Privacy Policy

Personal information is information about you as an individual that can identify you. Any reference to “information” or “data” in this policy is a reference to personal information about a living individual.

The personal information we collect directly from you:

• your name, date of birth and contact details (including address, email address and telephone number) when you fill in forms or contact us by phone, email or in writing.
• information about your activities on our website and the device used to access it, for instance, your IP address and geographical location.
• your bank or credit card details when you make a donation. We will not hold your card information if you donate to us online. It is collected by our third-party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions.
• your tax status and whether we can claim gift aid.
• any additional personal information you share with us for example, when you complete our surveys.
• images, such as pictures of you.
• When you share your personal stories or experience of using our service with us

Information about your mental and physical health, ethnicity and religion is called ‘special category data’ under data protection laws. This type of information is sensitive and, therefore requires greater protection.

We do not collect sensitive data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for doing so and data protection laws allow us to. For example, we may ask for your
health information if you are enquiring about disability benefits, applying for a blue badge permit, looking after someone with a health condition or seeking support from our befriending service team.

Depending on the service you need, we will make it clear why we are collecting this type of information and what it will be used for.

Personal information collected indirectly about you:

Your information may be shared with us by third parties, which might include, but is not limited to:

• Event organisers, for example, the London Marathon and fundraising sites like Just Giving, Virgin Money Giving and Make a Smile Lottery.
• Subcontractors acting on our behalf who provide us with technical, payment or delivery services, our business partners, advertising networks analytics providers and search information providers.

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

We may use your information for different purposes:

• providing you with the services, products or information you asked for
• carrying out our obligations under any contracts entered between you and us
• keeping a record of your relationship with us
• verifying your identity and eligibility to receive certain services or benefits
• conducting analysis and market research to understand better how we can improve
  our services, products or information
• checking for up to date contact details against third party sources so we can stay in touch if you move
• entries into a competitions
• booking onto events
• seeking your views or comments on the services we provide
• notifying you of changes to our services
• sending you communications which you have requested or that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, fundraising appeals and activities and, promotions of goods and services checking donations for prevention of fraud or other crime
• processing grant, trust or job applications
• processing orders that you have submitted
• for promoting of our services

Data protection laws require us to meet certain conditions before we’re allowed to use your personal information in the way we describe in this privacy policy. We take these responsibilities extremely seriously. To use your personal information, we’ll rely on the following conditions, depending on the activities we’re carrying out:

Legitimate Interests – We can process data to achieve our legitimate interests (provided the information is used fairly and does not duly impact your rights).

We consider our legitimate interests to be running Age Well East as a charitable organisation in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example, to:

• understand how people choose/use our services and products
• send postal communications which we think will be of interest to you
• conduct research to understand our supporters better and to improve the relevance of our fundraising
• determine the effectiveness of our services, promotional campaigns and advertising
• monitor who we are in contact with to protect the charity against fraud, money laundering and other risks
• improve and personalise our services /communications for the benefit of all those in contact with Age Well East and better understand how people interact with our website
• Collect and process information to deliver appropriate services to you
• Thank you for supporting us with a donation.

Whilst processing 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 if our interests override the impact on you (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 having your explicit consent or another route available to us by data protection laws.

Consent – This is where you have provided specific consent to us using your personal information in a clearly defined way, such as email or telephone marketing and when we process information relating to your health and ethnicity
We will always ask for your consent to use your photograph for our purposes and when we share your story on our platforms.

Legal Obligation – This is where we process your data to carry out our legal obligations under employment, social security or social protection law.

Vital Interests – We can process data to protect life or health or a safeguarding concern which requires us to share your information with the emergency services. This will apply if someone needs medical treatment whilst attending one of our events.

We do not sell or rent your information to third parties and we will never share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

We may pass your information to our third-party service providers, suppliers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to send you mailings). However, when we use these third parties, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the services (such as postal information), and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and prevents them from using it for their own direct marketing purposes.

We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected for.

If you’ve used any of our services, we will keep notes of our work with you for seven (7) years. Some of our operational and legal considerations will determine the length of time we retain your personal data. For example, we are legally required to hold some types of information for longer periods to fulfil our statutory and regulatory obligations (e.g., tax and accounting purposes).

We may use your contact details to provide you with information about the important work we do for people in later life, our opportunities to support us and fundraising appeals. Additionally, we may send you products you can buy or details of third-party organised events, if we think it may be of interest to you.

Email/text/Phone
We will only send you marketing and fundraising communications by email, text and telephone if you have explicitly provided your consent. You may opt out of our marketing communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of our marketing emails.

Post
We may send you marketing and fundraising communications by post unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us.

Tailoring our messages
So that we can tailor our communications in a way that is timely and relevant to you, we may look at your personal information, your interests and preferences. We may also make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. This allows us to be more cost effective with our resources and reduce the risk of someone receiving information they may find inappropriate or irrelevant. For example, we may only send information about Dementia friendly groups or events to those who are looking after someone with Dementia.

Segmenting – we may conduct analysis of supporters and customers by group. This is to ensure that campaigns or mailings are sent to those who will be most interested or likely to respond. This type of analysis is effective when offering a service specifically for people living in a certain location.

You are in control
You have a choice about whether you wish to receive information from us or not. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us, about the important work we do for people in later life and the exciting services we offer, then you can tell the advisor directly or select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form used to collect your information. (Please check forms)

You can also freely change your marketing preferences at any time by emailing: dataprotection@agewelleast.org.uk, telephoning 0300 37 33 333, or writing to: 63 North Hill, Colchester, Essex, CO11PX.

We will not use your personal information for marketing purposes if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. We will retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. In some circumstances, 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.

The UK data protection law gives you rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Under this legislation you have the right to:

• be given clear, transparent and free information about how your data will be used. (Right to be informed).
• access your personal data so that you can see how we are using your personal information. The right to access is commonly called a subject access request (SAR)
• update or amend the information we hold about you (Right to rectification)
• obtain and reuse the personal data you have given to us for your own purposes (Right to data portability)
• request that we permanently delete or remove your information where there is no “compelling” reason for us to keep it (Right to erasure)
• object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (Right to object)

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email us at dataprotection@agewelleast.org.uk or write to 63 North Hill, Colchester, Essex CO11PX.

We will 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 an initial response.

For more details about your rights and circumstances which may affect these rights, we recommend you consult the guidance published by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office.

We regularly train all staff on how to manage personal data. We also take steps to ensure that appropriate technical controls are in place to protect your data.

Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected. You can check if you are on a secure page by locating a lock icon on the bottom of your web browser.

Unfortunately, sending information via the internet, including email is not completely secure; anything you send is done at your own risk. Once received, we will secure your information in accordance with our security procedures and controls.

We recognise the importance of keeping your personal information accurate and up to date and will take steps to ensure this. Where possible, we use publicly available sources to identify deceased records to avoid sending inappropriate messages.

We really appreciate it if you let us know when your contact details change.

We automatically collect the following information when you visit our website:

• technical data, including the type of device you’re using, the IP address, browser and operating system.
• information about your visit to our website, for example, the pages you visited and how you navigate the 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 the Age Well East site. More information on cookies can be found under the ‘Use of Cookies’ section below.

Use of ‘cookies’

Our website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. This helps us to deliver a more personalised service when you browse our website and improves our services.
It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.

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.

We are committed to protecting vulnerable or young supporters, customers and volunteers. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

We observe good practice guidelines in our interactions with vulnerable people and we use additional care when processing their information.

The information which you provide to us through this website may be transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). This may happen if any of our servers are 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 agree 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 to ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this policy.

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

We regularly review who has access to information to ensure that your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors

We collect some personal information, including special category data, such as health information from our volunteers. You will use your health information to make reasonable adjustments to support you as a team member.

The information we collect from you helps us to ensure that all our volunteers have a positive experience volunteering with us.

We will use your information to match you to the client that is right for you. If you have agreed, we will update you about what we do through our newsletters. We will ensure that your personal information is securely stored in our database.

We keep volunteer information for seven years after your last interaction with us.

We keep this policy under regular review, particularly when we make any significant changes to how we process your information. We will notify you so that you can raise any concerns or objections with us.

When making less impactful changes, we’ll update this notice and post a summary of the changes on our website.

This policy was last updated in November 2023