Privacy policy

Age UK Sheffield - Our Privacy Policy

This policy describes how and why Age UK Sheffield uses your personal information, how we protect your privacy when doing so, and your rights and choices regarding this information. We promise to respect any of your personal information which is under our control and to keep it safe. We aim to be clear when we collect your information about what we will do with it. When we record and use your personal information, we:

Only access it when we have a good reason;
Only share what is necessary and relevant;
Handle and store your personal information in line with the law.

We are a local charity with relationships with customers, volunteers, students and members, so we use personal information on a day to day basis to deliver our mission. This policy is effective from 25^th May 2018.

“Age UK Sheffield”, “AUKS”, “we”, or “our”, means:

Age UK Sheffield, registered charity (number 1108413) and company limited by guarantee (number 05207254).

The Registered address is Age UK Sheffield, First Floor, South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue, 197 Eyre Street, Sheffield, S1 3FG.

How we collect information about you

We collect information in the following ways:

Information you provide to us directly

You may give us your information:

To receive and Age UK Sheffield service;
To sign up to be a Friends of Age UK Sheffield member;
To sign up to attend one of our events;
To purchase our products or services;
To register as a volunteer;
To apply to work with us;
To fundraise or make a donation.

When you visit our website:

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

Technical information, including the type of device you are 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 the 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, referral sources (e.g. how you arrived at our website).

We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website- more information on cookies can be found under the ‘Use of Cookies’ Section below.

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.

With your consent, your information may be shared with us by third parties, for example:

Via a health or social care professional who thinks that you will benefit from one of our services;
Via fundraising sites like Just Giving or Virgin Money Giving;
If you sign up as a volunteer for us through an external volunteering website;
If you are a social work student on placement and your placement is organized via third party, for example, Sheffield Hallam University.

You should check any privacy policy provided to you by a third party.

What information we collect

We collect, store, and use the following kinds of personal information:

Your name;
Your contact details (including postal address, telephone number, email address and/or social media identity);
Your date of birth;
Your gender;
Your previous profession (for example, if you were in the armed services and accessing our veteran service);
Your next of kin (where you receive services from us so that we know who to contact in an emergency);
Your bank details, where you provide these to make a payment for services received;
If you volunteer for us, or apply for a job with us, information necessary for us to process these applications and assess your suitability (which may include things like employment status, previous experience depending on the context, as well as carrying out Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks);
Information relating to your health (for example if you are taking part in or attending an event for health and safety purposes or where you are accessing Age UK Sheffield services)
Information about your financial situation (where you share this information with us to help you access benefits that you may be entitled to);
Where you have left us a legacy, any information regarding next of kin with which you may have provided us to administer this;
Information as to whether you are a taxpayer to enable us to claim Gift Aid;
Age, nationality and ethnicity information for monitoring purposes; and
Any other personal information you provide to us.

Certain types of personal information are in a special category under data protection laws, as they are considered to be more sensitive. Examples of this type of sensitive data would be information about health, race, religious beliefs, political views, trade union membership, sex life or sexuality, or genetic/biometric information.

We only collect this type of information to the extent that there is a clear reason for us to do so, for example to provide services and support or to meet our duty as an employer. WE will also collect this type of information if you volunteer it to us- for example if you tell us you have cancer when accessing out cancer services, or information about how your health affects your ability to do day to day tasks if you are making a claim for Attendance Allowance.

How we use your data

We use your information to:

Provide you with the services, products, or information you asked for;
Process your application for a job or volunteering opportunity;
Process placement requests, for example student placements;
Administer your donation or support your fundraising, including processing Gift Aid;
To invoice you for services received;
To keep a record of your relationship with us;
To respond to complaints or queries you make to us;
Understand how we can improve our services, products, or information by conducting analysis and market research;
Carry our evaluation of our services;
Audit the quality of services provided;
Report on service activity to funders;
Illustrate the impact of our interventions using customer case studies;
Manage our events;
Further our charitable objectives;
send you correspondence and communicate with you;
Administer our websites and to troubleshoot, perform data analysis, research, generate statistics and surveys related to our technical systems;
Display content to you in a way appropriate to the device you are using (for example if you are viewing content on a mobile device or a computer);
Generate reports on our work, services and events;
Safeguard our staff and volunteers;
Conduct due diligence and ethical screening;
Conduct training and quality control;
Audit and administer our accounts;
Meet our legal obligations, for instance to perform contracts between you and us, or our obligations to regulators, government and/or law enforcement bodies;
Carry out fraud prevention and money laundering checks;
Establish, defend or enforce legal claims.

Lawful processing

The GDPR laws require us to rely on lawful grounds to process your personal information.

Consent

When accessing Age UK Sheffield services, we will always get your permission by asking you to consent verbally or in writing to Age UK Sheffield. Please see the Age UK Sheffield customer privacy notice here.

In most cases, we’ll get your permission to collect, use, store and share your information. At times we might use or share your information without your permission. If we do, we’ll always make sure there’s a legal basis for it. This could include situations where we have to use or share your information:

To comply with the law, called ‘legal obligation’- for example, storing financial information for a minimum period of six years or sharing information if a court orders us to do so;
To protect someone’s life, called ‘vital interests’- for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a customer was unwell at our office or raising a safeguarding issue where someone was at risk of harm;
To carry out our aims and goals as an organisation, called ‘legitimate interests’- for example, creating anonymous case studies and statistics;
To carry out a contract we have with you, called ‘contract’- for example, if you received a paid for service from us;
To defend our legal right- for example to resolve a complaint that we gave the wrong advice.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, our website uses cookies. To find out more, please visit the cookies page.

How does Age UK Sheffield Protect Data?

Age UK Sheffield takes the security of your data seriously. Age UK Sheffield has internal policies and controls in place to try and ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties.

Where Age UK Sheffield engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of the data.

How will my data be stored?

Your information will be recorded securely on our Customer Record Management system, HR and Volunteer Management system, and in other IT systems (including the organisation’s email system).

When we use your information without permission

To comply with the law, called ‘legal obligation’- for example, storing financial information for a minimum period of six years or sharing information if a court orders us to do so;
To protect someone’s life, called ‘vital interests’- for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a customer was unwell at our office or raising a safeguarding issue where someone was at risk of harm;
To carry out our aims and goals as an organisation, called ‘legitimate interests’- for example, creating anonymous case studies and statistics;
To carry out a contract we have with you, called ‘contract’- for example, if you received a paid-for service from us;
To defend our legal right- for example, to resolve a complaint that we gave the wrong advice.

Rights you have over your data

You have a range of rights over your data, which include the following:

Where data processing is based on consent, you may revoke this consent at any time and we will make it as easy as possible for you to do this (for example, by ‘unsubscribe’ links at the bottom of all our marketing emails);
You have the right to ask for rectification and or deletion of your information;
You have the right of access to your information;
You have a right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner if you feel your rights have been infringed. The ICO’s address is:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Walter Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO Website: https://www.ico.org.uk

A full summary of your legal rights over your data can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website.

If you would like access to the rights listed above, or any other legal rights you have over your data under current legislation, please get in touch with us.

How you can access and update your information

You can contact us at any time and ask us:

What information we’ve stored about you
To change or update your details
To delete your details from our records.

To do this, please email enquiries@ageuksheffield.org.uk or call us on 0114 250 2850.

Please note that relying on some of these rights, such as the right to delete your data, will make it impossible for us to continue to deliver some services to you. However, where possible, we will always try to allow the maximum access to your rights while continuing to deliver as many services to you as possible.

How long is your data held by us?

We take the principles of data minimisation and removal seriously and have internal policies in place to ensure that we only ever ask for the minimum amount of data for the associates' purpose and delete that data once it is no longer required.

Typically, if you receive a service from Age UK Sheffield, we will retain your data for a minimum period of six years.

To view our Job Applicant Privacy Policy click here.

To view our Volunteer Applicant Privacy Policy click here.

To view our Customer Privacy Policy click here.

Transferrable outside the EEA

We will not transfer any personal data to countries outside the EEA.

Review of this policy

We may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time and will publish the most current version on our website. If a modification meaningfully reduces your rights, we will notify people whose personal data we hold is affected. This policy was updated in August 2025.