Privacy Notice for Volunteers

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 St., Leighton Buzzard Bedfordshire, LU7 1EZ. Alternatively, you can telephone 01525 213522.

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 St., Leighton Buzzard Bedfordshire, LU7 1EZ.
We are registered with the Information Commissioner. Our registration number is: Z9348633

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

How do we collect information about you?

The information we hold about you is primarily information you provided when applying for a volunteer/trustee role. Further information may be recorded during your time with Home-Start.

We will collect this information in a variety of ways including directly from you, and from third parties as outlined below:

Former employers or other referees
Professional bodies relevant to your profession
Disclosure and Barring Service
HMRC, DWP and other statutory agencies

What type of information is collected from you?

Your name, address, contact details
Unique personal identifiers, e.g. date of birth, photographs.
Your attendance at Home-Start Bedfordshire
Personal data provided by you for a specific purpose, e.g. disability, medical conditions
Your application and/or CV
References
Supervision notes
Accidents at work
Details of any training received
Time and attendance details
Bank account details for expenses purposes
Interview tests/results

Sensitive personal data held by Home-Start Bedfordshire

We require to use some personal data that is considered under data protection law to be ‘special category data’ for example, in relation to your health or ethnicity. We also use some other data which you may consider to be sensitive such as financial information. The information we hold is that which you provide to us (e.g. you may give us information when you applied for your role, or in response to surveys)

Records may contain:

Individual demographic information in compliance with legal requirements (such as marital status, national identifier, passport/visa information, nationality, citizenship, military service, disability, gender)
Health issues requiring adaptations to your working environment
Leaves of absence such as maternity leave, sickness absence, etc
Health and safety incidents, accidents and associated records.

How and why is your information used?

We are required to use your personal data for various legal and practical purposes for the administration of your volunteering role.

How long is your information kept for?

We will keep your personal data only as long as is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was collected, and in accordance with our Data Protection Policy. Data will be deleted when no longer required.

Who has access to your information?

Personal data, including sensitive personal data, may be shared with members of staff, including trustees, who legitimately need the information to carry out their normal duties to support your time with us. We endeavour to ensure that special category personal data is only shared with colleagues with your explicit consent. However, circumstances may arise where this data is shared with colleagues without obtaining your consent. This will only occur in compliance with data protection law if it is necessary to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another person, or for certain other reasons where it is not possible or appropriate to gain your consent such as disclosures to the police for prevention or detection of crime, or to meet statutory obligations. We may disclose certain personal data to third parties. These third parties, and the purpose for sharing the information, are set out below:

Relevant data may be shared with your next of kin but only with your consent or in an emergency
Relevant data may be shared with the Home-Office, UK Visas and Immigration for the purpose of proving eligibility to work in the UK
Data may be shared with reputable “data processors” for the purpose of sending communications, e.g., staff surveys
With your permission we may share information about you for publicity and marketing purposes online, in print and on social media

Otherwise we do not share data with any third party, except as allowed for in other privacy notices or required by law. We do not sell your personal data to third parties under any circumstances or permit third parties to sell on the data we have shared with them.

Lawful Processing

The lawful basis for processing your personal data is necessary for a legal obligation to which Home-Start is subject, for example, compliance with workplace health and safety law or charity law. There is a legal obligation for you to provide much of the information detailed. Without this we are unable to fulfil our obligations.

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 Bedfordshire 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 Bedfordshire 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 Bedfordshire 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, service users 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.

Review of this Privacy Notice

We keep this notice under regular review. This notice was last updated in September 2025.

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.