Privacy Notice for Supporters

At Home-Start Bedfordshire, we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Privacy Notice explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, how we keep it safe and secure and your rights and choices in relation to your information.

Any questions regarding this notice and our privacy practices should be sent by email to office@home-startbedfordshire.org.uk or by writing to Home-Start Bedfordshire, Delta House, 33 Hockliffe Street, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU71EZ. Alternatively, you can telephone 01525 213522.

Who are we?
The personal data we collect from you, how we collect and how we use it depending on your relationship with Home-Start, please see the Appendix below which applies to you
Your Rights
Keeping your information safe – IT security
Keeping your information up to date
16 or Under
Vulnerable circumstances
Changes to this notice
Review of this notice
How to complain

Who are we?

Home-Start Bedfordshire is committed to protecting your personal information and to being transparent about what information we hold. Home-Start Bedfordshire understands its obligations to you to help you understand how and why we process your personal data. We will only do so in accordance with all applicable UK data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation. In this notice ‘Home-Start’, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ means:

Home-Start Bedfordshire is a charitable company limited by guarantee.
Company no. 5414484
Charity no. 1109262
Registered office: Delta House, 33 Hockliffe Street, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU71EZ

We are registered with the Information Commissioner. Our registration number is: Z9348633

Our Supporters – Fundraising & Communications

The personal data we collect from you, how we collect and how we use it

How do we collect information about you?
We obtain information about you in the following ways:

Information you give us directly
For example, we may obtain information about you when you take part in one of our events, make a donation, apply to volunteer for us, purchase products and services or when you register to receive one of our newsletters.

Information you give us indirectly
Your information may be shared with us by third parties, which might include:

independent event organisers, for example the London Marathon and fundraising sites like Just Giving;
professional fundraisers; and
subcontractors acting on our behalf who provide us with technical, payment or delivery services, our business partners, advertising networks analytics providers and search information providers.

What type of information is collected from you?
The personal information we collect, store and use might include:

your name and contact details (including postal address, email address and telephone number);
your date of birth;
information about your activities on our website and about the device used to access it, for instance your IP address and geographical location;
your bank or credit card details. If you make a donation online or make a purchase, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions;
information as to whether you are a UK taxpayer so we can claim gift aid; and
any other personal information shared with us.

Data protection laws recognise certain categories of personal information as ‘special category’ and therefore requiring greater protection, for example information about your health, ethnicity and religion.

We do not usually collect special category data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for doing so and data protection laws allow us to. For example, we may ask for your health information if you are taking part in one of our fundraising running events.

Where appropriate, we will make it clear why we are collecting this type of information and what it will be used for.

Public Information
We supplement information on our supporters with information from publicly available sources such as annual reviews, corporate websites, public social media accounts, the electoral register and Companies House in order to create a fuller understanding of someone’s interests and support. For more information, please see the section on ‘Building Profiles’ below.

How and why is your information used?
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do for families, our fundraising appeals and opportunities to support us, as well as the products and services you can buy, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form used to collect your information.

Email/text/Phone/Post
We will only send you marketing and fundraising communications by email, text and telephone if you have explicitly provided your prior consent. You may opt out of our marketing communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of our marketing emails. We may send you marketing and fundraising communications by post unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us.

How long is your information kept for?
We are committed to putting you in control of your data so you are free to change your marketing preferences (including to tell us that you don’t want to be contacted for marketing purposes) at any time.

We will not use your personal information for marketing purposes if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted and will retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes like where we are processing a donation or thanking you for your participation in an event.

We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected for. The length of time we retain your personal information for is determined by operational and legal considerations. For example, we are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory and regulatory obligations (e.g. health/safety and tax/accounting purposes). We review our retention periods on a regular basis.

Who has access to your information?
We do not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

However, we may disclose your information to third parties in order to achieve the other purposes set out in this notice. These third parties may include:

Third parties working on our behalf
We may pass your information to our third party service providers, suppliers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you mailings). However, when we use these third parties, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the services and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and prevents them from using it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties unless we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime. We will not release your information to third parties for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so..

Third Party Product Providers we work with
Our trusted third party product providers provide a range of quality and reliable products and services designed to meet the needs of families. When you enquire about or purchase one or more of these products, the relevant third party product provider will use your details to provide you with information and carry out their obligations arising from any contracts you have entered into with them. They will be acting as a joint controller of your information and therefore we advise you to read their Privacy Notice. These third party product providers will share your information with us which we will use in accordance with this notice.

Lawful Processing
Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. We consider the following grounds to be relevant:

Specific Consent
Where you have provided specific consent to us using your personal information in a certain way, such as to send you email, text and/or telephone marketing.

Performance of a contract
Where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under it, such as were you to buy Home-Start named products and services.

Legal obligation
Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject, for example where we are ordered by a court or regulatory authority like the Charity Commission or Fundraising Regulator for example, in relation to anti-money laundering purposes.

Vital interests
Where it is necessary to protect life or health (for example in the case of medical emergency suffered by an individual at one of our events) or a safeguarding issue which requires us to share your information with the emergency services.

Legitimate interests
Where it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (as long as what the information is used for is fair and does not duly impact your rights).

We consider our legitimate interests to be running a charitable organisation in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example to:
provide our services to support you and your family;.
send postal communications which we think will be of interest to you;
conduct research to better understand our supporters and to improve the relevance of our fundraising;
understand how people choose/use our services and products;
determine the effectiveness of our services, promotional campaigns and advertising;
monitor who we deal with to protect the charity against fraud, money laundering and other risks;
enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services /communications for the benefit of our customers; and
better understand how people interact with our website.

When we legitimately process your personal information in this way, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example, where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

When we use sensitive personal information, we require an additional legal basis to do so under data protection laws, so will either do so on the basis of your explicit consent or another route available to us at law (for example, if we need to process it for employment, social security or social protection purposes, your vital interests, or, in some cases, if it is in the public interest for us to do so).

We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.

Your Rights

Under UK data protection law, you have certain rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Here is a summary of the rights that are likely to apply to you when we are processing your personal information.

Right of access
You have a right to request access to the personal data that we hold about you. You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, and we will provide you with this unless legal exceptions apply. If you want to access your information, please contact us using the details provided.

Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected
You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. The accuracy of your information is important to us, so we’re working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address or if you believe any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us using the details provided.

Right to restrict use
You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy or we’re not lawfully allowed to use it.

Right of erasure
You may ask us to delete some or all of your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions; we will do so as far as we are required to by law. In many cases, we will anonymise that information, rather than delete it.

Right for your personal information to be portable
If we are processing your personal information (1) based on your consent, or in order to enter into or carry out a contract with you, and (2) the processing is being done by automated means, for example, when you shop from our website, you may ask us to provide it to you or another service provider in a machine-readable format.

Right to object
You have the right to object to processing where we are using your personal information based on legitimate interests, (or for statistical/research purposes). In these circumstances we will consider your request against our legitimate reasons for continuing to process your information.

You have an absolute right to object to direct marketing. If you wish to opt-out of receiving marketing materials from us at any time, please contact us using the details provided.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us using the details provided. We may be required to ask for further information and/or evidence of identity. We will endeavour to respond fully to all requests within one month of receipt of your request, however if we are unable to do so we will contact you with reasons for the delay.

Please note that exceptions apply to a number of these rights, and not all rights will be applicable in all circumstances. For more details we recommend you consult the guidance published by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office.

Keeping your information safe

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organisational controls are in place to protect it, such as Firewalls, anti-virus protection and encryption. Home-Start has developed a set of security policies that include device security, authentication requirements, acceptable usage of resources, data storage requirements. We undertake regular reviews of who has access to information that we hold to ensure that your info is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors.

Where Home-Start engages third parties to process personal data on our behalf, those third parties do so on the basis of our written instructions to them; are under a duty of confidentiality; and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data. They are also not allowed to use your personal data for their own purposes.

Home-Start has in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and the Information Commissioner’s Office of a personal data breach when legally required to do so.

Keeping your information up to date

We take reasonable steps to ensure your information is accurate and up to date. Where possible we use publicly available sources to identify deceased records or whether you have changed address. We really appreciate it if you let us know when your contact details change.

Young People

We are concerned to protect the privacy of young people under the age of 18. We will explain what data is held and how that data is being processed. We take responsibility for identifying the risks of processing data and mitigate these risks accordingly.

Vulnerable circumstances

We are committed to protecting vulnerable supporters, customers and volunteers, and appreciate that additional care may be needed when we use their personal information. In recognition of this, we observe good practice guidelines in our interactions with vulnerable people.

Changes to this notice

Any changes we may make to this notice in the future will be posted on this website so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you are happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes we will make this clear on this website.

Review of this Privacy Notice

We keep this notice under regular review. This notice was last updated in February 2024.

For further information on each of these rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, visit the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) website at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public

If you would like to exercise any of the rights, please email, call or write to us using the details in ‘How to contact us’ below, let us have enough information to identify you, let us have proof of your identity and address, and let us know the information to which your request relates.

How to complain

Please report any complaint to the details set out in ‘How to contact us’ below. We hope we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the ICO who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone: 0303 123 1113.

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or the information we hold about you at Home-Start Bedfordshire, Delta House, 33 Hockliffe Street, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU71EZ. Email: office@home-startbedfordshire.org.uk, phone number: 01525 213522.

Our Data Protection Officer/Lead is Linda Johnson.