Last updated: 01 September 2022
When sharing personal data with a third party supplier, they must first be approved by the Party.
The current list of approved suppliers can be found at our Approved Suppliers List.
If there is software, services or a printer you want to use which will involve sharing personal data with, you must seek approval first so they can be reviewed for UK GDPR compliance.
Where you are printing unaddressed leaflets, surveys, etc., then you do not need to get the printer supplier approved. If you are addressing using labels that will be added by activists, then you also do not need to get the printer supplier approved.
However, any printing supplier you want to use to print addressed mailings and/or addressed leaflets must have been through the approval process below. This includes local party print societies that are VAT registered and/or limited companies. If your local party prints leaflets in its own right, i.e. not as a print society, the local party does not need to become an official supplier. The local party is covered to handle data under the Members Data Protection Rules.
Any software in which you record personal data, even if it is stored locally on your computer, must also be approved, to ensure that the data is kept secure.
To gain approval, first check that the supplier is not already on the Approved Suppliers List. If the supplier is not already approved, then email them and ask them to complete the Supplier Audit at https://digitallibdems.typeform.com/to/DuUet4 and copy in data.protection@libdems.org.uk in to your email.
The request will be reviewed and a Data Protection Impact Assessment conducted. You will be notified of the decision in due course.
Supplier Audits can take some time as we need to review their documents, application and their existing Privacy Policy/information for UK GDPR compliance. The audit will then need to be repeated annually. This process to review can take approx. 20 working days from the submission and can take longer if we need to communicate directly with the supplier.
Therefore if you are likely to need approval in the run up to an election campaign, e.g. for a new printer, you need to ensure that the request for approval is made well in advance.
Please note that we may not always approve every supplier we receive a Supplier Audit for, this is because if a compatible supplier is already on the approved supplier list, we will request that you use them instead.