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Privacy Policy

At Wildlife and Countryside Link (Link), we respect the privacy of our members and all visitors to our website. This policy is concerned with how we collect information, what we do with it and what controls you have.

1. Your Privacy

Wildlife and Countryside Link is a unique coalition of charitable organisations concerned with the conservation and protection of wildlife and the countryside. Link is the biggest coalition of environmental and animal protection organisations in England. We are an umbrella organisation for a wide range of charities with an interest in nature conservation, access to the countryside and animal welfare. Our joint vision is ‘to secure and shape a healthy, enhanced and accessible natural world’.

We want England’s wildlife sites to comprise a coherent and resilient ecological network, on land and at sea. We work with our members, and others, to embrace a new, restorative approach which rebuilds nature and creates a more resilient natural environment for the benefit of wildlife and people.

We take our duty to process your personal data very seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal data. You can contact us at any time to discuss this policy or the data we hold, using the details provided at the bottom of this page.

We may change this document from time to time to reflect current best practice on what we do with your information. Please check back frequently. You will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated (see end).

2. Who are we?

In this policy references to Wildlife and Countryside Link, or Link, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to Wildlife and Countryside Link, which is a registered charity, number 1107460, and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales, number 3889519. Registered in England at 89 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7TP.

3. What are your rights?

A new data protection law, which comes into effect on 25 May 2018, gives everyone a number of very important rights. These are:
  • Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).
  • Your ability to request a copy of the information we hold about you, which will be provided to you within one month (right of access).
  • The ability to update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).
  • To ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).
  • To ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be 'forgotten').
  • To object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).
  • To obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes (right to data portability).

To not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling).
If you would like to know more about your rights under the data protection law see the Information Commissioners Office website.

4. What personal data we collect and how we use it

4.1. What we need

Wildlife and Countryside Link is what’s known as the ‘controller’ of the personal data you provide to us. Depending on your interaction, we will usually collect basic personal data about you like your name, postal address, and telephone number.

We will be very clear with you that we wish to collect such information, our reason for collecting such information, and we would only do so with your specific consent and permission.

4.2. Why we need it

We collect your personal data in connection with specific activities such as campaign updates, requests to receive our newsletters, event invitations, feedback and applications.

The information is either needed to fulfil your request or to enable us to provide you with a more personalised service. You don't have to disclose any of this information to browse our website. However, if you choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services.

4.3. Our marketing

Sometimes, we will process your personal data to provide you with information about our work or our activities that you have requested or are expecting.
On other occasions, we may process personal data when we need to do this to fulfil a contract (for example, if you have purchased something from our web shop) or where we are required to do this by law or other applicable regulations.

Link also processes your data when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests do not override your rights. Those legitimate interests include providing you with information on our policy work, campaigning, membership, newsletter requests and feedback. We have a legitimate interest in contacting those signed up to our mailing list, and processing this data in accordance with your rights (see section 7). You can unsubscribe from our mailing list at any time, by clicking ‘unsubscribe’ on the email itself.

4.4. How we obtain your details

We only collect your personal information when you provide it to us directly either by using our website or via email. You will always have the opportunity not to be contacted by us, by unsubscribing from our emails, or by contacting us directly. However, we may continue to hold information so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us and ensure there is no duplication.

We also collect non-personal information, such as IP addresses (this is the location of the computer on the internet), pages accessed and files downloaded. This helps us to determine how many people use our sites, how many people visit our website on a regular basis, and how popular our pages are. This information doesn't tell us anything about who you are or where you live, it just allows us to monitor and improve our service.

4.5. Children

If you are under 18, please ensure you obtain your parent/guardian's consent before sending any personal information to any website or to Wildlife and Countryside Link.

Please note that we will not knowingly market to or accept donations from persons aged under 18 years.

As a parent or guardian we encourage you to be aware of the activities in which your children are participating, both offline and online. If your children voluntarily disclose information, this may encourage unsolicited messages. We suggest that you discourage your child from providing any information without your consent.

All the personal data we process is processed by our staff in England, in accordance with guidance by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

5. Legitimate interests

We have a number of lawful reasons that mean we can use (or 'process') your personal information. One lawful reason is something called 'legitimate interests'. Broadly speaking, Legitimate Interests means we can process your personal information if:

  • We have a genuine and legitimate reason

and

  • We are not harming any of your rights and interests.

When you provide your personal details to us, we use your information for our legitimate business interests to carry out our work leading and supporting our members to have impact and influence on existing and emerging policy at the highest level. Before doing this, though, we will also carefully consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights.

6. Sharing your information

We will only disclose information to third parties or individuals when obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation and criminal investigations and the following:

  • If you have agreed that we may do so (i.e. by agreeing to this policy statement).
  • If we merge with another organisation to form a new entity, information may be transferred to the new entity.
  • We may disclose aggregate statistics about our site visitors, supporters, customers and sales to describe our services and operations to prospective partners, advertisers and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics won’t include any personally identifying information.
If we run an event in partnership with other named organisations your details may need to be shared. We will be very clear what will happen to your data when you register for any such event.

We will never sell your personal data, and will only ever share it with organisations we work with where necessary and if its privacy and security are guaranteed.

7. Retaining your information

Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means). We may also store information in paper files.
We place a great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our members and users. We have security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal data under our control. For example, only authorised personnel are authorised to access user information.
We only hold your information for as long as necessary for each purpose we use it. If you decide not to support Link anymore, or request that we have no further contact with you, we will keep some basic information (such as your name and email address) in order to avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future and to ensure that we don’t accidentally duplicate information.

8. How to contact us

If you wish to talk through anything in our privacy policy, find out more about your rights or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact our team (details at the bottom of this page) who will be happy to help. If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can speak to a member of staff at Link who will investigate the matter. If you are not satisfied with our response, or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Our team can be contacted by writing to:
Vox Studios, N101C
1 – 45 Durham Street
Vauxhall
SE11 5JH

or by emailing: enquiry@wcl.org.uk
or by phone: 0203 855 4265

If you wish to talk to us about anything in the policy or the information we hold about you, please contact a member of staff via the options above.

This document was last updated: 24/05/18.