Privacy policy

This privacy statement 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 policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to: HR@agecymrugwent.org or by writing to Data Protection Officer, 124-128 High Street, Blackwood, NP12 1AF. Alternatively, you can telephone 01633 763 330.

Who are we?

We are Age Cymru Gwent, one of the largest older people charities working across Gwent. We are dedicated to helping everyone make the best of later life. We are a partner organisation of Age UK.

Age UK’s Age Cymru Gwent is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and security. Whenever you provide us with your personal information via our website “Site(s)”, we will treat that information in accordance with this policy, our terms and conditions and current UK Data Protection legislation.

By using the Site and any services we offer via our Site, you are agreeing to be bound by this policy. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. This policy may change from time to time, so please check this page periodically.

Age UK’s Age Cymru Gwent is a registered charity (number 1155903). The registered address is 124-128 High Street, Blackwood, NP12 1AF. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, you should contact our Data Protection Office at HR@agecymrugwent.org or via 01633 763 330.

Our registered charity number is: 1155903.

Usually, Age Cymru Gwent will be the 'controller' of your personal information. This means that we are responsible for deciding how your personal information is used and ensuring that it is used in compliance with applicable data protection law (in conjunction with other parties, where applicable).

If one of our subsidiaries (or another entity) is the relevant controller, this will be explained where appropriate.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you in the following ways:

Information you give to us directly.

For example, we may obtain information about you when you access our services, take part in one of our events, donate to us, apply to volunteer for us, or when you register to receive one of our newsletters.

Mandatory Information

In some circumstances, it may be mandatory to collect and process some of your personal details to deliver the service or provide the support you are looking for.

For example:

we need your contact details to provide you with services and respond to your enquiry or complaint.
if you kindly choose to make a one-off or regular donation to us and allow us to claim Gift Aid, we might need to ask for your card details and full address.

Information you give us directly

Your information may be shared with us by third parties, for example, where you have consented for them to do so or where there is an agreement/contract in place between us and the third party. These might include:

independent event organisers, for example fundraising events and fundraising sites like Just Giving; professional fundraisers; and
Referrals made to us from another organisation or individual, such as your GP, if they think the service would be helpful to you.

You should check any privacy policy provided to you where you give your data to a third party.

When you access this website

When you visit the Site, we collect various personal information, which may include your name, address, contact details, IP address, and information regarding which pages are accessed and when

We, like many companies, automatically collect the following information:

technical information, including the type of device you’re using, the IP address, browser and operating system being used to connect your computer to the internet. This information may be used to improve the services we offer.
information about your visit to this website, for example, we collect information about pages you visit and how you navigate the website, i.e. length of visits to certain pages, products and services you viewed and searched for, and referral sources (e.g. how you arrived at our website).

We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website. Some of these cookies can be enabled/disabled by selecting your preferences in the preference centre you are presented with when first interacting with this site. More information on cookies can be found under the ‘Use of Cookies section below.

When you use Social Media

When you interact with us on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, we may obtain information about you (for example, when you publicly tag us in an event photo). The information we receive will depend on the privacy preferences you have set on those types of platforms. If you interact with us in this way, we encourage you to read the Privacy Policy of the social media platform(s) you use.

As mentioned above, we collect and use your personal information by using cookies, including social media cookies (i.e., third-party cookies). We use social media cookies to enhance the functionality of this website and provide you with personalised content.

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, Google 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.

What type of Information is collected from you?

The information we collect, store and use from you may depend on the relationship you have with Age Cymru Gwent. This might include:

your name and contact details (including postal address, email address and telephone number);
your date of birth
your communications with us, such as call recordings and emails you send. These communications may relate to general enquiries, requests for support or guidance, and complaints or feedback about our activities, products and services.
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;
if you are a successful applicant to volunteer or work for us, we will ask for a photographic ID to verify your identity. We may also collect your National Insurance number and information from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) where appropriate.

Data protection laws recognise certain special categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore require greater protection. The UK GDPR defines special category data as:

personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin;
personal data revealing political opinions;
personal data revealing religious or philosophical beliefs;
personal data revealing trade union membership;
genetic data;
biometric data (where used for identification purposes);
data concerning health;
data concerning a person’s sex life; and
data concerning a person’s sexual orientation.

This does not include personal data about criminal allegations, proceedings or convictions, as separate rules apply.
We do not usually collect sensitive data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for doing so and data protection laws allow us to. Where appropriate, we will make it clear why we are collecting this type of information and what it will be used for.

How and why is your information used?

The purposes for which we use your information may depend on the relationship you have with Age Cymru Gwent and/or our charitable partnership with Age UK. We may use your information for a number of different purposes, which may include:

providing you with the services, products or information you asked for.
carrying out our obligations under any contracts entered into between you and us;
keeping a record of your relationship with us;
administering your donation or supporting your fundraising, including processing Gift Aid;
responding to or fulfilling any requests, complaints or queries you make to us;
conducting analysis and market research to better understand how we can improve our services or information;
analysing the number and type of people who have used our services to demonstrate our impact and apply for funding
monitoring the interactions we have with our customers, donors and beneficiaries for quality control and compliance purposes to ensure we are delivering the service we and our regulators expect (See ‘Monitoring’ section below)
checking the information we have collected online and offline about you against third-party sources so we can ensure that the information we hold about you is up-to-date and accurate
to monitor website use to identify visitor location, guard against disruptive use, monitor website traffic, personalise information which is presented to you and/or to provide you with targeted advertisements
seeking your views or comments on the services we provide;
notifying you of changes to our services;
sending you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include newsletters, fundraising appeals and activities
communicating with you about the fundraising events you have signed up for to help us raise important funds for our charitable work.
administering a legacy, where the charity is potentially the beneficiary of a legacy, we will obtain the names and contact details of executors, a copy of the will, and a grant of probate
checking donations for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime;
processing grants or job applications.

How and when will you hear from us?

We respect your right to privacy, and we will only contact you about Age Cymru Gwent if you have consented to hear from us or where appropriate to do so.

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 policy. These third parties may include:

when you make a donation
when you consent to a referral to other organisations to provide additional support

Fundraising and Marketing communications

We may use your contact details to provide you with information about the vital work we do for older people, our fundraising appeals and opportunities to support us.

We will only send you marketing and fundraising communications by email text, and telephone if you have explicitly provided your prior consent. This does not apply to service communications (see below).

We’ll always ask for your permission to contact you about our products and services in this way, for example:

when you make a donation
when you fundraise for us
when you contact the Age Cymru Gwent Information and Advice lines

You can opt out of our marketing communications at any time via our dedicated consent form.

Post

We may send you marketing and fundraising communications by post that we think may be of interest to you unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in this way.

If we contact you by post with marketing and fundraising information, we do so on the lawful basis of legitimate interest.

This means that we send postal communications to achieve our charitable and/or organisational aims and ideals whilst ensuring that doing so does not impinge on your privacy rights.

We believe that we have a legitimate interest in doing this to raise vital funds, to sustain our charitable work, to be there for older people who need us most.

We ask you if you would prefer not to hear from us in this way the first time you contact us, and you can opt out of postal communications at any point going forward.

Service Communications

We may send you certain communications without your consent if we are under a legal obligation to do so, if we feel sending the communication is in both yours and our interests, and/or if it would be a disadvantage to you if we didn’t send you the communication.

These communications may include:

‘Thank you’ emails to confirm receipt of your kind donations made to us online.
Registration confirmation, such as when you sign up to one of our events.

Online Advertising

We advertise on Facebook, Twitter and Google as well as some other online platforms such as Linked In. We also place adverts on other websites to promote general awareness of Age Cymru Gwent’s fundraising and the services that we offer. We do this by:

Advertising on particular types of websites - for example, newspapers and magazines' websites.
Advertising to people signed up with an online platform (such as Facebook or Google) based on what the platform knows about them.

We may use the following re-marketing processes on some or all of the specific online platforms.

'Look-alike' / 'Similar' audiences: We send a list of 'hashed' email addresses to an online platform such as Facebook or Google (hashing is a security measure whereby the personal information is turned into a code).
'Custom audiences'/ 'Customer matches': We use a similar method as above to send information and support about our fundraising campaigns/ marketing campaigns to people who have already signed up for these.
'Saved' audiences to remember which supporters on Facebook are most likely to respond to our fundraising, campaigning, and marketing requests.
Tracking people's interactions with our adverts so that we know when an individual has clicked on an advert. This allows us to measure the effectiveness of our campaigns.

In some of the above instances, this means that if you have already visited our website, we can direct you back to it through ads shown on sites you visit across the internet by third-party vendors. These third-party vendors include Google and Facebook. All parties may use cookies to serve these ads based on your past visits to our website.

You can object to your information being used by withholding permission on our cookie preference centre when you visit our site.

Lawful Processing

GDPR requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. The following are the grounds we use:

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. Your specific consent is also used where you have agreed for us to use your personal information in case studies to promote our work.

Performance of a Contract

Where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under it with commissioners or funders.

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.

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 Age Cymru Gwent as a charitable organisation in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example to:

send postal communications which we think will be of interest to you;
send email communications about, and related to, fundraising events you have signed up for to help you raise important funds for our charitable work
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;
Sharing personal data amongst relevant teams within Age Cymru Gwent to ensure we communicate with our supporters in the most effective way;
monitor who we deal with to protect the charity against fraud, money laundering and other risks;
record and monitor interactions for quality and training purposes
enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services /communications for the benefit of our customers; and
better understand how people interact with our website.
Retain records and call recordings as evidence in defence of a legal claim.

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).

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do for older people, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the consent form used to collect your information.

We’re committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to change your marketing communication preferences (including to tell us that you don’t want to be contacted for marketing purposes) at any time using:

HR@agecymrugwent.org , or by telephone: 01633 763 330, or post: Data Protection Officer, Age Cymru Gwent, 124-128 High Street, Blackwood, NP12 1AF.

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 when we are processing a donation or thanking you for your participation in an event.

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 we think apply:

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, contact us using the details below. Please be aware that we will ask you for proof of identity or alternative proof of authority before sharing any information we may hold.

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 your email address, or if you believe any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us via email or post (see below). Alternatively, you can telephone 01633 763 330.

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. In many cases, we will anonymise that information, rather than delete it.

Right for your information to be portal

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, 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 using your personal information (1) based on legitimate interests, (2) for direct marketing or (3) for statistical/research purposes.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email us at: HR@gecymrugwent.org or write to Data Protection Officer, Age Cymru Gwent, 124-128 High Street, Blackwood, NP12 1AF.

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 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.

Keeping your information safe

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely.

A list of all the technology measures we have in place include:

Encryption
Secure mail
Password protection
Cyber security

How long is your information kept for?

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 is determined by operational and legal considerations, as well as best practices.

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).

Further reasons we may retain personal information include:

For our auditing purposes
Evidence in defence of a legal claim
Ensuring you are suppressed from marketing if you prefer never to hear from us in the future.

We review our retention periods on a regular basis.

If you would like to know more about how long we hold hold your personal data for – please email us at: HR@agecymrugwent.org

Use of 'cookies'

When you visit the Site, we collect various personal information which may include your name, address, contact details, IP address, and information regarding which pages are accessed and when.
For more details please see our Cookies Policy

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if you access those using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party site and recommend that you check the privacy policy of that third-party site.

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

16 or Under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

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.

Transferring your information outside of Europe

If you use our services while you are outside the EEA, your information may be transferred outside the EEA in order to provide you with those services.

As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EEA. You should be aware that these countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EEA in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this policy.

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.

Monitoring

Records of your personal information and interactions with us (including by email, text and telephone) may be monitored. This may include:

When you call or email our Advice Lines
When you call, email or text your support worker or advisor
When you call or email to make a telephone donation to Age Cymru Gwent
When you call or email to update your details with us
When you call or email to make a complaint or provide feedback

We will let you know that your call may be recorded when you contact us by telephone, and we will only ask for the personal information that we need to provide you with the service you are looking for.

The purposes for which we monitor your communications with us are:

training and quality assurance to help us continuously provide the best possible service
to report, analyse and learn from the complaints and feedback that we receive.

Complaints

We welcome and take seriously all complaints and feedback about our work.

If you make a complaint to us, we will collect and use your information to respond to your concerns.

If your complaint relates to an area of our work where we employ a third-party processor or product provider, we may share your personal information with that third party to investigate your concerns.

We will keep a record of your complaint for 7 years from the date that we deem the complaint closed.

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