Written by STV | Jan 13, 2026 2:51:10 PM
When you interact and engage with STV Radio your information is processed by STV Audio Limited (“We”), which is the data controller of your personal data. STV Audio Limited is part of the STV group of companies. A reference to the “STV group of companies” means STV Group plc (SC203873) and its subsidiaries, including STV Central Limited.
If you listen to STV Radio through the STV Player, operated by STV Central Limited, the STV Player Privacy Policy applies. If you engage with us via third-party social media services, third-party messaging services (e.g. WhatsApp), or email, your information is also subject to the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the service you choose to use. You should refer to their privacy policies for how they process your data and their individual retention policies.
This Privacy Policy lets you know the following:
- The information we collect about you
- How we might use your information
- Our lawful bases for collection and use of your information
- How long we keep your information
- Who we share your information with
- Sharing information outside the UK
- Your data protection rights
- Our contact details
- How to complain
THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT.
We may collect or use the following information when you contact or engage with us or when taking part in a competition or prize draw operated by us:
- Name, phone number, email address, address, date of birth and any other personal information you share with us
- Texts, social media and/or WhatsApp messages, call recordings and voicenotes
- Your views, opinions or comments you share with us
- A broadcast recording of your voice if you appear on one of our shows or podcasts
If you use your social media account to directly engage with us (such as tagging one of our social media handles in a public post, commenting on one of our posts, or sending us a direct message), we may also use your social media handle to reply to or engage with you.
Some of our competitions and prize draws may include an online route of entry. STV Central Limited operates the online entry mechanism for our competitions on the stv.tv/win website. When you enter one of our competitions or prize draws via an online route of entry, STV Central Limited will share your name, email address, and information that you provide as part of your entry with us for the purpose of facilitating your participation in the competition or prize draw and to allow us to operate that competition
or prize draw. Please see STV Central Limited’s applicable privacy policy for information about how your personal data is processed by STV Central Limited, including when you are an STV Player account holder.
SENSITIVE INFORMATION. We will only collect sensitive personal information (also known as ”special category personal data”) from you if you provide us with it (for example, during a discussion on one of our shows). Sensitive personal information includes information about your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, sex life or sexual orientation.
Please do not submit such sensitive information if you do not wish for us to process it.
HOW WE MIGHT USE YOUR INFORMATION.
If you communicate with STV Radio by phone, text, email, WhatsApp message or communicate with us in some other way, we may collect your name, location and a summary of your contribution. This may then be broadcast on one of our shows or podcasts along with your name and general location. If you communicate with us by phone or send us a voice note via WhatsApp, we may broadcast/feature
your contribution in full (or in part) on one of our shows or podcasts.
If your contribution is featured in one of our shows or podcasts, please note that this includes your contribution being streamed online and/or available on demand via STV Player and, in relation to our podcasts, via selected third-party podcast-hosting platforms. Your contribution may be used again in a future broadcast/podcast, and we may use your featured contribution for promotional purposes on our social media accounts such as X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Please note that your contributions may be recorded.
We will sometimes use your personal information to get in touch with you, for example, if we need further information about what you’ve sent us by phone, text, email, WhatsApp or social media.
Where you have agreed, we may contact you at a later date to invite you for further discussion about a topic on one of our shows or podcasts.
Please do not contact STV Radio if you are under 18 years old.
Please do not send any photos or videos of yourself or others.
If you enter one of our competitions or prize draws, we will require your name and contact details to administer the competition or prize draw. We may also require your phone number and full address where we, or our prize provider, need to arrange delivery of the prize.
If you contact us with an enquiry or complaint, we collect your name and any contact details and other information you provide as part of your enquiry or complaint. We will use this information to communicate with you about your enquiry or complaint.
OUR LAWFUL BASES FOR THE COLLECTION AND USE OF YOUR INFORMATION.
Under UK data protection law, we must have a “lawful basis” for collecting and using your personal information. We process your personal information under the following legal basis:
Legitimate Interest
We process your personal information when we have a legitimate interest to do so, and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. Our legitimate interests include where we use your personal information to:
- feature your contributions on our radio shows and podcasts (where this does not fall under the special purpose exemption below);
- improve our service and audience experience;
- deal with your requests, complaints and enquiries (for example, to answer your questions or to respond to a comment or complaint); and
- retain caller records to better understand our audience and keep our audience engaged.
Consent
Where you have agreed to be contacted by us in the future, we may use your personal information to contact you about a topic that we think may be of interest to you and we may ask you if you wish to participate in one of our shows or podcasts to discuss that topic. We will only contact you if we have your consent to do so. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by emailing us at privacyteam@stv.tv
Performance of a contract
We may process your personal information when we need to fulfil a contract with you. For example, we may use your information to operate a competition or prize draw. We may check your eligibility to enter, select winners and deliver the prize if you are a prize winner. To verify your eligibility to participate in a competition or prize draw, we may require you to provide evidence in the form of a utility bill. We may also need to share your personal information with the prize provider strictly for the purpose of delivering
the prize to you.
Necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations
We may process your personal information to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, for example, preventing, investigating and detecting crime, fraud or anti-social behaviour and complying with law enforcement agencies.
Special purposes exemption
When you contact or otherwise engage with us and your contribution is featured on one of our shows or podcasts, we consider you to be a contributor. Where you participate as a contributor in our shows or podcasts we may rely on our special purposes exemption to process your information for journalism, art and literary purposes where we reasonably believe there is a public interest to do so and where we believe complying with certain data protection obligations is incompatible with the special purposes.
HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION.
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected. Once that purpose has been fulfilled, we will securely delete your data or anonymise your information, unless we are required to retain the data longer for legal, regulatory, tax or accounting reasons.
For personal information you provide to enter a competition or prize draw, the retention period will depend on the nature of the prize. Generally, it will be no longer than 12 months after the delivery of the prize, unless we inform you otherwise.
For personal information contained in our call management system, we will generally keep that information for no longer than 12 months after your call to us.
WHO WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH. We share information with:
- Service providers: we may share your personal information with third-party service
providers. These include professional advisors, IT systems, support and hosting service providers, technical engineers, data storage, cloud providers, outsourced service providers and other similar third-party service providers that assist us in carrying out business activities.
- Group companies: we may share your personal information with certain companies in the STV group of companies, including STV Central Limited. Where they have access to your personal information, they will use it only for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy or such other applicable privacy policy notified to you.
- Competition sponsors and prize providers: If whilst entering one of our competitions or prize draws you have expressly agreed that you are happy for us to do so, we will share some of your details with the prize provider or competition sponsor of that competition or prize draw for marketing purposes. Please note that any shared data will then be subject to the privacy policy of any prize provider or competition sponsor. If you are a prize winner, we may also share your information with the prize provider, competition sponsor, or other parties who assist us in providing prizes to winners for the purpose of delivering the prize to you.
- Government authorities and regulatory bodies: we may share your personal information with government bodies, law enforcement agencies or other regulatory bodies where we are required or permitted to do so by law, or to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of any third party or our users.
SHARING INFORMATION OUTSIDE THE UK.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK to authorised suppliers providing functionality or other services to us, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
- We will only transfer your personal data to countries within the EEA or other countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the UK Government.
- Otherwise, where we use service providers outside the UK or the EEA, we will only transfer your personal data using appropriate mechanisms approved by the UK Government (which may include specific contractual documentation) which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK. Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
YOUR DATA PROTECTION RIGHTS.
Data protection laws give you certain rights, which are set out in brief below:
- Right of access: You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. You can request other information such as details about where we get personal information from and who we share personal information with.
- Right to erasure: You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information. There are limitations to this right which may entitle us to refuse your request.
- Right to rectification: You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal information you think is inaccurate or incomplete.
In certain circumstances:
- Right to restriction of processing: You have the right to ask us to limit how we can use your personal information.
- Right to object to processing: You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data.
- Right to data portability: You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation or to you.
- Right to withdraw consent: When we use consent as our lawful basis, you have the right to withdraw your consent.
Should you make a rights request, we must respond to you without undue delay and in any event within one month.
OUR CONTACT DETAILS.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or you would like to exercise any of your legal rights, please contact our Privacy Team by post at: STV, Pacific Quay, Glasgow, G51 1PQ, or email to privacyteam@stv.tv.
HOW TO COMPLAIN.
Should you wish to complain about how we process your information, please contact our privacy team at our contact details above in the first instance. Should you remain unhappy with how we’ve used your data after raising a complaint with us, you can also complain directly to the Information Commission.
Their contact details are on their website at: https://www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
This Privacy Policy was last updated on 5 January 2026