Policies

Privacy & data protection

Who are we?

Northumberland Wildlife Trust (NWT) is a registered charity (charity number 221819) and a company limited by guarantee (company number717813) with offices at St Nicholas Park, Jubilee Road, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne NE3 3XT. Our website is www.nwt.org.uk.

NWT has a direct interest in the following subsidiary companies (providers of ecological services), which trade only to raise funds for our organisation:

  • EcoNorth Limited
  • EcoÉireann

Our commitment to you

We have legal obligations to you under the current Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We work under the guidance of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), an independent body set up to uphold information rights (www.ico.org.uk). We also have obligations to you as a supporter and value your trust highly.

We will never sell your personal data. There may be occasions when we share information with project or event partners, but we will always ask for specific consent at the point when you give your information.

NWT is defined as the data controller. With your permission, as outlined in this policy, we determine why and how your personal data is used.

A data processor is a person or organisation who processes your data on our behalf. This might, for example, be a mailing house, which sends your membership magazine to you as it more cost-effective to outsource larger tasks.  This also includes better Impact, the owner of the software system we use to host and maintain volunteer records. When we work with organisations like this, we have a written contract with them to protect your data. You will never hear from them independently. We always send your data to the data processors securely.

If you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or to discuss the privacy policy, please contact us:

Director of Finance and Central Services
Northumberland Wildlife Trust Ltd
St Nicholas Park
Jubilee Road
Gosforth
Newcastle upon
Tyne NE3 3XT

mail@northwt.org.uk
Tel: 0191 284 6884

Office hours are Monday to Friday, 9am -4pm.

Why do we collect your personal data?

We use your personal data to keep in touch with you.  We will only ever collect, store and use your personal data when we have an identified purpose and reason to do so. This includes:

A) To administer your NWT membership

We collect your personal data to administer your membership, which may involve:

  • Sending you your membership welcome pack when you first join us
  • Processing your Direct Debit subscription payments, if you have set this donation process up with us
  • Sending your membership renewal letter
  • Getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your subscription payment

Joint or Family membership
If you are a ‘joint’ or a ‘family’ member of our Wildlife Trust, we will address communications to all those listed on your membership. If you wish to update this at any point, please let us know.

Gift membership
If your Wildlife Trust membership was purchased as a gift, we will use the address provided by the purchaser to send you information about our work in the post. This will include a ‘renewal letter’, which we will send you when your membership is due to expire, to see if you would like to continue supporting our charity. 

When your membership has ended
Unless we hear from you directly, we will continue to send you information about our work for up to 6 months after your membership has ended. This is just in case your support was cancelled accidentally by, for example, changing your bank account details, and you might wish to update your details with us.

The ICO defines the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes as ‘contractual’.

B) To send you items purchased from our online shop, including event bookings

The ICO define the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes as ‘contractual’.

C) To enable you to volunteer with us

If you are an NWT volunteer, we collect your personal data so that we can keep you engaged with the volunteering programme, including information on:

  • changes to planned volunteer work programmes that you may be taking part in
  • new opportunities to volunteer
  • the positive impact you have on our work, by sending you our volunteer newsletter
  • dedicated volunteer thankyou events
  • health & safety issues

As defined by the ICO, the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes is ‘contractual’.

D) To send you information about our work and ask for your opinion

We also collect your personal data so that we can send you information about our work that we feel will be of interest to you. This includes your membership magazine, e-newsletters, fundraising appeals, events, campaigning opportunities, services, products, newsletters, feedback, competitions and other activities, as well as information from other carefully selected organisations that we work in partnership with such as Vine House Farm’s bird seed catalogue. From time to time, we may also use your personal data to ask for your opinion about our work.

This information is in addition to that outlined in sections A), B) and C) and is defined as ‘direct marketing’ by the ICO.

Your personal data also helps us to get to know you better and to develop a ‘profile’ of you on our secure supporter databases. This enables us to tailor information in a timely and relevant way to suit you. For example, keeping track of the donations you make to our organisation helps us to send you information about fundraising appeals that we feel you would like to hear about. Likewise, keeping a record of your wildlife interests that you may tell us about in one of our surveys, helps us to send you invitations to events you might like.

As defined by the ICO, we use two different lawful bases for processing your data for ‘direct marketing’ purposes:

Legitimate Interest
This is where we have identified a genuine and legitimate reason for contacting you, which does not override your rights or interests. We use legitimate interest to send you the information listed above by post or telephone (if you are not registered with the Telephone Preference Service, and you have given us your telephone number).

Opt-in Consent
This is where you have given us express permission to contact you by particular communication channels.  We use opt-in consent to send you the information listed above by email, text message (SMS) or telephone (if you are registered with the Telephone Preference Service).

We respect your right to update the way we get in touch with you about our work at any time.

What personal data we collect and how we use it?

Basic Information
The details we collect consist of information such as your name, postal address, email address, telephone or mobile number and bank account details, if you are supporting us financially.

Most of the time, we collect this data from you directly. Sometimes this is in person; other times, it is over the telephone, in writing, through an email or application form. Occasionally we obtain information, such as your telephone number or other contact details, from external sources (but only where you have given permission for such information to be shared).

Further Information
We also collect information about you that helps us to get to know you better. This may include:

  • Information about your wildlife interests, which you tell us through our surveys
  • Records of donations you’ve made towards fundraising appeals
  • Your preferences of how you would like us to contact you
  • Ways you’ve helped us through volunteering your time
  • Records of events you’ve attended, or campaigns or activities that you’ve been involved in
  • Date of birth to allow us to suggest appropriate events or activities

Occasionally we also obtain data from external sources. For example, we may check against Royal Mail’s National Change of Address database to ensure that the address we have listed for you is up to date. We may also collect demographic and consumption data generated through geodemographic tools (such as CACI Acorn). If you do not wish your data to be collected in any of these ways, please contact us.

Sensitive personal data
We do not normally collect or store sensitive personal data (such as information relating to health, beliefs or political affiliation) about supporters and members. However, when we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information, and we will only do so with your specific consent and permission. In these situations, we collect the data from you directly.

For example, if you are a volunteer then we may collect extra information about you, such as:

  • details of emergency contacts
  • medical conditions
  • referrals
  • criminal records checks
  • driving licence information

We may also collect sensitive personal data if you have an accident on one of our reserves or places managed by us. This information will be retained for legal reasons, for safeguarding purposes and to protect us (including in the event of an insurance or legal claim). If this does occur, we’ll take extra care to ensure your privacy rights are protected.

Children and young people
We do not collect, store or process personal details for children under 13 unless we have express permission from a parent or guardian to do so. A parent/guardian consent form is required for volunteers aged under 18. For memberships that include Wildlife Watch, if we have permission, we will capture children’s names and dates of birth at the point of joining. This is so that we can send information suitable for their age. 

Other ways in which we collect personal data to get to know you better include:

NWT website
Our website uses ‘cookies’ to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files placed on your computer or mobile when you visit a website.

Our use of cookies

Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.

Our cookies help us:

  • Make our website work as you'd expect

  • Remember your settings during and betweenvisits

  • Improve the speed/security of the site

  • Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook

  • Continuously improve our website for you

We do NOT use cookies to:

  • Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)

  • Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)

  • Pass personally identifiable data to third parties

  • Pay sales commissions

You can learn more about all the cookies we use below.

Cookie provider: The Wildlife Trusts
Purpose: Used by the website to remember cookie preferences.
Cookies: cookie-agreed, MCPopupClosed

Cookie provider: Facebook
Purpose: Used by Facebook for sharing content, conversion tracking, optimisation and marketing.
Cookies: _fbp, fr
Provider policy: Facebook

Cookie provider: Paypal
Purpose: Used to support payment services.
Cookies: AKDC, LANG, X-PP-SILOVER, akavpau_ppsd, enforce_policy, nsid, ts, ts_c, tsrce, x-csrf-jwt, x-pp-s
Provider policy: Paypal

Cookie provider: Vimeo
Purpose: Used to embed videos from Vimeo using cookies that we consider essential to the video player experience. Does not use third-party analytics or advertising cookies.
Cookies: player, vuid
Provider policy: Vimeo

Cookie provider: Eventbrite
Purpose: Used to deliver event booking services and content tailored to the user’s interests.
Cookies: _ga, _gat, _gid, AS, csrftoken, eblang, G, janus_re, mgref, SP, SS, ebGAClientId, lux_uid, SERVERID
Provider policy: Eventbrite

Cookie provider: New Relic
Purpose: Anonymously maintains a user’s browsing session on the website to allow us to monitor and troubleshoot website performance.
Cookies: JSESSIONID
Provider policy: New Relic

Cookie provider: Engaging Networks
Purpose: Maintains a user’s browsing session on the website when participating with our online campaigning activities.
Cookies: en_sessionId
Provider policy: Engaging Networks

Cookie provider: Google
Purpose: Used to understand website usage including how users found and explored our site and how their experience can be enhanced. Google also provides campaign tracking, advertising and website functionality services.
Cookies: IDE, _ga, _gat, _gat_UA-xxxxxxx-xx, _gid
Provider policy: Google

Cookie provider: Stripe
Purpose: Used for making card transactions on the website. Provided by Stripe.com which allows online transactions without storing any credit card information.
Cookies: __stripe_mid, __stripe_sid
Provider policy: Stripe

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Storing information

Security
All of the personal data we process is processed by our staff in the UK. However, for the purposes of hosting NWT’s website, your information is situated outside the European Economic Area (EEA) in the USA. This is done in accordance with guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Similarly, volunteer records are stored and maintained outside the EEA, in Canada, using the company Better Impact, with information processed in a manner compliant with the ICO guidelines and the GDPR.

Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means).

Payment security
All electronic NWT forms that request financial data will use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to encrypt the data between your browser and our servers.

Our online payment solutions are carried out using a 'payment gateway' which is a direct connection to a payment service provided by a bank. When you input card data into the payment page, you are communicating directly with the bank and the bank passes your payment to us; this means that your payment card information is handled by the bank and not processed or held by us. We do not store any sensitive payment card data in our systems. NWT complies with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council, and will never store card details.

We cannot guarantee the security of your home computer or the internet.

CCTV
Some of our premises have CCTV and you may be recorded when you visit them. CCTV is there to help provide security and to protect both you and NWT. CCTV will only be viewed when necessary (for example, to detect or prevent crime) and footage is only stored temporarily. Unless it is flagged for review CCTV will be recorded over.

NWT complies with the Information Commissioner’s Office CCTV Code of Practice, and we put up notices, so you know when CCTV is in use.

Data retention policy
We will only use and store information for as long as it required for the purposes it was collected for. We continually review what information we hold, and delete what is no longer required. For example, we will keep a record of donations for at least seven years (HMRC rules).

For volunteers, personal information will be removed and the record anonymised (for historical analysis) once there is a lpase of 3 years since either the volunteer or NWT has accessed their record.

If you ask us to stop sending you marketing materials, we will keep a record of your contact details and appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted.

Legacy income is vital to the running of the charity. We may keep data you provide us indefinitely, to carry out legacy administration and communicate effectively with the families of people leaving us legacies. This also enables us to identify and analyse the source of legacy income we receive.

Where you contribute material to us, for example in response to a particular campaign or on a survey, we will only keep your content for as long as is reasonably required for the purpose(s) for which it was submitted.

Your rights

We respect your right to control your data. Your rights include:

A) The right to be informed
This privacy notice outlines how we capture, store and use your data. If you have any questions about any elements of this policy, please contact us.

B) The right of access
If you wish to obtain a record of the personal data we hold about you, through a Subject Access Request, we will respond within one month.

C) The right to rectification
If we have captured information about you that is inaccurate or incomplete, we will update it.

D)The right to erase
You can ask us to remove or randomise your personal details from our records.

E) The right to restrict processing
You can ask us to stop using your personal data.

F) The right to data portability
You can ask to obtain your personal data from us for your own purposes.

G) The right to object
You can ask to be excluded from direct marketing activity.

H) Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
We respect your right not to be subject to a decision that is based on automated processing. 

For more information on your individual rights, please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Making a complaint

We want to communicate with you in ways that you are happy with, and to provide you with information that is of interest. We take complaints very seriously. If you wish to change how we communicate with you, or update the information we hold, then please contact our Data Controller:

  • email us at mail@northwt.org.uk
  • write to us at: Northumberland Wildlife Trust, St Nicholas Park, Jubilee Road, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne NE3 3XT
  • call us on 0191 284 6884 (Mon-Fri, 9am-4pm)

You may also opt out of marketing emails at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any marketing email from NWT.

Confidentiality
All complaint information will be handled sensitively, in line with relevant data protection requirements.

Responsibility
Overall responsibility for this policy and its implementation lies with the Director of Finance and Central Services.

Information Commissioner’s Office
For further assistance with complaints regarding your data, please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office, whose remit covers the UK.

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Email: casework@ico.org.uk

Leaving our website

We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other websites linked to our website. If you have followed a link from this website to another website you may be supplying information to a third party.

Contact us

If you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or to discuss the privacy policy, please contact us:

Director of Finance and Central Services
Northumberland Wildlife Trust Ltd
St Nicholas Park
Jubilee Road
Gosforth
Newcastle upon
Tyne NE3 3XT

mail@northwt.org.uk
Tel: 0191 284 6884

Office hours are Monday to Friday, 9am -4pm.

We update this policy periodically. Last update: 24 May 2018