Privacy policy

Cumbria Wildlife Trust is the only voluntary organisation devoted solely to the conservation of the wildlife and wild places of Cumbria. The Trust stands up for wildlife, creates wildlife havens and seeks to raise environmental awareness.

Formed in 1962 and supported by over 15,000 members and supporters, the Trust cares for 43 nature reserves, campaigns for the protection of endangered habitats and species such as limestone pavements and red squirrels, and works with adults and children to discover the importance of the natural world.

Cumbria Wildlife Trust is part of a federation of 46 local Wildlife Trusts and a central charity (the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts) across the UK. With more than 900,000 members and 33,000 volunteers, The Wildlife Trusts are the largest UK voluntary organisation dedicated to conserving the full range of the UK’s habitats and species.

We are committed to keeping the personal details of our members and supporters safe. This policy explains how and why we use your personal data, to ensure that you remain informed and in control of your information.

Any references to Cumbria Wildlife Trust, the Trust, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ refer to: Cumbria Wildlife Trust. We are a registered charity in England and Wales, and our registered charity number is 218711.

We use three key definitions to describe people mentioned in this policy. These are definitions enshrined in GDPR and used by the Information Commissioner (IC), the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights (www.ico.org.uk):

2.1 ‘Data subject’: this is you, one of our loyal members and supporters. As the data subject, we respect your right to control your data.

2.2 ‘Data controller’: this is us, Cumbria Wildlife Trust. We determine why and how your personal data is used (as outlined in this policy).

2.3 ‘Data processor’: Cumbria Wildlife Trust is a data processor as well as any other organisation, who processes your data on our behalf, with your permission. For example, this might be a mailing house who sends your membership magazine to you, on our behalf (due to the size of our organisation, it’s more cost-effective to outsource ad-hoc and large-scale tasks like this).

When we work with other organisations or individuals in this way, we always set up a written contract with them to protect your data. The third parties we work with at no point ‘own’ your data, so you will never hear from them independently and they will always delete your data from their systems when they have completed the task in hand. We always send your data to partner organisations securely, to minimise the risk of it being intercepted by unknown individuals and/or organisations. 

We will never sell your personal data.

Should you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or about our privacy policy, please contact us:

Director of Finance and Resources
Telephone: 01539 816300
Email: mail@cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk
Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Plumgarths, Crook Road, Kendal, Cumbria LA8 8LX

Our office hours are 9am – 5pm (Monday – Friday).

We use your personal data to keep in touch with you.

We will only ever collect, store and use your personal data when we have an identified purpose and reason to do so. The IC refers to this as a ‘lawful basis’. Further information about why we collect your personal data is outlined below.

3.1 To administer your Cumbria Wildlife Trust membership and donations

We collect your personal data (see section 4 for the kind of data we collect) to administer your membership and donations, which may involve:

3.1.1 Sending you your membership welcome pack when you first join us
3.1.2 Sending you a thank you letter or email
3.1.3 Processing your Direct Debit subscription payments, if you have set this donation process up with us
3.1.4 Sending you your membership renewal letter
3.1.5 Getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your subscription payment or donation

The lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes may be ‘contractual’ or 'legitimate interest'

3.2 To send you items purchased from our online shop, including event bookings

We collect your personal data to send you:
3.2.1 Items you have purchased from our online shop
3.2.2 Information about events you have booked onto
The lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes is ‘contractual’.

3.3 To send you information about our work and ask for your opinion

We also collect your personal data so that we can send you information about our work that we feel will be of interest to you. 

This includes your membership welcome pack, membership magazine, fundraising appeals, events, campaigning opportunities, membership, services, products, newsletter requests, feedback, competitions and other activities, as well as information about other carefully selected organisations with whom we work in partnership.

From time to time, we may also use your personal data to ask for your opinion about our work.

3.4 Direct Marketing

The following information is in addition to that outlined in section 3 above and is interpreted as ‘direct marketing’ by the IC.

3.4.1 Joint and family membership

If you are a ‘joint’ or a ‘family’ member of Cumbria Wildlife Trust, we will address communications to all those listed on your membership. If you wish to update this at any point, please let us know. See section 4d in relation to children under 13 years of age.

3.4.2 Gift membership

If Wildlife Trust membership is purchased as a gift, the membership pack can be sent to the gift payer to pass on to the recipient, or directly to the recipient. In both instances, the recipient of the gift membership is given a link for them to choose what information they would like to receive from us.

3.4.3 When your membership has ended 

Unless we hear from you directly, we will continue to send you information about our work where you have consented to receive this – you can choose to opt out of this at any time. We may also send you a postal survey for feedback on why you chose to end your membership, or other relevant postal information for up to 2 years after the end of your membership.

3.4.4 Other Direct Marketing

Your personal data also helps us to get to know you better and to develop a ‘profile’ of you on our secure supporter database. This ‘profile’ enables us to send you the information listed above in a timely and relevant way, to suit you. For example, keeping track of the donations you make to our organisation helps us to send you information about fundraising appeals that we feel you would like to hear about.

Likewise, keeping a record of your wildlife interests that you may tell us about in one of our Membership Surveys, helps us to send you relevant project updates.

3.5 Direct Marketing

We use two different lawful bases for processing your data for ‘direct marketing’ purposes:

3.5.1 Legitimate interest

This is where we have identified a genuine and legitimate reason (see section 3c) for contacting you, which crucially does not override your rights or interests.

We use legitimate interest to send you the information listed above by post or telephone (if you are not registered with the Telephone Preference Service, and you have given us your telephone number).

3.5.2 Opt-in consent

This is where you have given us express permission to contact you by particular communication channels.

We use opt-in consent to send you the information listed above by email, or telephone (if you are registered with the Telephone Preference Service) We respect your right to update the way we get in touch with you about our work at any time.

3.6 To enable you to volunteer with us

If you are a Cumbria Wildlife Trust volunteer, we collect your personal data so that we can keep in touch with you about, for example:

3.6.1 Changes to planned volunteer work programmes that you may be taking part in 
3.6.2 The positive impact you have on our work, by sending you our volunteer newsletter
3.6.3 Dedicated volunteer thank-you events

The lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes may be ‘contractual’ (where administering your volunteer record) and ‘legitimate interest’ (when sending you information about our work)

4.1 Basic information

We will usually collect basic information about you, including your name, postal address, telephone number, email address and your bank details if you are supporting us financially.

Most of the time, we collect this data from you directly. Sometimes this is in person; other times, it is over the telephone, in writing or through an email. Occasionally we obtain information, such as your telephone number or other contact details, from external sources (only where you have given permission for such information to be shared).

4.2 Getting to know you better

We also collect information about you that helps us to get to know you better. This may include:

4.2.1 Information about your wildlife interests, which you tell us through our Membership Surveys
42.2 Records of donations you’ve made
4.2.3 Your preferences of how you would like us to contact you
4.2.4 Ways you’ve helped us through volunteering your time
4.2.5 Records of events you’ve attended, or campaigns or activities that you’ve been involved in

Sometimes we will collect other information about you such as your date of birth and gender. When we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information, and we will only do so with your specific consent and permission. 

Once again, most of the time we collect this data from you directly. Data collected, processed, handled, shared and transferred both ways between The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT) and our Wildlife Trust is bound by a written Data Sharing Agreement to protect your data in line with current legislation.

We may also collect demographic and consumption data generated through geodemographic tools (such as CACI Acorn), as well as information related to your wealth. This may include information from public registers and other publicly available sources such as Companies House, newspapers and magazines. If you do not wish your data to be collected in any of these ways, or have questions about them, please contact us:

Director of Finance and Resources
Telephone: 01539 816300
Email: mail@cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk
Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Plumgarths, Crook Road, Kendal, Cumbria, LA8 8LX

Our office hours are 9am–5pm (Monday-Friday)

5.1 Our website

Our website uses ‘cookies’ to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.

Our cookies help us: 
• Make our website work as you'd expect
• Remember your settings during and between visits
• Improve the speed/security of the site
• Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
• Continuously improve our website for you

We do NOT use cookies to:
• Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)
• Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
• Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
• Pay sales commissions

For more information on our Cookies Policy, please see our Cookies policy.

5.2 Sensitive personal data

We do not normally collect or store sensitive personal data, also known as special category data, (such as information relating to health, beliefs or political affiliation) about supporters and members. However, there are some situations where this will occur.

When we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information. In most cases we will only collect such information with your specific consent and permission. In these situations, we collect the data from you directly. There are limited cases where permission is not required for processing special category data.

If you are a volunteer then we may collect extra information about you, for example:
5.2.1 References
5.2.2 Criminal records checks
5.2.3 Details of emergency contacts
5.2.4 Medical conditions

We may also collect sensitive personal data if you have an accident on our premises or one of our reserves. This information will be retained for legal reasons, for safeguarding purposes and to protect us (including in the event of an insurance or legal claim). If this does occur, we’ll take extra care to ensure your privacy rights are protected.

In line with data protection law, if we receive any information through any data collection channel that indicates an individual is under 16 years of age, we will not store or process that individual’s personal details, unless we have the express permission from your parent or guardian to do so.

If we have the permission of your parent or guardian, and you are a Wildlife Watch member, we will capture your date of birth at the point of joining. This is so that we can send you information that we feel is suitable to your age.

7.1 Security

All of the personal data we process is processed by our staff in the UK. However, for the purposes of IT hosting and maintenance your information may be situated outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).

Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means). Our staff receive data protection training and we have a set of detailed data protection procedures which personnel are required to follow when handling personal data.

7.2 Payment security

All electronic Cumbria Wildlife Trust forms that request financial data will use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to encrypt the data between your browser and our servers.

If you use a credit card to donate, purchase a membership or purchase something online we will pass your credit card details securely to our payment provider (Stripe; PayPal). Other payment methods (e.g. ApplePay) are handled in a similar manner.

Cumbria Wildlife Trust complies with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council, and will never store card details. Our PDQ machine is rented from: Yorkshire Payments Thornhill Brigg Mills, Thornhill Beck Lane, Brighouse, HD6 4AH.

Of course, we cannot guarantee the security of your home computer or the internet, and any online communications (e.g. information provided by email or our website) are at your own risk.

We have CCTV cameras on nature reserves and at our offices to help provide security and to protect both you and Cumbria Wildlife Trust. CCTV will only be viewed when necessary (e.g. to detect or prevent crime) and footage is only stored temporarily. Unless it is flagged for review CCTV will be recorded over.

Cumbria Wildlife Trust complies with the Information Commissioner’s CCTV Code of Practice, and we display notices, so you know when CCTV is in use.

We will only use and store information for as long as it required for the purposes it was collected for. We continually review what information we hold, and delete what is no longer required.

We respect your right to control your data. Your rights include:

10.1 The right to be informed 
This privacy notice outlines how we capture, store and use your data. If you have any questions about any elements of this policy, please contact us.

10.2 The right of access
If you wish to obtain a record of the personal data we hold about you, through a Subject Access Request, we will respond within one month.

10.3 The right to rectification
If we have captured information about you that is inaccurate or incomplete, we will update it.

10.4 The right to erase
You can ask us to remove or randomise your personal details from our records.

10.5 The right to restrict processing
You can ask us to stop using your personal data.

10.6 The right to data portability
You can ask to obtain your personal data from us for your own purposes.

10.7 The right to object
You can ask to be excluded from marketing activity.

10.8 Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
We respect your right not to be subject to a decision that is based on automated processing.

For more information on your individual rights, please see the Information Commissioner's website.

Cumbria Wildlife Trust want to exceed your expectation in everything we do. However, we know that there may be times when we do not meet our own high standards. When this happens, we want to hear about it, in order to deal with the situation as quickly as possible and put measures in place to stop it happening again.

We take complaints very seriously and we treat them as an opportunity to develop our approach. This is why we are always very grateful to hear from people who are willing to take the time to help us improve.

Our policy is:
11.1.1 To provide a fair complaints procedure that is clear and easy to use for anyone wishing to make a complaint.
11.1.2 To publicise the existence of our complaints procedure so that people know how to contact us to make a complaint.
11.1.3 To make sure everyone in our organisation knows what to do if a complaint is received.
11.1.4 To make sure all complaints are investigated fairly and in a timely way.
11.1.5 To make sure that complaints are, wherever possible, resolved and that relationships are repaired.
11.1.6 To learn from complaints and feedback to help us to improve what we do.

For further information on how to make a complaint, please see our complaints page.

All complaint information will be handled sensitively, in line with relevant data protection requirements.

For further information on how to make a complaint, please see our complaints page.

For further assistance with complaints regarding your data, please contact the Information Commissioner, whose remit covers the UK.

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

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 
email: casework@ico.org.uk

We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other websites linked to our website. If you have followed a link from this website to another website you may be supplying information to a third party.

We will never sell your personal data. When sharing your data with us, if you have opted-in to receive further contact, we may get in touch with information about our partners, or third party products and services, but these communications will always come from The Wildlife Trusts. In some circumstances where we are using subcontractors or suppliers we may share your personal data so that they can carry out their contractual services. For example, if you order something from a Wildlife Trust shop that uses a third party delivery company, your name and address will be shared with them. Occasionally, where we partner with other organisations, we may also share information with them. Our Wildlife Trust also shares personal data with The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, but only where permission has been given when the data was gathered.

Should you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or about our Privacy Policy, please contact us:

Director of Finance and Resources
Telephone: 01539 816300
Email: mail@cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk
Cumbria Wildlife Trust,
Plumgarths,
Crook Road,
Kendal, 
Cumbria. LA8 8LX
Our office hours are 9am–5pm (Monday-Friday)