Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Taylor Birchwood

Last Updated: March 2026

We provide executive search services to clients looking to recruit personnel for their businesses. We also provide executive coaching services for candidates. We also provide Interim Management, Talent Mapping, Assessment and Salary Survey services.

What does this Policy cover?

This Privacy Policy explains our use of personal data processed through the website, if you choose to contact us, and our use of business contact details. It also explains how we use candidate personal data and the personal data of our clients.

This Policy applies to personal data processed by our UK office and our Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) office. It reflects compliance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, as well as relevant provisions of the UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the Protection of Personal Data (UAE PDPL).

What personal data do we collect and why do we use it?

The table below explains who we collect personal data about, what that personal data is and the purpose we process it for.

The last column sets out the ‘lawful basis’ we rely on for processing that personal data which is a requirement of data protection rules. Essentially, companies may only process personal data if they can identify a lawful basis from a list set out in the legislation.

Individual	Personal data	Source and Purpose	Lawful Basis for Processing
Candidates	CVs, identification documents, educational records, work history, employment record and references, interview notes or meeting transcripts, correspondence and other personal data provided by you as part of the recruitment or engagement process. We rarely process special category information such as racial, disability, trade union or health information where you have made this available to us. From time to time we hold psychometric tests, in the event you or others provide us with such information.	We mainly collect this information directly from you. We will initially collect basic information on you such as contact details, role and experience and then pass this on to the client in search of personnel. If you are chosen by the client to progress in a process, we may then be collecting more information from you at the interview (or equivalent) stage and onwards in that manner. The amount of information we collect depends on how far you progress through the recruitment, engagement and onboarding stages. Sometimes we collect information from third parties such as an agent acting on your behalf such as an interim manager or from a third party recommendation or a person giving a reference, a friend or former colleague or even a present employer or psychometric test provider. We do use some publicly available sources to find information about potential candidates, specifically LinkedIn and company websites. We may also send you selective industry insights, whitepapers and event invitations that we think would be of most interest to you, or relevant for your potential role opportunities. You have the option to opt out at any time by emailing us at privacy@taylorbirchwood.com. We use your responses to online satisfaction surveys to help us identify ways to improve our services. Notes from meetings, market intelligence/research discussions or interviews with us may be produced using an automated note taking or transcription tool, which may employ Artificial Intelligence (AI).	The processing is necessary for our legitimate interests of assessing suitability for potential roles, to find potential candidates.If you choose to give us special category data (listed in the second column), we obtain your express consent to process that.
References/ referees	Contact details and correspondence.	Reference contact details may be given to us by candidates as part of a recruitment process. Other personal data about referees is given to us by you directly. All references given to us are treated as confidential.	Our legitimate interests as a business in obtaining references on candidates.
Individuals who contact us with general queries	Contact details provided and correspondence.	This information is given to us by you. It is used to respond to the query and keep a record of it.	Our legitimate interests as a business in responding to and keeping a record of correspondence.
Clients and potential clients	Contact details, meeting notes or transcripts, and correspondence. Contracts.	This information is given to us by you or from publicly available information (for example on your website). It is used for us to fulfil contracts and engage in business discussions. We may also send you selective industry insights, whitepapers and event invitations that we think would be of interest, with the option to opt out at any time. We use your responses to online satisfaction surveys to help us identify ways to improve our services.	Our legitimate interests as a business in responding to and keeping a record of correspondence. Some information is also necessary for us to perform our contract – for example certain contact details.
Coaching clients (ie where you are a client of ours we are providing coaching services to)	Contact details, correspondence, assessments, information provided, analysis and recommendations and opinions. Special category information such as health, disability or ethnicity or racial information is only processed if provided by you, and is more likely to be processed if you are a shortlisted candidate.	This information is given to us by you. Occasionally we undertake feedback sessions as part of coaching which may involve the provision of information about you from other people known to or nominated by you. We use the information to provide our coaching services to you.	Our legitimate interests as a business in providing coaching services. Some information may also be necessary specifically for us to perform the contract. We only process special category data with your express consent.
Suppliers and contractors	Contact details and provided correspondence.	This information is given to us by you or from publicly available information (for example on your website). It is used for us to fulfil contracts and engage in business discussions.	Our legitimate interests as a business in responding to and keeping a record of correspondence. Some information is also necessary for us to perform our contract – for example certain contact details.
Event Attendees	Photographs	On occasion we hold networking/social/educational events, which might be photographed. Photographs are stored as a record of the event and might be used for PR purposes on social media (eg linked in). Photographs are not used for identifying individuals, and individuals would not be named without obtaining consent.	Our legitimate interests for storing photographs would be for keeping a record of an event.
Website visitors	Information from cookies or tokens.	This information is collected via the cookies when you use our website. We use this data for analytics purposes to help us improve the experience for visitors to our website. We use Google Analytics to help us determine information such as the type of content to which a visitor to the site links, and the length of time each visitor spends in any particular area of the site.	We only install non-essential cookies with your consent.

How long do we keep your personal data for?

We keep your information only for as long as is necessary for the relevant purpose and in line with applicable legal and regulatory requirements. For example, if we have a contract with you, we may retain relevant records for up to 6.5 years after expiry in order to assist us with any contractual claims. We use a number of criteria for determining the retention period, including obligations under applicable law in the UK and UAE, our need to defend or bring contractual claims within the statutory limitation period, and consideration of the original purpose for which the data was collected.

Who do we share your personal data with?

Data may be shared in the following circumstances:

Where you are a candidate:

- we share your personal data with the client who has a senior communications role to fill in order to determine with the client whether you are a good fit for an available position. Typically, we would contact you before personal information is shared with the client. We work with clients across most industries globally;
- we may also conduct checks in order to verify information you have provided or other onboarding vetting checks required by the client and where we do this we may share your information with a background checks agency or service provider.

With professional advisors.
In the event of a sale of the company or its assets.
With suppliers but only subject to robust contractual protections (e.g. database provider, online survey tool).
Our sister and group companies.

Where data is transferred between the UK and UAE, or to other jurisdictions, we ensure that adequate safeguards are in place in line with both the UK GDPR and UAE PDPL requirements.

What happens if you do not provide us with the information we request or ask that we stop processing your information?

If you do not provide the personal data necessary, we may not be able to respond to your query or consider your application or request or match you with available role opportunities or to provide the relevant services to you.

Do we make automated decisions concerning you?

We do not carry out this type of processing activity.

Do we transfer your data internationally?

We may sometimes transfer your personal data to countries outside of your home jurisdiction — this may include transfers outside of the UK, the European Economic Area (EEA), or the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — for example, to our network of associate companies, or if we are either using a supplier or working with a client based elsewhere. You can find the list of European member states by clicking on the following link: https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries/member-countries_en. The privacy laws in countries outside the UK, EEA, or UAE may be different from those in your home country.

At present, we regularly transfer personal data to the United States. We may also, on occasion, transfer personal data from the UK or UAE to other countries where necessary for our services, in accordance with applicable UK GDPR or UAE PDPL requirements.

We also transfer personal data between our UK and Dubai offices. Transfers from the UK to the UAE are conducted under the UK GDPR’s transfer rules, using appropriate safeguards such as contractual clauses. Transfers from the UAE to the UK are carried out in accordance with the UAE PDPL, ensuring that the recipient jurisdiction offers an adequate level of protection or that contractual safeguards are in place.

Where we transfer data to a country that has not been deemed to provide adequate data protection standards, we always have security measures and approved model clauses or other adequate safeguards in place to protect your personal data. Please contact us if you would like more details about our safeguards for data transfers.

What rights do you have in relation to the data we hold on you?

By law, you have a number of rights when it comes to your personal data. Further information and advice about your rights can be obtained from the data protection regulator in your country. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner. In the UAE, the relevant supervisory authority is the UAE Data Office.

We usually act on requests and provide information free of charge, but may charge a reasonable fee to cover our administrative costs of providing the information for:

Baseless or excessive/repeated requests, or
Further copies of the same information.

Alternatively, we may be entitled to refuse to act on the request in some circumstances.

Please consider your request responsibly before submitting it. We’ll respond as soon as we can. Generally, this will be within one month from when we receive your request but, if the request is going to take longer to deal with, we’ll come back to you and let you know.

RIGHTS		WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
The right to be informed		You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent and easily understandable information about how we use your information and your rights. This is why we’re providing you with the information in this Privacy Policy. If you have any additional questions, for example regarding transfers and locations of data or our legitimate interests basis, do please get in touch.
The right of access		You have the right to obtain access to your information (if we are processing it), and certain other information (similar to that provided in this Privacy Policy). This is so you’re aware and can check that we’re using your information in accordance with data protection law.
The right to rectification		You are entitled to have your information corrected if its inaccurate or incomplete.
The right to erasure		This is also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’ and, in simple terms, enables you to request the deletion or removal of your information where there is no compelling reason for us to keep using it. This is not a general right, there are exceptions.
The right to restrict processing		You have rights to ‘block’ or suppress further use of your information. When processing is restricted, we can still store your information, but may not use it further. In this event, we would keep a list of people who have asked for further use of their information to be ‘blocked’ to make sure the restriction is respected in future.
The right to data portability		You have rights to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services. This is not a normal scenario for companies of our nature but if you have any questions you can contact us.
The right to object to processing		You have the right to object to certain types of processing, including processing for direct marketing or where we are relying on our legitimate interests for processing (e.g. if you no longer want to be contacted with potential role opportunities).
The right to lodge a complaint		You have the right to lodge a complaint about the way we handle or process your personal data with your national data protection regulator.
The right to withdraw consent		If you have given your consent to anything we do with your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although if you do so, it does not mean that anything we have done with your personal data with your consent up to that point is unlawful). This includes your right to withdraw consent to us using your personal data for marketing purposes.

Updating this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy may be updated periodically to reflect changes in personal data protection legislation and best practices. When we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will change the “last updated” date above and will notify you of any significant changes to this Privacy Policy.

Any updates will take into account changes to either UK or UAE data protection laws and guidance issued by the relevant supervisory authorities in each jurisdiction.

How can you contact us?

If you are unhappy with how we’ve handled your information or have further questions on the processing of your personal data, please contact us here:

For UK-related privacy matters:

Taylor Birchwood

189 Shaftesbury Avenue

London WC2H 8TJ

Email: privacy@taylorbirchwood.com

For UAE privacy matters:

Taylor Birchwood People Advisory – FZCo

Dubai Silicon Oasis

Dubai

Email: privacy@taylorbirchwood.com

For UK residents: You may also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (www.ico.org.uk).

For UAE residents: You may also contact the UAE Data Office (www.u.ae/en/about-the-uae/digital-uae/data).