WSET Policies

Complaints & Appeals

Scope of Policy

The scope of this policy is to ensure that there is a clear route for any parties that may wish to lodge a complaint against the Approved Programme Provider (APP) and/or its staff to do so. The policy also ensures that there is protection for the APP and/or its staff during the complaints procedure.

Procedure

All complaints should be sent via email or in writing to the main contact of the APP – Chris Cassell; school@mustandlees.co.uk.

Complaints can be made at any time and we guarantee that no prejudice will be taken against any complaint. The Complainant should provide their Name; Address; Contact Details & the details of the incident they wish to complain about. This should include:

The incident date
The location that the incident took place (APP; External Site; etc.)
The name of the staff present on that course date or at the time the incident took place
Details of the incident
Any actions that were taken at the time the incident took place to resolve the issue.

In the event of a complaint being made against the main contact, the complaint will be dealt with by another member of the team to ensure that there is no conflict of interest at any time and that the complainant be dealt with fairly.

If this is not possible we will confirm this immediately along with a full reason for this decision.

An acknowledgement of complaint receipt can be expected within 3 working days of the complaint being received and a response to the complaint within 15 working days. Whilst a response will be returned within 15 days, investigating the complaint may take longer. During this time the complainant will be kept up to date regarding the investigation. In the event of a solution being provided by the APP that does not satisfy the complainant, an appeal must be made within 10 working days from the initial offered solution to the complaint. The appeal must be made in writing/by email and must detail why the initial solution does not satisfy the complaint and what the complainant feels would satisfy the complaint.

If no solution can be reached between the APP & the complainant we will issue a response confirming that Must & Lees complaint procedures have been exhausted and no agreed solution has been reached, the student will be provided with the details for the Quality Assurance team at WSET (email: qa@wsetglobal.com).

Please note that WSET will be unable to respond to any complaints until the Must & Lees complaints procedure has been exhausted.

Conflict of Interest Policy

Must & Lees is required to identify, monitor & manage actual, potential & perceived Conflicts of Interest, including where these may arise in the context of WSET courses and examinations. This is essential to protect the integrity of WSET qualifications and promote confidence in the WSET processes and the services provided by Must & Lees.

This document defines a conflict of interest and describes these in context of working with WSET. This also identifies those conflicts of interest that can be managed and are therefore acceptable and those that cannot be managed and are therefore unacceptable. Examples are provided.

Policy Scope

This policy applies to all staff members employed by Must & Lees and any individuals that act on behalf of WSET.

Definition of Conflict of Interest

A Conflict of Interest exists where an individual has interests or loyalties that could adversely influence their judgement, objectivity or loyalty to WSET when conducting activities associated with WSET qualifications.

Examples of Conflicts of Interest in the context of an awarding organisation include:

The undertaking of any assessment or moderation of assessment of candidates by an individual who has a personal interest in the result of the assessment for any or all individuals concerned;

The tutoring of candidates by an individual involved in the assessment process;

The invigilation of a WSET assessment by any individual involved in the delivery of training leading to the assessment.

Some of these Conflicts of Interest can be managed and are therefore acceptable. For example, the marking of WSET Level 3 tasting assessments by Internal Assessors is verified by WSET to mitigate the risk of a Conflict of Interest.

Some Conflicts of Interest cannot be managed and are not acceptable. For example, it would be inappropriate for an individual involved in the authoring of examination questions or the compilation of examination papers to teach or coach students.

Identification and Management of Conflicts of Interest

Any candidate or potential candidate who believes their involvement in a WSET course provided by Must & Lees may give rise to a conflict of interest as described above must inform the Nominated Educator (Chris Cassell), either verbally or in writing, upon booking. Failure to do so may jeopardise results. In this communication, they should clearly set out the reasons for which they believe conflict of interest is a risk. The Nominated Educator (Chris Cassell) will then respond with a decision as to whether the perceived conflict can be adequately managed within not more than 48 hours. If a candidate has knowingly withheld any information relating to Conflicts of Interests Must & Lees reserves the right to remove the candidate from the course. In such cases a refund will not be granted and the candidate will not be able to complete the course.

Diversity & Equality

The democratisation of wine is at the core of our business and we are committed to upholding the principles of diversity and equality across everything we do in order to ensure that all staff, candidates and other stakeholders are treated fairly and equally at all times.

This commitment extends to any person who connects with Must & Lees in any way, in-person or virtually including WSET candidates, WSET staff, and WSET APP educators and staff.

Must & Lees is actively engaged in creating a community hub promoting, advancing, and confirming our commitment to diversity and inclusion is a key aspect of this. We believe that diversity contributes to enhanced learning outcomes offering differing viewpoints and encouraging critical thinking.

Must & Lees fully supports the principles of Equal Opportunities. We strive to ensure that all candidates for our qualifications are treated fairly and on an equal basis.

Equal Opportunities are assured by:

The selection, recruitment and training of those working for this APP;

Consideration at an early stage in the development of new schemes or qualifications;

Ensuring that the format and content of all syllabi, examinations and other do not discriminate against anyone which is the responsibility of WSET by whom we are approved to teach WSET qualifications;

Wherever possible ensuring there are no barriers to entry to units and qualifications, which we deliver and/or offer, for disabled people, women or men, or people from different racial groups, other than those directly related to the integrity of the units or qualifications. The nature of any barriers will be stated and the inclusion of the requirements that create the barrier justified only and explicitly in terms of the integrity of the unit or the qualification. Details of how the effect of any barriers will be mitigated will be recorded, including using access arrangements or including reasonable adjustments.

Clarifying the responsibility of all members of staff and/or consultants, who are involved in the delivery of WSET courses within this APP, to comply with this policy. In particular external parties invited by this APP to contribute to these development arrangements must also, as representatives of relevant learners, ensure that the views of learners and others are taken into account in the development of QCF units and qualifications.

Anonymous assessment of examination candidates wherever possible;

Promoting practices and procedures that give equal opportunities to everyone;

Being required to have equal opportunity policies in place;

The variation of any conventional rules and regulations for the conduct of examinations which might inhibit the performance of candidates with specific needs, provided that the standard, quality and integrity of the assessment is not compromised.

Working as appropriate with relevant organisations and agencies to develop measures to identify and prevent inequality of opportunity;

Making every effort to ensure that there is equality of opportunity in its assessment process, regardless of the candidate’s gender, age, racial origin, religious persuasion, sexual orientation or disability;

Ensuring, to the best of our ability, that any documentation produced does not contain language or images which may be regarded as offensive or stereotypical, and that they reflect the diversity of contemporary society;

Must & Lees is an equal opportunities organisation and will consider applications from any organisation or individual who can demonstrate that they meet our approval criteria.

This policy is published on our website and provided in our Candidate Booking Info Pack and will be provided to any student on demand

Monitoring

Must & Lees will comply with all current and relevant legislation and this policy will be monitored and reviewed annually.

All relevant issues identified as suggesting our provision or services have unnecessary impact on learners will be reported back to management who will be responsible for leading on introducing amendments to provision and/or services where necessary and in accordance with our documented procedures for developing and reviewing units and qualifications. Details of the outcomes of each review will be made available to the qualification regulators upon request.

Notes to candidates

Candidates who believe they have been discriminated against should contact us in the first instance for advice (please refer to our complaints procedure).

Privacy & Data Protection

This privacy notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through your use of our site www.mustandlees.co.uk

By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age.

Who we are

Must & Lees (‘we’ or ‘us’) are a ‘data controller’ for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 (i.e. we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information).

Contact Details

Chris Cassell

Must & Lees Founder

cheers@mustandlees.co.uk

239 Liverpool Road, London

It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us or by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you at any time.

What date we collect about you, why we collect it and how we process it

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.

Information we collect

1. Personal information you provide to us

Your name, your D.O.B., email address, business name, business description, website address, and telephone number at the time of providing that information to us
Examples of when we may collect this information include::

When you book onto an event
When you purchase a service from us
When you subscribe to our newsletter

2. Personal information you provide about third parties

If you give us information about another person (for example, during group bookings), you confirm that the other person has appointed you to act on their behalf and agreed that you:

Shall consent on their behalf to the processing of their personal data
Shall receive any data protection notices on their behalf
Shall consent on their behalf to the transfer of their personal data abroad.

We may process the following categories of personal data about you:

Communication Data that includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.

Customer Data that includes data relating to any purchases of goods and/or services such as your name, title, date of birth, billing address, delivery address, email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details and your card details. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract.

User Data that includes data about how you use our website and any online services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back- ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business.

Technical Data that includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyse your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business and to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.

Marketing Data that includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable you to partake in our promotions such as competitions, prize draws and free give-aways, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of this advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.We may use Customer Data, User Data, Technical Data and Marketing Data to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook adverts or other display advertisements) and to measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve you. Our lawful ground for this processing is legitimate interests, which is to grow our business. We may also use such data to send other marketing communications to you. Our lawful ground for this processing is either consent or legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).

Sensitive Data includes food allergies and other dietary requirements and special exam requirements, including medical conditions that require access considerations or alterations to the exam conditions. We only collect this information about you in order to deliver our training courses and events in the most sensitive and effective manner. Our lawful ground for this processing is contractual as may otherwise be unable to deliver our events or training courses appropriately. This information is only held or used by us and in communication with the relevant venue / caterer. If you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to deliver appropriate food or exam conditions). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a product or service you have ordered but if we do, we will notify you at the time. We will only use your sensitive data in relation to the particular event for which it was collected.

We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

Marketing Communications

Our lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, we may send you marketing communications from us if (i) you made a purchase or asked for information from us about our goods or services or (ii) you agreed to receive marketing communications and in each case you have not opted out of receiving such communications since. Under these regulations, if you are a limited company, we may send you marketing emails without your consent. However you can still opt out of receiving marketing emails from us at any time.

Before we share your personal data with any third party for their own marketing purposes we will get your express consent.

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time emailing us at cheers@mustandlees.co.uk or by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you at any time.

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided as a result of other transactions, such as purchases, attendance at courses and events, etc.

Disclosures of your Personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:

Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers
Examination bodies that accredit qualifications, such as WSET Wine & Spirit Education Trust
Government bodies that require us to report processing activities.
Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.
We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International Transfers

Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA. Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is in place:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that the European Commission have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data by; or
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or

If we use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place.

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

Data Security

We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. We also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they must keep it confidential.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to.

Data Retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.

For tax purposes the law requires us to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they stop being customers.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Your Legal Rights

Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent.

You can see more about these rights at:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at cheers@mustandlees.co.uk

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you.

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

Disabling / Enabling Cookies

You can accept or decline “cookies” by modifying the setting in your browser. Please note that if you disable “cookies” you may not be able to use all the features of our Website.

Reasonable Adjustments Policy

A reasonable adjustment is any action that helps to reduce the effect of a disability or difficulty that places the candidate at a substantial disadvantage in the assessment situation.

Must & Lees seeks to conduct the assessment of all candidates in a way that puts them at no disadvantage, or advantage, over other candidates. Reasonable adjustments must not affect the integrity of what needs to be assessed, but may involve:

Changing standard assessment arrangements, for example allowing candidates extra time to complete the assessment activity
Adapting assessment materials, such as providing materials in large text format
Providing access facilitators during assessment, such as a sign language interpreter or reader
Re-organising the assessment room, such as removal of visual stimuli for an autistic candidate.

Reasonable adjustments are approved or set in place before the assessment activity takes place; they constitute an arrangement to give the candidate access to the qualification. The use of reasonable adjustment will not be taken into consideration during the assessment of a candidate’s work. Out of fairness to all candidates, evidence of the individual circumstances giving rise to the request must be produced.

Must & Lees Responsibilities

Prompts for identification of reasonable adjustment in teaching of special assessment needs at the time of candidate registration forms.

Inform WSET® Awards at the earliest opportunity so that appropriate arrangements can be made.

Agree the specific arrangements for the examination, or for marking with WSET® Awards, which will vary according to individual circumstances.

Candidate Responsibilities

Identify any reasonable adjustments in teaching or special assessment requirements on their candidate registration.

Communicate with Must & Lees to negotiate solutions to reasonable adjustments in the teaching aspects of the course.

Candidates are required to submit any reasonable adjustment examination requests at least 4 weeks (28 days) before the date of the examination. The candidate is required to provide evidence/statement of disability from an independent professional of the relevant field.

Must & Lees will forward any Requests for Reasonable Adjustments to WSET® Awards.

Candidates and their advisors should also be aware that it is not appropriate to make requests for special arrangements where the candidate’s particular difficulty directly affects performance in the actual attributes that are the focus of the assessment.

That reasonable adjustments will not give unfair advantage over candidates for whom reasonable adjustments are not being made, or alter the assessment demands of the qualification as detailed in the qualification specification.

WSET® Awards reserves the right to seek the advice of independent agencies as appropriate in coming to a decision on specific arrangements and must agree before any reasonable adjustments are offered by this APP to its students.

Special Consideration Policy

Special consideration is an action taken after an assessment to allow candidates who have been disadvantaged by temporary illness, injury, indisposition or adverse circumstances at the time of the assessment to demonstrate attainment.

A candidate may be eligible for special considerations if:

Performance in an examination is affected by circumstances beyond the control of the candidate. This may include recent personal illness, accident, bereavement or examination room conditions;
alternative assessment arrangements which were agreed in advance of the assessment proved inappropriate or inadequate;
the application of special consideration would not mislead the end-user of the certificate.

Candidate Responsibilities

The candidate must notify the Must & Lees within three (3) days of the examination date.

The candidate must provide supporting evidence of the circumstances requiring special consideration. Eligibility will only be considered if accompanied by supporting independent documentation.

Must & Lees Responsibilities

Where a Request for Special Consideration is received by Must & Lees, this will be submitted to WSET®Awards within seven (7) days of the relevant examination.

In cases of serious disruption during the examination, the Examinations Officer will submit a detailed report of the circumstances and candidates affected to the Examinations Administrator at WSET® Awards, in addition to the Examination Papers.

Remedies and the Nature of Special Considerations

Where a candidate is unable to attend an examination due to recent personal illness, accident or bereavement, Must & Lees will endeavour to transfer the candidate to an alternative examination date at no extra cost.

Must & Lees will not charge an unused paper fee for applications where approval from WSET® Awards is granted.

WSET® Awards does not offer aegrotat awards and all assessment requirements of WSET® qualifications must be met.

It is also our policy that special considerations will not give unfair advantage over candidates for whom special considerations are not being applied, or alter the assessment demands of the qualification as detailed in the qualification specification.

Failure to attend due to work commitments does not qualify for “special consideration”.

Malpractice and Maladministration

Must & Lees will ensure that their programme for the delivery and administration of any WSET qualification complies in all respects to the rules, regulations and procedures set out in the WSET APP Operating Handbook.

All WSET examinations run by Must & Lees will be administered in line with the Centre Agreement, Code of Practice and Invigilation Instructions provided in the Operating handbook, and Examination Regulations issued to all APPs and Students in the Qualification Specifications

Failure to abide by these criteria will be considered Malpractice and or Maladministration and may affect our ability to continue teaching WSET qualifications.

Definition of Malpractice and Maladministration

Malpractice can arise from any act, omission, event, incident or circumstance that prejudices learners, affects public confidence in qualifications, affects the standards of qualifications which the awarding body makes available or affects the ability of the awarding body to undertake the development, delivery or award of qualifications.

Maladministration relates to a failure by the APP to offer WSET Qualifications in accordance with the rules, regulations and operating procedures set out in this Handbook. The APP must have in place procedures for dealing with instances of Malpractice and Maladministration should they arise.

Examples of Malpractice and Maladministration

The headings below list categories of maladministration by the staff of the APP and malpractice by APP staff and / or candidates which may adversely affect the integrity of WSET® qualifications and certification.

Malpractice will include, but is not limited to:

Actual or attempted Plagiarism, or cheating, of any nature by candidates;
Candidates in breach of published Examination Regulations and APP in breach of invigilation rules or the Code of Conduct;
Fraudulent use of WSET® certificates;
Use of unapproved or ineligible educators to deliver a qualification course, or use of un-authorised internal assessors
Change of examination location or altered facilities so they no longer meet the required standards;
Failure to administer examination in line with the assessment requirements.

Maladministration will include, but is not limited to:

Failure to follow procedures or adhere to regulations as laid out in the APP Operating Handbook;
Failure to return examination papers within the required timeframe or
Breach of the Conflicts of Interest Policy

Serious and /or deliberate breaches of conduct, or serious neglect of professional duty, represents a high risk to the integrity of the qualification. Major Malpractice could result in the invalidation or revocation of examination results to a student and / or approval of the APP. In this instance OfQual must be informed of the malpractice case and WSET®Awards will take all appropriate action as directed by the Regulatory Authority, which may include notification to other Awarding Bodies.

Minor and /or accidental breaches of conduct or neglect of professional duty, or those more major breaches not considered to be deliberate or malicious in intent, represents a lower risk to the integrity of the qualification and would not affect examination results or certification.

Reporting Malpractice

Candidates may report a potential incident of Malpractice or Maladministration to the Nominated Educator (Chris Cassell) who will then immediately report it to the Centres Co-ordinator and Quality Assurance Manager at WSET® Awards. Failure to do so may result in the refusal to issue results and Certification to candidates, the invalidation of examination results or the withdrawal of approval to offer WSET® qualifications.

Candidates may also report suspected Malpractice or Maladministration regarding an APP’s activities or personnel which may affect the integrity of WSET® qualifications directly to WSET® Awards.

WSET® Awards will confirm receipt of a report of suspected or actual malpractice within 3 working days.

Should a case of malpractice be raised with WSET® Awards against the Programme Provider, the main contact, or other appropriate person within the management of the APP, will be notified and invited to respond prior to further action being taken. Notwithstanding the foregoing, WSET® Awards reserves the right to immediately suspend an APP’s approval if, after consultation with the WSET’s Chief Executive, it is decided that such a suspension is required to protect the reputation of the WSET, and to prevent any possible re-occurence of the alleged malpractice. In such circumstances, the APP will be notified immediately and will be required to co-operate with the WSET® whilst the alleged malpractice is investigated.

WSET® Awards will appoint a suitably trained officer to investigate the alleged malpractice and this

officer will request supporting evidence from the APP, Candidate or other parties to validate the report of suspected or actual malpractice.

When supporting evidence has been supplied, WSET® Awards will conduct a full investigation of the suspected or actual malpractice to identify the cause and to determine whether malpractice has actually occurred.

Where it is determined that malpractice has occurred, a report will be filed. This will include whether the malpractice is accidental or deliberate, and represents a major or minor threat to the integrity of the qualification, and specify any sanctions that are to be applied to the APP, their staff or the candidate concerned. If malpractice has been alleged against a candidate, a summary of the investigation and the findings will be sent to the candidate; if the malpractice has been alleged against the APP the summary will be sent to the Main Contact, and the candidate or APP Main Contact will be advised of the sanctions being imposed. They will also be advised of the General Appeals Policy should they wish to appeal the decision that has been made.

Any case of malpractice that threatens the integrity of the qualification, results issued or certification will be reported to the Regulatory Authority, and following discussion with the Regulatory Authority, other Awarding Bodies may be notified.

Where the report is the result of an internal investigation by the APP, WSET® Awards will review all the documentation supplied and action taken to ensure that any decisions made by the APP are valid and conform to this policy. WSET®Awards may request additional information to determine whether any additional sanctions should be applied to the APP, their staff or the candidate concerned.

Must & Lees Responsibilities

The Nominated Educator (Chris Cassell) of Must & Lees is responsible for ensuring that all staff involved in the delivery and / or administration of the WSET® programme run it in accordance with the rules, regulations and procedures set out in this manual, and are aware of, and comply with, this policy. Must & Lees is responsible for their own framework of controls and checks to minimise and identify any instances of malpractice and is fit for purpose of reporting and investigating any alleged malpractice.

Must & Lees will co-operate fully with WSET® Awards in any investigation of alleged malpractice at the APP including the removal and / or suspension of staff from their WSET® duties during such investigation.

Potential Sanctions Against Must & Lees.

In cases of alleged malpractice or maladministration, WSET® Awards has the right to apply sanctions. This may include suspension of approval to operate WSET® Awards courses with immediate effect if such action is approved by the Chief Executive of the WSET® whilst an investigation is carried out.

It is WSET intent that no learner should be disadvantaged by any instance of malpractice or maladministration that has arisen by the actions (or non-action) of the APP. However where such breach undermines the integrity of the assessment process, it may be necessary to invalidate the exam that has been held and require the APP to arrange a free resit for candidates at their convenience.

Potential Sanctions Against Candidates

Following an investigation by WSET® Awards, it may be necessary to apply one of more of the following sanctions against an individual candidate or candidates.

Letter of warning;
The disallowing of an examination result;
The invalidation of a certificate and/or unit certificate and recall of certification already issued;
Refusal of entry to future WSET®

All decisions with regard to malpractice will be communicated in writing within 20 working days following receipt of supporting documentation. Where it is not possible to respond within this timeframe, a written response will be given providing a date for completion.

Any candidate, educator, invigilator or APP has the right to appeal any decision made against them using the General Appeals section of the APP handbook, or as detailed in the WSET® Customer Service Statement.

Cancellation Policy - WSET Courses

Candidates must be over the UK legal minimum age for the retail purchase of alcoholic beverages.

Bookings for WSET courses are refundable up to 4 weeks (28 days) prior to the Course Start date.

All Refund requests must be made in writing or by email.

When issuing refunds we reserve the right to deduct : an Administration Fee of £30.00, unrecoverable payment processing fees incurred with the booking, and the cost of any WSET Study materials supplied.

No refunds are available for cancellations received within 4 weeks (28 days) of Course Start date.

On occasion due to unforeseen circumstances we may need to postpone or reschedule a course or event. If alternative date or a credit is not acceptable we will refund payment in full (less the cost of any WSET Study materials supplied).

Where circumstances are beyond our reasonable control, we reserve the right to postpone and reschedule all or part of any course or event and no refunds will be offered

WSET Course Transfers

Transfer of a booking to an alternative Course can be arranged if a request is made up to 4 weeks (28 days) prior to the Course Start date – this is subject to availability.

Transfer requests must be received in writing or by email, and will incur an Administration Fee of £30.00

Transferred courses are not eligible for refunds

WSET Course Exams

Examination fees are included within the price of applicable courses.

Students will need to bring photographic identification with them on the date of any examination, such as a driving licence or passport.

Students requiring reasonable adjustments must submit their request no later than 4 weeks (28 days) before the examination date. Such requests must be supported by a doctor’s certificate or similar document.

Where a student fails to attend or does not meet the criteria to pass the examination, but still wishes to gain the qualification, they should contact Must & Lees (school@mustandlees.co.uk) and we will recommend options, which may include attendance at a future course, or sitting the examination on another date.

Examination dates are fixed to the course onto which you book and any transfer to an alternative exam date will incur an administration fee of £30.00.

Exam date transfer requests must be made in writing or by email and are subject to availability.

Exam date transfer requests made within 10 or less working days of the exam date will incur the Admin Fee plus the cost of the unused exam paper.

In the event of a student resitting a WSET examination, the following examination fees will apply, depending on the course, as follows. Level 1: £65, Level 2: £80.

Corporate & Private Events

For Corporate and Private events, a non-refundable deposit is payable to hold the date and the remaining balance must be paid before the event.

Final numbers must be confirmed no later than 1 week before the event. Our invoice will be based on these numbers as a minimum and the cost of any additional guests attending will be detailed on a final invoice if applicable.

Gift Vouchers

Gift vouchers are non-refundable.

Gift Vouchers are valid for 1 Year (12 months) from date of issue.

If you are using a Must & Lees voucher we will verify the voucher number(s) supplied before event date.

Online gift vouchers may be used as full or part payment towards any course / event available for booking on this website on the date of booking.

Any balance of online gift vouchers will remain as a gift voucher and cannot be exchanged for cash. The expiry date on the balance is the original expiry date of the voucher.