Privacy notice and cookies

At the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Branch we are committed to respecting and protecting your privacy and keeping your personal information safe.

This policy explains how and why we use your personal data (e.g. any information which identifies you, or which can be identified as relating to you personally), to ensure that you remain informed and in control at all times.

Please read this privacy notice together with any other information that we may provide on specific occasions when we ask to collect or process your personal data so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using it.

We are the RSPCA Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Branch (charity no. 226142) and have been established since 1938. For the purposes of data protection law, we are a controller of your personal data. This means we make decisions about how and why it is used and have a duty to ensure your rights are protected.

Our purpose

The RSPCA Chesterfield & North Derbyshire Branch is a self-funding branch of the RSPCA responsible for raising funds locally to support our animal welfare work. Our main aim is to promote responsible pet ownership and to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome those animals in need – finding them loving, permanent homes.

Personal data you provide

We may collect personal information about you when you:

  • rehome an animal from us or express an interest in rehoming

  • bring an animal to us

  • sign up for publications or newsletters

  • volunteer or fundraise for us

  • register or participate in an event

  • register with us for information or a service we provide (e.g. lost and found animal register, public microchipping, financial veterinary assistance)

  • pledge or make a donation

  • register for our Safe Haven sponsorship scheme

  • purchase goods or services

  • telephone, write, contact us online, text us or otherwise provide us with your personal information

This can include information such as your name, communication preferences, email address, postal address, IP address, telephone number, date of birth or bank account details so we can process donations, or information as to whether you are a taxpayer to help us to claim gift aid. In some cases we may also collect information about you from publicly available sources.

We may also hold personal/sensitive personal information in connection with our law enforcement activities, for example in the event that you make a report about alleged animal cruelty offences.

Personal data created through your involvement with us

Your activities and involvement with the RSPCA Chesterfield & North Derbyshire Branch will result in personal data about you being created. This may include details of pets you have rehomed, how you have helped us as a volunteer or your involvement with one of our appeals. If you decide to donate to us, we may keep a record of when, how much you have donated, and through what medium e.g. an appeal or sponsoring our animal accommodation. If you choose to Gift Aid a donation to us, then we will ask for your address and UK taxpayer status as this information is needed to fulfil our obligations under tax and charity law.  It will also be shared with HMRC for tax regulation purposes.

Information from third parties

We sometimes receive personal data about individuals from third parties such as vet practices and other animal welfare organisations with whom we work to rehome pets and to provide our services and information. If you participate in an event organised by an external party or make a donation through a donation aggregator like JustGiving, then they may pass personal data about you to us.

Special Categories of Personal Data

We do not collect any special categories of personal data about our supporters (e.g. race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, health and disability etc.) unless there is a clear reason for doing so. However there are some situations where we will collect special categories of personal data such as your health if you are participating in a fundraising activity like running a marathon, or where we need to ensure that we provide appropriate support to enable you to participate in an event or support us in some other way.

We might collect special category information if you are planning to rehome an animal from us or bring an animal into our care and the information is necessary for that purpose e.g. details of your health status if it affects the type of animal you are looking to rehome from us or details of your personal circumstances if it is relevant to help us understand an animal’s behaviour or the reason an animal needs to be rehomed. We might also collect information to enable us to recognise and respond to the needs of a vulnerable person.

We will only collect special category personal data with the individual’s consent, and clear notices will be provided on applications for events and other relevant forms and communications, so you know what information we need and why we need it. If we do need to collect this sort of data, we will take extra care to ensure that your privacy rights are protected.

Accidents or incidents

If an accident or incident occurs on our property or involving one of our staff (including volunteers), our record of what happened and the action we have taken as a result may include personal data and special categories of personal data.

We are committed to keeping your information safe and want you to feel confident about how we use it when you support our work and animals in our care. We do not rent, swap or sell your personal information to other organisations for them to use in their own marketing activities.

How we ensure we are using your information properly

The legal basis that we rely on for processing your data will depend upon the circumstances in which it is being collected and used, but will in most cases fall into one of the following categories:

  • where you have provided your consent to allow us to use your data in a certain way

  • where the processing is necessary to carry out for the performance of a contract with you

  • where the processing is necessary in order for us to comply with a legal obligation; or

  • where it is in our legitimate interests to perform our functions, for example, processing donations or sending you administrative communications where our legitimate interest is to raise funds and to deliver our charitable purposes

What is legitimate interest?

Legitimate interest is a legal ground for processing your data. It means that our use of your information must be fair and balanced to ensure we consider your rights and interests as an individual.

We may process your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interests, provided that your fundamental rights do not override those interests. Our legitimate interests are:

  • to keep our records updated;

  • to administer our relationship with you;

  • to determine how our limited resources might be used in the most effective way;

  • to protect our security, guard against fraud and other wrongdoing; and

  • to inform our marketing and maximise supporter engagement and participation

Administration

We use personal data for administrative purposes, e.g. to carry on our charitable work. These include:

  • If you rehome an animal from us or bring an animal into our care

  • if you participate in an event organised by us, keeping you updated;

  • processing donations and gift-aid declarations;

  • Managing enquiries, feedback and complaints;

  • maintaining databases of our volunteers and donors, e.g. to make sure that the personal data they contain is accurate and up to date;

  • fulfilling orders for goods or services;

  • helping us respect your choices and preferences, e.g. if you ask not to receive marketing communications, we will keep a record of this);

  • asking you to take part in a survey; or

  • enabling you to participate in a prize draw or competition

Legal requirements

We must ensure our activities comply with the law. Therefore we may need to share your personal data if we are required to do so by law, e.g. disclose your personal/sensitive personal information when required to by law, for example, to HMRC for tax purposes. We may use your personal data for other purposes such as fraud prevention, to comply with money laundering regulations and to protect people’s rights, property or safety.

If certain levels of financial donations are made, the Fundraising Regulator’s Code of Fundraising Practice requires all charities in the UK to perform certain checks regarding the individual who has made the donation.

More details can be found at www.fundraisingregulator.org.uk

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

Data sharing

We may have to share your data with third parties. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We may share your data with third-party service providers such as eTapestry (Customer Relationship Management system), BMc Azurri (Gift Aid claim processing), HMRC (Gift Aid processing), the national RSPCA  and other RSPCA branches (Processing home visits and dealing with animal welfare concerns), accountancy and IT support services.

All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Our donors and supporters

If you wish to support us by making a donation, registering to fundraise for us, joining our Safe Haven sponsorship scheme or signing up to an event, we will collect your name and contact details as a minimum.

Where appropriate, we may also collect additional information, such as your bank details, communication preferences and taxpayer status for gift aid. We will use the information you provide to give you the services, products or information you asked for, tailor communications  to you, to administer your donation including processing gift aid, to send you a thank you letter, to support your fundraising or manage your marketing preferences.

We may also send you administrative communications, for example confirming your transaction when you have made a donation to us.

To make an online donation, you will be directed to a payment gateway which uses security features and encryption to ensure your data remains safe.

Our members

If you are member of our Branch we need to hold your personal information so that we can keep our register of members up to date.

We will also communicate with you about your Branch membership and provide you with information in accordance with our governing documents, for example notifying you of our Annual General Meeting.

Marketing communications

Where you give us your consent, we may also use your personal data in order to send you marketing and fundraising communications, such as invitations to events, information on ways you can support our work, requests for donations and information about our activities.

You decide how you want us to contact you, whether by mail, email or by phone or text message (SMS/MMS) and you can update your communication preferences at any time by telling us when things change. From time to time we will also send you a communication to update and refresh your communication preferences.

Rehoming an animal from us

When you apply to rehome an animal from us, we will need to share personal information such as your name, address and telephone number, to enable a home visit by one of our volunteer home visitors or a home visitor for your local RSPCA branch or national RSPCA establishment.

We make sure that all dogs, cats and rabbits are microchipped when they are rehomed from us; this is a legal requirement in relation to dogs. We will share your personal information with a microchip company in case your animal goes missing. The microchip company we contact will depend upon which microchip has been used to microchip your animal. The principal microchip companies we deal with are PETtrac, Anibase and Petlog but this list is not exhaustive.

If you rehome a dog, cat or rabbit from us, we will also share your personal information with Petplan® insurance, our pet insurance provider, so you can receive your four weeks’ free pet insurance.

Stories, photos and case studies relating to animals we have rehomed are an important part of the content we share to illustrate our work, which we could not do without you. We might use these in places such as our newsletters, magazine, or on our website. Wherever we use such information, we will always obtain your prior consent.

Volunteer and job applicants

If you apply for a job or apply to volunteer with us, we will hold the personal information you provide to process your application.

We may undertake monitoring of recruitment statistics, in line with employment and data protection law.  If we need to disclose information to a third party, for example if we need to take up a reference, we will not do so without asking you beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law.

If you apply to work with us we’ll only hold your data for the purposes of that application. We will not hold your personal information for any longer than is necessary for the purposes of that application.

Here you can read our Applicant policy.

Children and vulnerable persons

Children’s personal information

We are very happy to have the support of children and young people who want to fundraise for us, or who engage with our work. Where appropriate, we will seek the consent from a parent, guardian or carer before collecting information about young people under 16.

Vulnerable persons

We care about the safety of vulnerable persons and while we welcome their support, we also work hard to ensure we are meeting their needs, while upholding their rights.

We abide by Institute of Fundraising Code of Practice when engaging with people in vulnerable circumstances.

We also have our own Branch Safeguarding policy to protect adults at risk and children who we deal with during the course of our work.

On occasion, we may gather information about your computer for our services and to provide statistical information regarding the use of our website to our advertisers.

Such information will not identify you personally, it is statistical data about our visitors and their use of our site. This statistical data does not identify any personal details whatsoever. It is used by us to analyse how visitors interact with the website so that we can continue to develop and improve this website.

We may gather information about your general internet use by using a cookie file that is downloaded to your computer. Where used, these cookies are downloaded to your computer automatically.  This cookie file is stored on the hard drive of your computer as cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. They help us to improve our website and the service that we provide to you.

All computers have the ability to decline cookies. This can be done by activating the setting on your browser which enables you to decline the cookies. Please note that should you choose to decline cookies, you may be unable to access particular areas of our website.

For more information, visit https://www.aboutcookies.org/

Third Party Cookies

To share stories and news, we may embed photos and video content from websites such as Twitter and YouTube. When you visit a page with content embedded from one of these sites, they may set a cookie. Our website also uses embedded ‘share’ buttons to enable visitors to easily share things with their friends through several popular social networks, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. These sites may set a cookie when you are also logged in to their service. The RSPCA Chesterfield & North Derbyshire Branch has no control over these cookies and you should check the relevant third-party website privacy policy for more information about these.

Third party Links

Our website may also include links to other websites, not owned, associated or managed by the RSPCA Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Branch. Whilst we try our best to only link to reputable websites we cannot be held responsible for the privacy of information collected by sites not managed by us, nor can we accept responsibility or liability for them. For this reason you should consult the privacy notice on any external website you link to before you submit any personal information to those websites.

Website Security

We maintain a high level of security to keep your data safe. We use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information given over the internet. All your personal information, including credit card numbers, bank account details and name and address, is encrypted.  This process takes the words and figures you enter and converts them into bits of code that are then securely transmitted over the internet.

Your payments via debit or credit card are passed securely to our payment processing partner Blackbaud Merchant Services

While we make every reasonable effort to ensure that information sent to us is done so securely, we cannot warrant the security of information transmitted to us through the internet. When you transmit information to us via the internet, you do so at your own risk.

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us.

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

  • Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.

  • Request erasure of your personal information. In some cases, you have the right to be forgotten, which requires that your personal information is deleted from our systems. Where you have requested that we do not send you communications, we will need to keep some limited data to ensure we honour this.

  • Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

  • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.

  • Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact dataprotection@chesterfield-rspca.org.uk

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Branch via dataprotection@chesterfield-rspca.org.uk Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

We employ a variety of physical and technical measures to keep your personal data safe and to prevent unauthorised access to, or use or disclosure of it. Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to them (using both physical and electronic means). Our staff and volunteers receive data protection training, and we have a set of detailed data protection procedures which they are required to follow when handling personal data.

We cannot absolutely guarantee the security of the internet, external networks or your own device, accordingly any online communications (e.g. information provided by email or through our website) are at your own risk.

We will only retain your personal information 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. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer a supporter of the branch we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy.

If you have opted in to receive communications from us, we will retain your personal information in order to send you those communications, until you tell us that you do not want to receive them in future.  If you subsequently opt out of receiving those communications, we will remove you from our mailing list but we will retain a record of the fact that you have opted out in order to ensure that you do not receive further marketing communications from us.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our retention policy and schedule which you can request by contacting us.

You can help us keep our records up to date by telling us when your contact details and other personal information changes. You can also change your mind at any time about how we contact you or ask us to stop contacting you altogether. Please contact us and we will make the changes for you:

If you have any data protection questions in relation to this policy, about how we use your personal data in general, or if you would like to make a request to exercise any of the rights you have over your personal data, please contact us by emailing dataprotection@chesterfield-rspca.org.uk, calling 01246 273358 or in writing to:

RSPCA Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Branch

137 Spital Lane

Chesterfield

Derbyshire

S41 0HL

Complaints

If you have any complaints about the way in which we have used your personal information, please get in touch with us. We will be happy to discuss your concerns.In addition, you are also entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office or to the Fundraising Regulator

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

This policy was lasted updated on 28th June 2018