Privacy Policy

Sight Loss Councils Privacy Policy

Here at Sight Loss Councils we take your privacy seriously and promise to keep your details secure.

This policy explains how we use your personal information and the reasons for keeping it, as well as your rights under the new General Data Protection Regulation.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you, for instance when you use our website, when you contact us about services, if you make a donation, or if you register to receive one of our newsletters.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what website pages are accessed and when. We may also hold special categories of personal data about you such as information about your eye condition.

How is your information used?

We may use your information, with your explicit consent, to:

  • process and administer your request for attendance at events or to receive newsletters;
  • send you periodic communications that may be of interest to you. These may include information about events, campaigns or appeals concerning visual impairment, sector news or research findings;
  • seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
  • notify you of changes to our services;

Where you have indicated to us that you prefer to be contacted by telephone or post, we will do so on the basis of pursuing our legitimate interests in providing you with a service or information.

Where it is necessary for the performance of a contract, we will use your information to:

  • process a job/volunteer application;
  • if you are an employee/volunteer, to administer payroll, expenses and pension payments

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example, employee or volunteer personal details or tenancy information).

Our retention criteria where there is no statutory specification include the following:

  • Application forms and interview notes for unsuccessful candidates – six months
  • Pensioners’ records – twelve years after benefit ceases
  • Personnel files and training records – six years after employment ceases

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as you continue to use our services, or as long as our business relationship continues.  Once you have indicated that you no longer wish to receive our services, your information will be held on a suppression file to ensure that you don’t receive further communications from us.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.  We may share your information with third parties such as MailChimp or SurveyMonkey in order to send you marketing communications or to canvass your opinion.

We may pass your information to our third party service providers and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf, for example:

  • Our IT providers, Scoria
  • Our payroll administration service, Trace Payroll Services
  • Our pension administration service, The Pensions Trust
  • Our website infrastructure providers, Namesco and Webbasics
  • Our website analytics service, Google Analytics

However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have agreements in place that require them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes.

We work closely with trusted partners to provide you with the services you have requested, for instance Thomas Pocklington Trust.  These partners will use your details to provide you with information. In some cases, they will be acting as a data controller of your information and therefore we advise you to read their Privacy Policy.

Your data may also be available to our website provider to enable us and them to deliver their service to us, carry out analysis and research on demographics, interests and behaviour of our users and supporters to help us gain a better understanding of them to enable us to improve our services. This may include connecting data we receive from you on the website to data available from other sources. Your personally identifiable data will only be used where it is necessary for the analysis required, and where your interests for privacy are not deemed to outweigh their legitimate interests in developing new services for us. In the case of this activity the following will apply:

  1. Your data will be made available to our website provider
  2. The data that may be available to them include any of the data we collect as described in this policy.
  3. Our website provider will not transfer your data to any other third party, or transfer your data outside of the EEA.
  4. They will store your data for a maximum of 7 years.
  5. This processing does not affect your rights as detailed in this privacy policy.

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you wish to receive newsletters and other communications from us by email about our exciting services and events, we will be relying on you giving us consent about how and why we contact you.  You can withdraw this consent at any time either by choosing ‘unsubscribe’ on the communications sent to you, or by emailing info@sightlosscouncils.org.uk or contacting:

Data Protection Lead
Thomas Pocklington Trust
Pocklington Hub, 3 Queen Sq, London, WC1N 3AR
Tel: 020 8995 0880

We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We may contact you for marketing purposes by post or telephone in order to pursue our legitimate interests unless you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted in this way. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us at info@sightlosscouncils.org.uk or on 020 8995 0880.

Your rights

  • The accuracy of your information is important to us. You can update or correct your personal data by contacting us.
  • You have the right to access the information we hold about you by making a ‘Subject Access Request’.
  • In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us for the data we hold about you to be erased.
  • In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data.
  • You have the right to object to the processing of your data if
  • It is being processing based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of official authority (including profiling);
  • The communication is direct marketing (including profiling)
  • It is being processed for purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics.
  • You have the right to data portability, which allows you to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services.

If you want to know more about your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation, or if you are unhappy with the way we have handled your information, you can visit the Information Commissioners Office website at www.ico.org.uk or contact their helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Our security precautions

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. All information you give to us is stored on secure servers and encrypted laptops are used when processing data.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and unfortunately this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its security during transmission. Once we receive your information, we make every effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, the Sight Loss Council website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better, more personalised service.  You don’t have to consent to website cookies if you don’t wish to do so.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

Children

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children.  If you are a child and wish to access our services, then we will seek your consent to process your personal data.  Your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation as a child are the same as those for an adult and are set out earlier in this document.

Transferring your information outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the EEA. By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are located in a country outside of the EEA.

If we transfer your information outside of the EEA in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place and security measures are taken, e.g.  any contracts we enter into contain ‘sufficient guarantees’ that the requirements of the GDPR will be met and your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this Policy.

Review of this Policy

We keep this policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in March 2018.

If you have any questions regarding this policy or how we use your personal information, please email info@sightlosscouncils.org.uk or contact:

Data Protection Lead
Thomas Pocklington Trust
Pocklington Hub, 3 Queen Sq, London, WC1N 3AR
Tel: 020 8995 0880

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