RSPCA Worcester and Mid Worcestershire Privacy Notice

RSPCA Worcester and Mid Worcestershire (Registered Charity 205930) is committed to respecting your privacy and keeping personal data that is collected about you safe. The Privacy Notice below explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy.

If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please contact us at admin@rspcaworcester.org.uk using the subject “Data Protection” or by calling us on 01905 821272.

Why we use your personal information

Do you know what personal information is?

Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when put together with other information can then identify a person. For example, this could be your name and contact details.

Some personal information is special and classed as ‘sensitive’ including items such as ethnicity or political opinion. We do not collect sensitive personal information about members of the public or our volunteers.

Why do we need your personal information?

We may need to collect information about you when you interact with us, for example when you:

• ask about our activities
• register with us for information
• use our veterinary services
• sign up for publications or newsletters
• volunteer or fundraise for us
• pledge or make a donation or sign up for an event
• become involved in one of our campaigns
• rehome, adopt or foster an animal from us
• telephone, write, contact us online or text us or otherwise provide us with your personal information

This can include information such as your name, email address, postal address, IP address, telephone numbers, date of birth or bank account details so we can process donations and payments and information as to whether you are a taxpayer to help us claim giftaid.

How the law allows us to use your personal information

We will not rent, swap or sell you personal information to other organisations for them to use in their own marketing activities.

There are a number of legal reasons why we need to collect and use your personal information.

Generally we collect and use personal information where:

• you, or your legal representative, have given consent
• you have entered into a contract with us
• it is necessary to perform our statutory duties
• it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency
• it is required by law
• it is necessary for employment purposes
• you have made your information publicly available

If we have consent to use your personal information, you have the right to remove it at any time. If you want to remove your consent, please contact admin@rspcaworcester.org.uk.

What you can do with your information

The law gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us.

You can ask for access to the information we hold on you

You have the right to request access to your personal data to verify the lawfulness of the processing.

You can ask to change information you think is inaccurate

You have the right to request inaccurate personal data rectified or completed if it is incomplete.

You can ask to delete information (right to be forgotten)

You have the right to request that personal data is erased

You can ask to limit what we use your personal data for

You have the right to request your personal data is stored but not processed

You can ask to have your information moved to another provider (data portability)

The right to data portability gives you the right to receive personal data you have provided to a controller in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format.

Right to Object

You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data.

Who do we share your information with?

We use a range of organisations to either store personal information or help deliver our services to you. Where we have these arrangements there is always an agreement in place to make sure that the organisation complies with data protection law.

Sometimes we have a legal duty to provide personal information to other organisations.
We may also share your personal information when we feel there’s a good reason that’s more important than protecting your privacy. This doesn’t happen often, but we may share your information:

• in order to find and stop crime and fraud; or if there are serious risks to the public, our staff or to
• to HMRC for tax purposes

We will also share your information with other parties as part of our animal care and adoption activities:

• When you apply to rehome an animal from us, we’ll need to share your perdona information such as name, address and telephone number to enable a home visit by one of our volunteers.
• In order to microchip animals (a legal requirement for dogs) we will need to share your information with or nominated microchipping company for this purpose.
• When you re rehome a cat or dog from us we will share your information with our pet insurance provider in order to offer you 4 weeks free insurance.
• If you apply for a job with us or volunteer, we’ll 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, we will not do so without asking you beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law. For example, if we need to take up a reference, or obtain “disclosure” from a Disclosure and Barring Service. If you apply for work with us we’ll only hold your data for the purposes of that application. We won’t hold yout personal information for any longer than is necessary for the purposes of that application. We may hold personal information for the purposes of maintain a volunteer register and your information will be held and processed so that we can contact you about future volunteering opportunities. We’ll only hold information relating to the nature of your voluntary work and we’ll delete it in accordance with our retention policies.
• When someone visits our website we may use third party services to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour pattern. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone and we do not allow third party services to carry out work that may identify anyone. If we do want to collect information through our website we will make this clear and explain what we do with it.
• We will use cookies on our website to help make our website interaction better for visitors. Cookies are small text files that reside on a user device so that our website will remember you and reflect your needs. We will also collect aggregated administrative information including an IP address that identifies an individual device.

How do we protect your information?

We will do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and we’ll only make them available to those who have a right to see them. Examples of our security include:

• Controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it
• Training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong
• Regular updates of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches)

How long do we keep your personal information?

We only keep our information for as long as it is required for the purpose it was collected. However there is often a legal reason for keeping your personal information for a longer set period of time, this ranges from months for some records to decades for more sensitive records.

Children and vulnerable people

In any instance where personal data is collected regarding the above we will seek permission to gather this from the nominated carer or parent. For example in relation to information gathered regarding competitions of fundraising.

Where can I get advice?

For independent advice or to make a complaint about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at:

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

Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.