind that this does not apply to telephone calls that we may need to make to you related to your purchases as above.

Other Processing Activities

In addition to marketing communications, we also process personal information in the following ways that are within our legitimate organisational interests:

We may analyse data we hold about you to ensure that the content and timing of communications that we send you are as relevant to you as possible.

We may analyse data we hold about you in order to identify and prevent fraud.

In order to improve our website we may analyse information about how you use it and the content and ads that you interact with.

We may use profiling techniques or third party wealth screening and insight companies to provide us with information about you that will help us to communicate in a relevant way with you, in particular when we are approaching you about potential philanthropic support. Such information is compiled using publicly available data about you.

We may use information we hold about you for anonymous analytical purposes such as reporting on general audience attributes.

In all of the above cases we will always keep your rights and interests at the forefront to ensure they are not overridden by your own interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. You have the right to object to any of this processing at any time. If you wish to do this, please use the contact details at the end of this policy. Please bear in mind that if you object his may affect our ability to carry out tasks above that are for your benefit.

Third Parties

There are certain circumstances under which we may disclose your personal information to third parties. These are as follows:

To our own service providers who process data on our behalf and on our instructions (for example our ticketing system software provider). In these cases we require that these third parties comply strictly with our instructions and with data protection laws, for example around security of personal data.

Where we are under a duty to disclose your personal information in order to comply with any legal obligation (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies).

To specific named visiting companies whose performances you have attended. In these cases we will always ask for your explicit consent before doing so.

Your Debit/Credit Card Information

If you use your credit or debit card to purchase from us or to make a donation, we will ensure that this is carried out securely and in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). You can find more information about this standard here.
We optionally allow you to store your card details for use in a future transaction. This is carried out in compliance with PCI-DSS and in a way where none of our staff members are able to see your full card number. We never store your 3 or 4 digit security code.

Maintaining your Personal Information

We store your personal information indefinitely such that for any subsequent purchases you make we are able to link them back to a single unique record that we hold for you on our system.

If there are aspects of your record that are inaccurate or that you would like to remove, you can usually do this by logging in to your account through our website. Alternatively please use the contact details at the end of this policy.

Any objections you make to any processing of your data will be stored against your record on our system so that we can comply with your requests.

Security or your Personal Information

We will put in place appropriate safeguards (both in terms of our procedures and the technology we use) to keep your personal information as secure as possible. We will ensure that any third parties we use for processing your personal information do the same.

We will not transfer, process or store your data anywhere that is outside of the European Economic Area.

Your Rights to your Personal Information

You have a right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies in the data corrected. Please use the contact details at the end of this policy if you would like to exercise this right.

Contact Details & Further Information

Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about any aspect of this privacy policy, and in particular if you would like to object to any processing of your personal information that we carry out for our legitimate organisational interests.

Data Manager
Dance City
Temple Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 4BR

info@dancecity.co.uk