Privacy Policy.

Last updated: [CONFIRM: date of publication]

This notice explains what personal information Al-Maqari Al-Qur'aniyyah UK ("we", "us", "the institute") collects when you visit our website, register or apply for a place at the institute, attend our classes, or buy from our bookstore — and what we do with it. We have tried to write it in plain English. If anything is unclear, please email us at admissions@almaqariuk.com.

1. Who we are

Al-Maqari Al-Qur'aniyyah UK is the data controller for the personal information described in this notice. We are based at:

Open Door Community Centre
Keevil Drive, London
SW19 6TF, United Kingdom

Email: admissions@almaqariuk.com

Registered charity / company number: [CONFIRM: charity or company registration number, if any]

Data protection contact: [CONFIRM: name or role of the person responsible for data protection queries]

2. The information we collect

We collect information directly from you, mainly when you fill in a form on our website. We do not buy personal information from third parties.

Our registration form (at /register) asks for:

• Full name, email address, phone number, date of birth, and gender
• Postal address
• How you heard about us
• Details of your Qur'ān memorisation to date
• Preferred teachers and programmes
• Your goals, needs, and motivation for applying

Where an application is made on behalf of a child through our Young Ḥuffādh pathway, we additionally collect the parent or carer's:

• Full name and relationship to the child
• Email address and phone number
• Date of birth and address

See section 4 below for how we handle children's information.

Once you apply, we hold records relating to your admissions decision, interview scheduling and outcome, class placement, attendance, and progress, so that we and your teachers can run your studies properly.

When you place an order through our store, we collect your name, email address, delivery address, and the items you have ordered. Payment is handled entirely by Stripe — we never see or store your card details (see section 5).

• We use Cloudflare Turnstile on our forms and Upstash Redis for rate limiting, to stop automated abuse. As part of this, IP addresses are processed briefly and are not retained by us beyond what is needed for that purpose.
• If you are a member of staff, we use an essential session cookie to keep you signed in (see section 7 on cookies).

3. How we use your information, and our legal basis for doing so

UK data protection law requires us to have a "lawful basis" for each way we use your information. Here is how that applies to us:

• Assessing your application, scheduling interviews, and placing you in a class — necessary to take steps at your request before entering an agreement with you, and to perform that agreement once you join us.
• Sending you emails about your application or order — acknowledgements, interview invitations, confirmations and reminders, acceptance decisions, class changes, and cancellations — necessary to perform our agreement with you, sent through our email provider, Postmark.
• Creating a Microsoft Teams meeting for your interview — necessary to perform our agreement with you. Your name and email address appear on the calendar invitation, created through Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Graph).
• Running classes, and keeping attendance and progress records — our legitimate interest in delivering Qur'ānic education properly and maintaining a reliable record of each student's progress.
• Processing and delivering bookstore orders — necessary to perform our contract with you as a customer.
• Keeping our systems and forms secure — our legitimate interest in preventing spam, fraud, and abuse of our website.
• Marketing communications — only ever with your consent. At present we do not send marketing emails or newsletters.

4. Children's information

Where a child applies through our Young Ḥuffādh pathway, we process the child's and the parent or carer's information on the basis of the consent given by the parent or carer at the point of registration. A parent or carer may withdraw that consent, or ask us to amend or delete the information held, at any time by emailing admissions@almaqariuk.com.

5. Who we share your information with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with the trusted service providers ("processors") we rely on to run the institute and the store, each of whom is only permitted to use your information to provide their service to us:

• Neon — hosts our database (EU region), where applicant, student, and order records are stored.
• Postmark — sends transactional emails on our behalf (acknowledgements, interview and order communications).
• Microsoft 365 / Microsoft Graph — creates Teams meetings for interviews and provides staff sign-in (Microsoft Entra ID).
• Stripe — processes store payments. We never see or store your full card details.
• Cloudinary — hosts our product images.
• Cloudflare — provides Turnstile, our anti-abuse check on forms.
• Upstash — provides the Redis service we use for rate limiting.
• Netlify — hosts our website.

We may also disclose personal information where we are required to by law, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of the institute, our students, or others.

6. International transfers

Our database is hosted in the EU. Some of the processors listed above may store or process information outside the UK and European Economic Area, including in the United States. Where this happens, we rely on the safeguards recognised under UK data protection law, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, to ensure your information stays protected.

7. Cookies

We keep cookies to a minimum. We use a single essential session cookie so that staff can sign in and stay signed in to our internal systems. We do not use any advertising or tracking cookies, and we do not run third-party analytics that track you across other websites.

Where we embed a video (for example, from YouTube), we use its privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), which does not set tracking cookies unless you choose to play the video.

8. How long we keep your information

• Applicant and student records are kept for as long as you are studying with us, plus a reasonable period afterwards [CONFIRM: exact retention period once you are no longer studying with us].
• Order and payment records are kept for as long as required for accounting and tax purposes [CONFIRM: retention period — the statutory minimum in the UK is currently 6 years].
• Records of applications that do not proceed are kept only for as long as reasonably needed to conclude the admissions process, then deleted or anonymised.
• Audit logs of staff actions on our systems are kept for security purposes for [CONFIRM: retention period].

9. Your rights

Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• ask us to delete your information, in certain circumstances;
• ask us to restrict, or object to, how we use your information;
• ask us to provide your information to you, or another organisation, in a portable format; and
• withdraw any consent you have given us, at any time, without affecting what we did with your information before you withdrew it.

To exercise any of these rights, email admissions@almaqariuk.com. We will normally respond within one month.

10. Keeping your information secure

Staff access our internal systems by signing in with the institute's own Microsoft 365 account (Microsoft Entra ID), and their actions are recorded in an audit log. Information is encrypted in transit, and access to applicant and student records is limited to staff who need it to do their work.

11. If you have a complaint

We hope you will come to us first if you have any concerns — email admissions@almaqariuk.com and we will do our best to put things right. You also have the right to complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

ICO registration reference: [CONFIRM: our ICO registration number, if registered]

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this notice from time to time, for example if the way we use your information changes. We will update the "last updated" date at the top of this page whenever we do.