My Cookie and Privacy Policy
1. Introduction & General Terms
We are committed to protecting your personal information when you are using our services. This Privacy Policy relates to our use of any personal information you provide to us via phone or text, by email, in letters or correspondence.
It also relates to our use of any personal information you provide to us online.
In order to provide you with our full range of services, we sometimes need to collect information about you.
This Privacy Policy explains the following:
what information we may collect about you;
how we will use information we collect about you;
when we may use your details to contact you;
whether we will disclose your details to anyone else;
your choices regarding the personal information you provide to us;
the use of cookies on our website and how you can reject these cookies.
We are committed to safeguarding your personal information. Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the Data Protection Act 1998 (these laws are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the "data protection laws").
Our website contains hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third party websites have their own privacy policies, and are also likely to use cookies, and we therefore urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit, which may also be collected by cookies whilst visiting these websites. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.
2. What information will you collect about me?
When you participate in, access or sign up to any of our services, activities or online content, such as newsletters, competitions, telephone or text, vote, donate money, or create an account for any purpose on our website, we may receive personal information about you. This can consist of information such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone or mobile number or date of birth, depending on the activity.
By submitting your details, you enable us (and where applicable our contractors) to provide you with the services, activities or online content such as e-Newsletters, that you select.
We also use cookies and collect IP addresses (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet) from visitors our websites.
3. How will you use the information you collect about me?
We will use your personal information for a limited number of purposes including the following:
to provide our services, activities or online content and to deal with your requests and enquiries;
for "service administration purposes", which means that we may contact you for reasons related to the service, activity or online content you have signed up for (e.g. to provide you with password reminders or to notify you that a particular service, activity or online content has been suspended for maintenance);
to contact you about a submission you have made, including any content you provide.
to provide you with information about our services, activities or online content;
to analyse and improve the services offered through our website;
to provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience. We may also use and disclose information in aggregate (so that no individuals are identified) for marketing and strategic development purposes;
4. When will you contact me?
We may contact you:
in relation to any service, activity or online content you have signed up for in order to ensure we can deliver the services to you;
in relation to any correspondence we receive from you or any comment or complaint you make about our products or services;
in relation to any contribution you have submitted to us
to invite you to participate in surveys about the our services (participation is always voluntary); and
for marketing purposes, where you have agreed to this
5. Will I be contacted for marketing purposes?
We will only use your information for marketing purposes, or to promote new services, activities or online content where you have agreed to this.
6. Will you share my personal information with anyone else?
We will never sell on to third parties the personal information you provide to us. We will keep your information confidential except where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies) or to third parties where this is essential in order to process your information on our behalf. For example, these third parties might include organisations that provides us with the ability to manage our contact lists and produce e-Newsletters. They operate to high standards of information security at a level which is beyond something which we could provide directly ourselves. We never give them authority to use your information for anything other than the purpose for which it was provided and not use your personal information for their own business purposes, unless you have explicitly consented to the use of your personal information in this way.
7. Cookies Policy - Information we collect from you
a. What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer, tablet or mobile phone (referred to here as a "device") browser from a website's computer and is stored on your device's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other websites. Many websites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.
On our website, cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor our websites to your interests.
During the course of any visit to our website, the pages you see, along with a cookie, are downloaded to your device. Many websites do this, because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things like find out whether the device (and probably its user) has visited the website before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.
b. How does you use cookies?
Information supplied by cookies can help us to analyse the profile of our visitors and help us to provide you with a better user experience. We use this type of information to help improve the services we provide to its users. Certain areas of our website may use cookies for a specific reason - for example, to help one of the website functions effectively on your device.
c. Third Party Cookies in embedded content on our pages
Please note that during your visits to our website you may notice some cookies that are not related to us, for example, YouTube or Flickr, you may be presented with cookies from these websites. We do not control the dissemination of these cookies. You should check the third party websites for more information about these.
To ensure that our website includes interesting and helpful content we sometimes embed photos and video content from websites such as YouTube and Flickr. As a result, when you visit a page containing such content, you may be presented with cookies from these websites. We do not control the dissemination of these cookies and you should check the relevant third party's website for more information.
Our Sharing Tools
You will also see embedded ‘share’ buttons on our web pages; these enable users to easily share content with their friends through a number of popular social networks. When you click on one of these buttons, a cookie may be set by the service you have chosen to share content through. Again, we do not control the dissemination of these cookies.
d. Our cookies and how to reject cookies?
If you wish to reject cookies that are set on your device through our website then you can do so when you are asked on your first visit whether you accept or reject our cookies. It is important to note that if you change your settings and block certain cookies, this means that certain personalised features cannot then be provided and accordingly you may not be able to take full advantage of all of the websites' features.