Privacy Policy

Surge Yachting Ltd, trading as Surge Crew  ·  Last updated: 16 September 2026

We are a yacht crew recruitment and placement business, which means people trust us with CVs, certificates, references and career histories. This policy explains what we collect, why, who sees it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do about it. It is written to meet the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

It sits alongside our Cookies Policy, which covers the website specifically.

Who we are

Surge Yachting Ltd (trading as Surge Crew), registered in England and Wales under company number 16952788, is the data controller for the personal data described here.

Registered office: 32 Ashley Park, Ashley Heath, Ringwood, BH24 2HB, United Kingdom.
Contact for any privacy question or request: crew@surgeyachting.com.

Whose data we hold

  • Crew and candidates - people registering with us, applying for a role, or whose profile we hold for future roles.
  • Clients - captains, heads of department, owners' representatives, management companies and their staff.
  • Referees - people a candidate nominates, or previous employers we contact with the candidate's agreement.
  • Website visitors - covered mainly by the Cookies Policy.

What we collect

From crew and candidates

  • Identity and contact details: name, date of birth, nationality, phone or WhatsApp number, email address, and where you are based.
  • Professional information: CV, employment and yacht history, positions held, availability, salary expectations, and the type of programme you are looking for.
  • Certification and eligibility: STCW and other maritime certificates, licences, seafarer medical certificate (ENG1 or equivalent) status, visas and the right to work or travel where a role requires it.
  • References and feedback from previous employers, and our own interview notes.
  • A photograph, where you choose to provide one.

From clients

  • Your name, role, employer or vessel, and contact details, plus the details of the vacancy and our correspondence about it.

We collect most of this directly from you. We may also receive information from referees you nominate, from mutual industry contacts who recommend you, and from professional or publicly available sources such as LinkedIn.

We do not ask you to pay us to find you work. As an MCA certified recruitment and placement service we operate in line with Maritime Labour Convention 2006, Regulation 1.4. Fees are charged to the employer, never to crew.

More sensitive information

Some details in recruitment carry extra protection in law, such as health information behind a medical certificate, or information that reveals your racial or ethnic origin. We keep this to what a role genuinely requires, and where the law needs your explicit consent we will ask for it separately and clearly. You can withdraw that consent at any time. Please do not send us health details, or copies of documents we have not asked for, unless we have explained why we need them.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

Scroll the table sideways on a narrow screen.

What we doLawful basis
Keeping your profile on file and matching you to suitable rolesLegitimate interests - running a recruitment service that connects crew with employers, which is what you came to us for
Interviewing you, taking references and preparing a shortlistLegitimate interests, and steps taken at your request before a placement
Sending your details and our comparison table to a specific client for a specific roleLegitimate interests - we tell you before we put you forward, and you can say no
Managing a placement and our agreement with the clientPerformance of a contract
Sending you alerts about new rolesConsent, which you can withdraw at any time
Analytics cookies on this websiteConsent, given through our cookie banner
Keeping records for MLC, tax, and to handle any dispute or complaintLegal obligation, and legitimate interests in defending our position
Processing information that carries extra legal protectionYour explicit consent, or another condition where one genuinely applies

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered whether our interest is outweighed by your rights. You can ask us for that assessment, and you can object to processing on this basis at any time.

Who we share it with

Clients. This is the point of what we do. With your knowledge, we share your profile, CV, certification and reference summary with captains, heads of department, owners' representatives and management companies considering you for a role. We introduce you for one role at a time. We do not circulate your CV speculatively, and we do not sell your data to anyone.

Referees. When you nominate someone, we contact them to discuss your work. We tell them who we are and why we are asking.

Service providers who process data on our behalf, under contract and only on our instructions. These include our website host and content delivery provider, our online form provider, our email and office software provider, our workflow and automation tools, our website analytics provider and our cookie consent provider. Named examples that apply to this website are set out in our Cookies Policy. You can ask us for the current list.

Professional advisers and authorities, such as our accountant or insurer, or a regulator where we are required to respond.

Sending data outside the UK

Yachting is international, and so is this. A vessel, a captain or an owner's representative considering you may be anywhere in the world, and some of our software providers are based outside the UK and the European Economic Area.

Where we transfer your data to a country without a UK adequacy decision, we put appropriate safeguards in place, normally the UK International Data Transfer Addendum alongside the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or reliance on the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider participates. Where a placement itself requires us to send your details to an employer in such a country, we will only do so with your knowledge. You can ask us for details of the safeguards used.

How long we keep it

  • Candidate profiles: we review our records at least every 24 to 36 months. If you have not been in touch and we have not placed you in that time, we delete your profile or ask whether you want to stay on file.
  • Placement records: kept for six years after the end of the relationship, so we can meet tax and accounting requirements and deal with any dispute.
  • Enquiries that go nowhere: deleted within 12 months.
  • Consent records for cookies: 12 months, then we ask again.

You can ask us to delete your profile sooner. See below.

Automated decisions

We do not make decisions about you by automated means alone, and we do not use profiling to decide whether to put you forward. Shortlisting is done by a person who has spoken to you.

Keeping it secure

We use access-controlled accounts, multi-factor authentication, encrypted connections and reputable providers, and we limit who can see candidate files. No system is perfect, so if a breach ever affected your rights we would tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office as the law requires.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you can ask us to:

  • give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
  • correct anything inaccurate or incomplete;
  • delete your data, where there is no good reason for us to keep it;
  • restrict what we do with it while a question is resolved;
  • send your data to you or another provider in a portable format;
  • stop processing based on legitimate interests, by objecting; and
  • withdraw consent at any time, where consent is what we relied on. This does not affect anything we did beforehand.

Email crew@surgeyachting.com and we will respond within one month. There is no charge. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we do not hand your file to someone else.

Complaints

Please come to us first at crew@surgeyachting.com - most things are quicker to fix that way. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at any time:

Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
Helpline 0303 123 1113  ·  ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when what we do changes, or when the law does. The date at the top shows the last revision. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will tell registered crew directly.