Privacy Policy
Updated July 2025
The British Equity Collecting Society Limited (“BECS” or “we”, “us” or “our” as the context permits) is firmly committed to your privacy. This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, process and protect your personal information. The Policy is in line with UK data protection laws.
This statement may be updated from time to time, so please check back periodically.
Personal Data We Collect
To enable BECS to manage and distribute rights on behalf of our members and to be able to offer distribution services to third parties, BECS maintains a database which holds the following information:
- Personal information: such as name (legal and professional), date of birth, address, nationality, country of tax residency, gender, contact telephone and email address, and agent details. Each member is assigned a BECS membership number and an International Performer Number.
- Payment information: such as bank details.
- Works, rights and broadcast information: such as production titles, character name, series and episode details of audio-visual works, production year and country, and first transmission date.
We may receive this information:
- Directly from you when you register as a member, provide your photo ID and proof of address, or contact us in writing, by telephone, email or otherwise.
- Via third parties such as providers of broadcast data, your authorised representatives or entities we currently provide or have previously provided our distribution services to.
- From publicly available sources, such as IMDB, general news websites, and credits available on programmes on various devices and streaming services.
By providing any personal information to BECS relating directly to you or third parties, you represent and warrant that you have the authority to transfer such information to BECS, and that you authorise BECS to process it where necessary in compliance with this Privacy Policy.
Who Will Hold Your Information?
Your information will be held by BECS. BECS, the “Data Controller” will have control over and responsibility for your personal information.
If the operations of BECS are sold or integrated with another organisation your details may be disclosed to our advisors and any prospective purchasers and their advisors and will be passed on to the successor organisation.
How Will BECS Use Your Personal Data?
- We process the information we collect as described above for the management of rights entrusted by you to BECS or for the provision of other services. This processing is necessary for the performance of the mandate(s) for the management of rights or agreement(s) for other services you have entered into with BECS or to take steps at your request prior to entering into such mandate(s) or other agreement(s). This includes:
- Using your contact details to process your membership application, verify your identity, to perform due diligence, to contact you regarding your membership or administration of your mandated rights.
- Using your contact details to respond to any communications you have with BECS (telephone, email or otherwise).
- Processing your personal data to calculate, collect and distribute payments due to you.
- Updating our systems to provide enhanced, relevant and accurate services to you.
- We may use your contact details wherever necessary and required for the fulfilment of contract and legitimate interests in providing our management of rights services, including keeping you informed about developments at BECS and the work we are doing on behalf of our members.
- BECS may process your personal data to comply with any legal obligations and to enforce or apply our governing rules or any other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of BECS, its members, its staff, or other third parties.
- We may use your personal data for research and analysis, and for internal service monitoring to ensure our services are of the highest standard.
- BECS will never provide members’ details to third parties for marketing purposes.
What is the lawful basis for processing?
In general, we do not require your consent to process your personal information because the processing is necessary:
- to provide you with information that you have requested, or
- to provide services to you as set out in our constitution, as agreed between us, including managing claims for payment on your behalf and distributing payments to you, or
- for legitimate interests, in administering our relationship with our members, or
- because we need to do it to comply with the law.
However, you do have rights in relation to our processing of your data – see the Your Rights section below for more details.
We do not generally collect “sensitive personal data” or “special categories of data” where the rules about how it is processed are stricter.
If you object to or ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information, this won’t affect the lawfulness of the processing we’ve already carried out.
Age Limitations
BECS’ services are not intended to be used directly by children without the approval of a parent or guardian. If you are under the age of 16, you are only permitted to register with BECS or provide your personal information with your parent / guardian’s consent. If your parents agree to provide information on your behalf they will be required to consent to such information being used as provided by the Privacy Policy, on your behalf.
Cookies
Cookies are small files stored on your computer or mobile device when you use the BECS website. They are designed to hold a small amount of data specific to a particular client and allows the server to deliver a page tailored to a particular user. To find out more about how we use cookies please see our Cookies Notice.
Who We May Share Your Personal Data With
BECS may share your personal data, for the purposes described above, with
- Other collective management organisations and rights societies with which we have reciprocal/ representation agreements with and licensees, to comply with existing agreements, secure new agreements with them or to claim performers’ rights payments on your behalf.
- Other third parties for whom we manage distribution and payment services.
- Other third-party companies and organisations such as technology and database providers, banking and payment services providers; with whom we have agreements to help supply, maintain or facilitate our services.
- Your authorised representatives.
- Regulatory bodies, courts, law enforcement agencies, auditors and professional advisors to comply with legal obligations; or to obtain professional related advice; or for fraud prevention purposes; or to enforce agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of BECS, its Members, its staff, or other third parties.
Some of these third parties may be based outside the EU.
Where BECS needs to transfer your personal data to a third party we will take reasonable steps to ensure your data is treated securely in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable data protection regulations. Typically, this is addressed through our contract with the data recipient under which the transfer takes place.
Protection of Your Data
All personal data provided to BECS is stored securely and is accessible only by authorised personnel. We have appropriate technical infrastructure and organisational measures against any unauthorised access, accidental loss or destruction and damage to your data. However, no computer system can ever be fully protected against every possible risk and it is not possible to guarantee the security or integrity of personal data when you send or transmit it to us (such as via email or over the internet).
Please note that where our web site includes links to, or content embedded from, third party web sites, such web sites are outside our control and are not covered by this Privacy Policy.
Retention of Data
BECS will retain your personal data for as long as you are a member, in order to provide our services, and typically for at least 6 years afterwards, to comply with legal, financial and regulatory obligations. We will not hold information about you which is excessive in respect of the purposes for which it is processed.
Your Rights
Under data protection laws, where we collect, process and keep your personal data, you have various rights in respect of that data. These are summarised below.
Please note that most of these rights are not absolute; they only apply in certain circumstances and are subject to certain limitations. For example, some of these rights will not apply because of the lawful basis upon which we are processing the data. Also, data controllers are not obliged to comply with manifestly unfounded or excessive requests.
If you notify us that you wish to exercise any of these rights, we will inform you if we consider that it is a case where the rights do not apply or if any limitations are applicable.
Your rights are:
- The right to request a free copy of the personal data that we hold about you.
- The right to have corrections made to any personal data we hold about you.
- The right to have certain personal data erased.
- The right to restrict our processing of your personal data.
- The right to request that we transfer, either to you or to another data controller, a digital data file comprising a copy of the personal data you have provided to us.
- The right to object to us processing your personal data for direct marketing (which is an absolute right) or where our processing is based on a legitimate interest (in which case we may continue to process it if our legitimate interest outweighs the objection).
Where we send you communications such as member newsletters, with information about key actions and deadlines, or details of our services and events for members, we will usually be doing so based on our contractual relationship with you or our legitimate interests (see above). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you such communications.
How to Contact BECS
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or would like to make a request to exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal data, please use the following contact details:
British Equity Collecting Society Ltd, 22 Tudor Street, London, EC4Y 0AY.
T: +44 203 946 7800
Complaints
We take your privacy very seriously and are committed to processing your data in compliance with applicable data protection legislation. If you have any concerns with the way your data has been processed, please contact us using the contact information above, so we may seek to resolve them. If you are unhappy with how your concerns have been dealt with, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: www.ico.org.uk
